Surprised this wasn’t brought up anywhere by now. One of America’s finest writers explains how it was (what else?) the men who pushed anti-abortion laws, and how “Pro-Life” was nothing more than marketing.
The Long, Cruel History of the Anti-Abortion Crusade
Abortion opponents don't care what happens to an unwanted child, and they've never cared about the mother.
By John Irving
Mr. Irving is a novelist and a screenwriter.
June 23, 2019
Amid the anti-abortion measures being pushed through state legislatures, consider the mazy history of abortion in the United States. Women, capable of determining and managing their reproductive rights, have been undermined by men in power before.
Prior to the 1840s, abortion was widespread and not illegal in our country. In the time of the Puritans, America's deeply religious founding fathers, abortion was allowed until the fetus was "quick" — when the woman could feel the fetus move. Before modern diagnostic ultrasound, abortion was permissible beyond the first trimester — up to four or five months. Our founding fathers got this right; the choice to have an abortion or a child belonged to the woman.
Beginning in the 1840s, and continuing over decades, abortion was outlawed state by state, becoming illegal everywhere in the United States by 1900 — until 1973, when the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision held that a woman had a constitutional right to an abortion.
...Beginning in the 1840s, doctors sought to gain control of the reproduction business. Doctors were establishing their new profession; midwives and homeopaths were their competition. But why did doctors lobby for abortion to be illegal? What was their logic? … We know what the doctors wanted, and they achieved it; they became the arbiters of women's reproductive health care. … (emphasis mine)
Link: John Irving Op-Ed
That’s probably the most I can print with the free use limit. Irving continues with the reasoning behind the novel “The Cider House Rules”, and what the lack of choice meant for women.
Okay, one more quote, because it resonates: “The prevailing impetus to oppose abortion is to punish the woman who doesn't want the child.” It has nothing to do with the mother, it has nothing to do with the child; it’s about punishment.
Given this, putting children into concentration camps is … well, consistent.
And that’s the problem. We elected a sadist, because a lot of sadists liked him.