Back in 2015, a group of Republican lawmakers nearly derailed a House bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks because it didn’t have enough protections for sexual assault victims. Now, some of the nation’s more prominent pro-life/forced-birth groups are trying to send one of those lawmakers to the unemployment line for a stance that most fair-minded people would consider to be an act of basic decency.
Last January, the House was due to take up the 20-week ban when several Republicans led by Renee Ellmers of North Carolina objected to a provision that would have required rape and incest victims to report their assault to law enforcement if they wanted to be exempt from the ban. Ellmers said that while she is staunchly opposed to abortion, the original bill would have “further victimized the victims of rape.” Due to objections from Ellmers and others, that provision was cut out of the final bill.
However, that didn’t sit very well with the Susan B. Anthony List, a group dedicated to electing more anti-abortion women to Congress. While it publicly supported the new version, the SBA List considers any exemptions to protect sexual assault victims to be merely “a political judgment” necessary to get abortion restrictions passed. Indeed, according to SBA List executive director Marjorie Dannenfelser, exceptions to protect victims of rape and incest are “utterly inconsistent with the pro-life position.” No, Marjorie. These exceptions are rooted in basic decency.
Ellmers has learned the hard way how the forced-birth movement really felt about her stance. On Thursday, the SBA List announced it would endorse Congressman George Holding in the Republican primary for Ellmers’ 2nd District. Holding’s 13th District was eliminated when a federal appeals court threw out North Carolina’s congressional map, forcing a mid-decade redistricting, and Holding opted to challenge Ellmers in the 2nd. This comes on the heels of the National Right to Life Committee endorsing Holding in March.
Dannenfelser made no bones about why the SBA List has Ellmers in its crosshairs. As Dannenfelser sees it, no political organization worth its salt can ignore “the derailment of your number one priority.” She believes that unless there is a “short and swift reaction to bad votes,” the forced-birth movement will continue to have its head handed to it in Washington.
Never mind that Ellmers has a perfect lifetime voting record with the NRLC. And never mind that Ellmers firmly believes the far-right hokum that Planned Parenthood was selling baby parts. Need proof? Watch this speech Ellmers made last year about the now-debunked videos from the Center for American Progress.
She also wanted Planned Parenthood’s funding yanked, as this speech a few weeks later shows.
But apparently that wasn’t good enough for Dannenfelser and friends. Even though Ellmers lobbied hard to join the House committee leading the taxpayer-funded witch hunt on Planned Parenthood, she was reportedly left off due to strong objections from forced-birth groups. All because Ellmers had the decency to realize that sexual assault victims don’t deserve to be further traumatized by being told, “Too bad, you have to keep your baby anyway.”
Many of my longtime readers both here and on Daily Kos know that for a time, I was weakly pro-life. But episodes like this are a reminder of why the scales fell off my eyes about the so-called mainstream pro-life movement. If standing up for sexual assault victims makes you a mealy-mouthed squish, then there should no longer be any doubt–the forced-birth movement doesn’t really give a damn about the sanctity of life. It’s nothing more than a backdoor attempt to destroy the right to privacy from within.
Even now, hearing Dannenfelser say that exemptions for rape and incest victims are “utterly inconsistent with the pro-life position” makes me want to retch. So basic decency is merely a “political judgment,” and standing up for such decency is a “bad vote”? The thought that anyone could even suggest this is too damn obscene for words. As far as I’m concerned, Dannenfelser, the SBA List, and the rest of the forced-birth movement can shove it.
