The Abortion Police
Those of you who know someone who is firmly in favor of stopping abortions need to understand that some laws make problems worse. The amendment to the U.S. Constitution to prohibit the drinking of alcohol led to a massive increase in illegal drinking and crime. This, in turn, led to another amendment created to retract the anti-alcohol amendment. Similarly, we are already experiencing widespread problems from anti-abortion legislation.
As soon as you enact a law that criminalizes some aspect of abortion, you must enforce that law. I call the enforcers, the abortion police. No law can stop abortions without the abortion police intruding into the lives of women. The stricter the law, the greater the intrusion.
For many people, particularly those with an authoritarian disposition, trust in rules is believed to be how one protects oneself and one's group. Enforcement of the rules is seen as the mechanism to make the rules work. Authoritarians, in particular, are very adamant about enforcing laws, primarily through administering punishments. The more severe the punishment, the better the punisher feels. No matter how this affects the authoritarians in their desire to make the world a better place as they see it, they are turning the society that faces strict abortion laws into a kind of hell, particularly for women.
The abortion police tend to get carried away with enforcement. For example, they are forcing women into medically unsafe situations by preventing an abortion when the fetus is already deceased and needs to be aborted to save the mother from complications, including losing her ability to have a child in the future. Such actions also force doctors to be so careful in their care to avoid breaking the law that they cannot practice medicine properly. Some have left for states where the laws are not so draconian.
The abortion police include persons with no legal authority, such as the staff in a Catholic hospital who ignored a woman bleeding profusely on a gurney in the hospital hallway. They evidently assumed that the woman had botched a self-attempted abortion. She had not. She was suffering from a spontaneous abortion, which we politely call a miscarriage. Laying there in the hallway for hours while the hospital staff, who should have tried to stop the bleeding, rushed by, she almost died before care finally came. This woman who experienced the abortion police firsthand is the author of The Power Worshipers, an expose´ of Christian Nationalism, the principal movement behind anti-abortion legislation.
Some of the anti-abortion laws entice outsiders, such as neighbors and other people who are not a part of the family, to spy for the abortion police. In some cases, these spies may be able to get rewards for information concerning a pregnancy that was terminated or was about to be terminated. Donald Trump has floated the idea of monitoring women's menstrual periods. How is that going to be done? Who shows up at your door to check whether you have had your period this month?
No one in the entire U.S.A. is safe from the abortion police. Men must fear for their wives and daughters. For example, his wife could be sent to prison or may not get the care that she needs with some dying. People in states without anti-abortion laws and thus that have no abortion police still feel the threat of possible national anti-abortion laws or that their state may eventually pass such laws. Even women and families who approve of their state's anti-abortion laws will be subject to the abortion police. Surely, they did not anticipate such horrors. Still, some are already in prison or have been accused of some crime, such as a miscarriage perceived by the abortion police as an attempted abortion gone wrong. All these problems apply even to the persons who are most vehemently against abortions, including those who are MAGA.
At what point does such a woman realize that in her attempts to, as she would put it, save babies, she has entered into a personal hell? The only real choice she has is to vote for candidates who are against anti-abortion laws and who seek to return to something equivalent to Roe versus Wade. But if she does that in the open, she will receive intolerable criticism. She would be ostracized. How could she possibly do that without bringing down huge pain to herself and her family?
However, there is a solution. She can vote her conscience without announcing her decision to anyone. She may even offer economic help to women who seek an abortion for financial reasons. This way, she is still trying to prevent abortions without demanding that all women forgo an abortion. Forcing all women to follow the same course must be enforced by the abortion police. Thus, these good intentions have indeed paved the road to Hell.
The pro-MAGA woman who votes for people who support a woman's right to proper health care must first overcome her sense of guilt. Such a vote would seem like she's betraying herself, her friends, and her principles. Yet, that is not the case if that vote would do more good than harm. I believe that most women, regardless of their religious or political persuasion, will have the sanity to pull us out of the insane world that is presently being crafted. I am sure they will also be joined in this endeavor by some men.