“Right Up To The Moment of Birth” Really??

It’s the biggest lie told over and over at the Republican debate last night. Why aren’t post-debate commentators calling it out?

I watched the GOP debate last night. I didn’t expect anything different from what I got. But I did expect better from post-debate commentators. I’m perplexed that although there has been plenty of outrage over the raising of hands raised in support of voting for a convicted felon, I’ve yet to hear any corrections of the lie—repeated over and over by every candidate—that pro-choice means abortion “on demand…right up until the moment of birth.”

The “on demand” has always been inflammatory nonsense, suggesting a world in which women go up to the “abortions sold here” counter (or perhaps at a drive-in window) and order an abortion-to-go, please.

But this “up until the moment of birth,” “until the day of birth,” etc. is not just misleadingly suggestive. It’s an outright lie. Roe doesn’t say that. No Democratic platform or pro-choice agenda says that. It’s a craven myth, and needs to be called out whenever it’s deployed.

Not only is “right up to the moment of birth” a lie, it demonstrates callous indifference to the women who actually have been forced to undergo late-term abortions. Yes, they do happen, although very rarely, and only under the most extreme circumstances — when it has been discovered, for example, that their infants have stopped breathing, or would be unable to live outside the womb.

Do you know anyone who has been through that? Or through a stillbirth? Or through the pain and grief of having a child die days or weeks after birth? I do. She has never stopped grieving for that child. Late-term abortions are no less emotionally and physically wrenching than a stillbirth. No one is “for” them.

For the politicians waving this false flag, it has little to do with respect for life (not women’s lives or their children’s lives, not even fetal life), but is part of a broad agenda intent on dismantling all the gains in equality and social justice made since the sixties and seventies. Those were the decades when Civil Rights, Women’s Liberation, and Gay Rights began to insist that the country, its laws, and its culture were not owned by those who felt it was rightfully theirs by God’s decree. Since then, these movements have expanded, redefined themselves, become more inclusive—and more vocal.

But so too, have those who felt betrayed and angry. They’ve watched, and strategized, and made affiliation with religion, with talk radio and Fox News, and with a political party that saw demographics might soon make them obsolete. And when the most promising opportunity emerged—in the figure of a demonic idiot/genius who knew the magic words— “You don’t have to take this anymore”—you made him president. And he appointed judges to do your bidding.

And to perpetuate an insidious double-standard.

Would it surprise you to know that judges have consistently refused to force individuals to submit without consent to the use of their bodies, even when another life hangs in the balance? It’s true. No one can be forced, for example, to donate bone marrow — or even to undergo a blood test to determine compatibility — for a dying relative (let alone a stranger.)

Yet our legal history is strewn with case after case in which judges have ordered pregnant women to submit to highly invasive procedures in the interests of the life and health of a developing fetus. And the record is particularly grim when it comes to poor women and women of color.

This double-standard is not just a violation of the pregnant woman’s rights to equal protection under the law, it also belies the fact that the overwhelming majority of women will suffer significant pain, risk, and curtailment of their freedom to do what their doctors advise is in the best interests of their fetuses. We make pregnant women feel like child abusers if they take so much as one daiquiri, even in the ninth month when the child is fully developed. Yet neither the father nor the state nor private industry is held responsible for any of the harms they may be inflicting on developing fetuses (through smoking or reckless driving, for example.)

A pregnant women who has experienced nine months of pregnancy hauling her swollen body up to the “abortions here!”counter: “I’ll have one, please, but let’s wait until it’s born, please, so I can relish every moment of pregnancy and then have the pleasure of committing infanticide.”

I don’t think so.