It is not only Republican members of the Religious Right who believe that a woman should live not with the consequences of her decisions, but with the consequences of their own. In Louisiana, Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco has signed into law not only a trigger bill criminalizing abortion should Roe v. Wade be overturned, but a recent state-level ban on "Partial Birth Abortion" designed to establish penalties even more severe than those imposed by the federal ban -- in fact, she signed two of them.

However, even the rabidly anti-abortion legislature of Louisiana has stopped short of criminalizing women. For that logical next step, we must look to Ohio, where Rep. Tom Brinkman has introduced HB 284, a ban intended to lull the population into believing otherwise. A 2005 version of the bill openly criminalized both women and anyone who assisted them in obtaining access to abortion care. This year's bill makes criminals -- or corpses -- of women using a bit more circumspection.

Brinkman's new measure is advertised as providing an exception to "save the life of the mother" -- but it doesn't.

HB 284 strikes this language from the current law:

(1) "Medical emergency" means a condition of a pregnant woman that, in the reasonable judgment of the physician who is attending the woman, creates an immediate threat of serious risk to the life or physical health of the woman from the continuation of the pregnancy necessitating the immediate performance or inducement of an abortion.

(2) "Medical necessity" means a medical condition of a pregnant woman that, in the reasonable judgment of the physician who is attending the woman, so complicates the pregnancy that it necessitates the immediate performance or inducement of an abortion.

And substitutes this language describing the only abortion legal for any reason:

[T]his section does not apply to a person who provides medical treatment to a pregnant woman to prevent the death of the pregnant woman and who, as a proximate result of the provision of that medical treatment but without intent to do so, causes the termination of the pregnant woman's pregnancy.

Not that this really matters. Tom Brinkman, like so many politicians backed by the Religious Right, maintains that exceptions for a woman's life are just for show, anyway.

"It's a fallacy perpetrated by the Planned Parenthood people," Brinkman says. "My doctors tell me they're never in that type of dilemma."
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So what would Brinkman say to a young girl pregnant by her uncle?

"I would just tell that 13 year old -- I know they're (going) through a traumatic situation -- number one, it's not the baby's fault," he says. "Number two, we should have adoption choices available."

Besides, if a woman or girl is raped and subsequently has an abortion, the rapist wins.

Paula Westwood, executive director of Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati, [argues] that men win and women lose when a child of rape is aborted.

"What has happened is, men know, 'Well, if I happen to rape a woman, I can have her get an abortion,' and then even if he goes to prison he's free of all responsibility," she says. "If (victims of rape) can carry the child to term, they're free from any guilt from an abortion and they're also freer because the man really has no hold on them, because even though the man fathered the child the woman has some victory over it."

Wow, I just never looked at it quite that way before. Other sections of Brinkman's HB 284 are similarly easy to understand.

Sec. 5101.55.  (A) All abortions are prohibited in this state.
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Whoever violates division (A) of this section is guilty of unlawful abortion. Unlawful abortion is a felony of the second degree or, if the offender previously has been convicted of or pleaded guilty to a violation of ... the Revised Code as they existed prior to the effective date of this amendment, a felony of the first degree.

Whoever violates this section is liable to the pregnant woman, to the person who was the father of the fetus or embryo that was the subject of the abortion, and, if the pregnant woman was a minor at the time of the abortion, to her parents, guardian, or custodian for civil compensatory and exemplary damages.

Those looking for legal exceptions for women in this particular section of the bill will find them.

(A)"Another's unborn" or "such other person's unborn" means a member of the species homo sapiens, who is or was carried in the womb of another, during a period that begins with fertilization and that continues unless and until live birth occurs.
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[I]n no case shall the definitions of the terms "unlawful termination of another's pregnancy," "another's unborn," and "such other person's unborn" that are set forth in ...  this section be applied or construed in any manner so that the offense is applied or is construed as applying to a woman based on an act or omission of the woman that occurs while she is or was pregnant and that results in any of the following:

(1) Her delivery of a stillborn baby;

(2) Her causing, in any other manner, the death in utero of an unborn that she is carrying;

(3) Her causing the death of her child who is born alive but who dies from one or more injuries that are sustained while the child is an unborn;

(4) Her causing her child who is born alive to sustain one or more injuries while the child is an unborn;

(5) Her causing, threatening to cause, or attempting to cause, in any other manner, an injury, illness, or other physiological impairment, regardless of its duration or gravity, or a mental illness or condition, regardless of its duration or gravity, to an unborn that she is carrying.

However, the bill is strictly divided into discrete sections, with specific exceptions and penalties provided for violations applying only within each one. And this section stands entirely alone.

Sec. 2919.13.  

No person shall purposely take the life of a child born by attempted abortion who is alive when removed from the uterus of the pregnant woman.
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Whoever violates this section is guilty of abortion manslaughter, a felony of the first degree.

In common with the ubiquitous TRAP laws that already make the provision of abortion care a medico-legal minefield for physicians in most states, the devil of Brinkman's bill is in the details.

No woman who self-aborts has any way to know or to ensure, let alone to demonstrate, that this provision doesn't qualify her for a felony conviction under this stand-alone section -- one which provides no exceptions for anyone: NONE.

However, as Lynn Paltrow and Charon Asetoyer explained in the wake of last year's South Dakota ban, nominal exceptions actually do nothing to protect women from prosecution. If abortion becomes illegal, women are subject to imprisonment under other statutes already in existence.

If the unborn are legal persons, as numerous ... laws assert, then a pregnant woman who has an abortion can be prosecuted as a murderer under already existing homicide laws. Farfetched? Not at all.

Prosecutors all over the country have been experimenting with this approach for years. In South Carolina, Regina McKnight is serving a 12-year sentence for homicide by child abuse. Why? Because she suffered an unintentional stillbirth. The prosecutors said she caused the stillbirth by using cocaine, yet, they did not charge her with having an illegal abortion -- a crime that in South Carolina has a three-year sentence. Rather, they charged and convicted her of homicide -- a crime with a 20- year sentence. They obtained this conviction in spite of evidence that McKnight's stillbirth was caused by an infection.

[W]omen in states across the country, including South Dakota, have already been arrested as child abusers or murderers -- without any new legislation authorizing such arrests. In Oklahoma, Teresa Hernandez is sitting in jail on first-degree murder charges for having suffered an unintentional stillbirth. In Utah, a woman was charged with murder based on the claim that she caused a stillbirth by refusing to have a C-section earlier in her pregnancy.

If women are now being arrested as murderers for having suffered unintentional stillbirths, one should assume that in South Dakota's post-Roe world intentional abortions would be punished just as seriously.

Even the most ardent anti-choice activists are reluctant to talk about what will happen to women who have abortions when abortion is once again a crime. Amazingly enough, it seems that most of them haven't even thought about it [video link]. But we know what happened to women the last time around [San Jose Mercury News link no longer available].

The earlier laws never stopped abortion, but they did make it more dangerous. As police and prosecutors stepped up their enforcement in the 1940s and 1950s, they pushed good, safe abortion providers out of practice. As a result, abortion got more deadly. Many women who went to illegal abortionists were blindfolded and had abortions in secret places. Many survived, but some died and many more were seriously injured.

In the years immediately before Roe vs. Wade, hospitals around the country had separate septic abortion wards for women bleeding, injured and infected because of illegal abortions. Many of these patients had tried to abort by themselves.

Chicago's Cook County Hospital housed almost 5,000 women per year in its septic abortion wards.

Deaths due to illegal abortion approached 50 percent of the nation's total maternal mortality, according to a U.S. Department of Labor study titled "Maternal Mortality in 15 States.''

In countries where abortion is illegal today, 25 percent to 50 percent of all maternal mortality is due to illegal abortion.
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How will new criminal abortion laws be enforced?

In the past, prosecutors focused on those who performed abortions, though women were arrested and punished, too. Police and medical staff interrogated women suspected of having abortions. Suspects included women in the midst of a miscarriage.

If abortion is made illegal, medical personnel could again be coerced into collecting information from patients under the threat of losing their medical licenses.

Clinics could again be raided by police, patients captured and forced to endure coercive gynecological examinations as police search for evidence.

Women who seek medical care after an abortion could be questioned, arrested and required to testify in court.

These are not fictional nightmares. All of this happened routinely when abortion was a crime.

Of course it did. Doctors still practicing today tell us that it happened all the time. And the worshipers of a more heartless God than mine can hardly wait for it to happen all over again. Because for them, a fantastical idolatry of the "unborn" overshadows the value of any woman on earth.

Title image from Women Doing Time
Tom Brinkman: Cincinnati.com
Final image: Illinois Right to Life