The Baby is the Victim
By Debbie Joslin
President, Eagle Forum Alaska
During testimony for the Unborn Victims of Violence bill, SB20, opponents of the bill pointed out that homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women in America. Not only that, homicide among pregnant women in Alaska is the highest in the nation. After citing those statistics, they went on to say they don’t know why pregnant women are so often victims of violence.In my testimony before the committee I told them why that is so. The baby is most often the primary target of the assailant. The response from opponents of the bill was quick and sure. They insisted I was wrong and the woman is the primary target though they do not know why being pregnant seems to put her more at risk for violent crime. The answer seems obvious.
The majority of these crimes are committed by someone the woman knows, usually in the same household and very often the father of the unborn baby. He’s potentially angry she got pregnant in the first place; he does not want to take responsibility for supporting or parenting the child. The law now allows him to be rid of this unwanted responsibility via abortion. If she will not cooperate and have an abortion, his rage escalates to fury and the result is a battered or dead woman whose child is at the very least injured or at worst killed and miscarried.
Abortion advocates refuse to admit the unborn child is the primary target of the perpetrator because that would point out the very troubling reality – women many times don’t get an abortion because they WANT one. In the vast majority of cases, she’s acting at the behest of someone else or she is reacting to external pressures. Those who refuse the “abortion solution” can expect to be the object of scorn and can be in grave physical danger. If we really cared about these women we would warn them that a man who has requested an abortion and is refused is potentially dangerous. A man who feels cornered by an unwanted pregnancy may be angry and can act on that anger when a woman fails to exercise her “right to choose” abortion.
Roe has allowed abortion at any stage of pregnancy for any reason or for no reason at all and men are frustrated when the good time looks like it could turn into a lifetime commitment to a child they never wanted and possibly to a woman they care nothing for. They can see the “easy” solution and are frustrated and unable to fathom why she will not avail herself of it.
The pro-abortion crowd continues to show they not only disregard the life of the unborn child. They disregard the life of the mother as well. The fact that she might be rendered infertile, or possibly even die from a botched abortion, or that she will be tormented with the guilt of killing her own offspring doesn’t give them pause. Their response to the Laci and Connor bill shows that they will even sacrifice her physical safety from violence and that of her unborn wanted child.
This bill is designed to protect unborn WANTED children from criminal action. The trouble is that many unborn wanted children are only wanted by the mother. They are not wanted by the man who fathered them and that is why they are targeted by a man with criminal intent.
Opponents of SB20 assert that a woman would hesitate to press charges against the man who killed or injured her unborn child. They suggested making this bill law would cause friction in an abusive relationship. This “logic” would seem to say that we do not want to criminalize his behavior for fear of further angering him. It is the crime that is wrong, not the law against it. We have laws against violence done to a woman. It is time we protected her wanted unborn child from the same acts of violence. To fail to do so puts both mother and child at greater risk.
posted by Don Haase @ 1:32 PM
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