PW’s mighty Tara Murtha, a fearless defender of the defenseless in the GOP’s rape-y War On Vaginas Women, has some very good questions for Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan about just what this brave new post-Roe v. Wade world they are promising will look like. Questions nobody else seems to be asking. If nothing else, if you cut off contraception and access to safe, legal abortion, there’s gonna be a LOT more little mouths sucking on the Big Government tit. Plus, we’re gonna need to build many, many more prisons and we’re gonna need a shit-ton of body bags, too. To wit:
2. Explain the sentencing guidelines for women obtaining illegal abortions or who are self-aborting. And what about the doctors? If a woman became ill while self-aborting, what would emergency room protocol be? Is mental
illness included in “for the life of the mother?” How is that determined?
3. “Rape exceptions” needs clarifying detail. Will the rape need to be confirmed by a doctor for a woman to qualify for a safe abortion? Will an assailant need to be named? Would he need to be convicted before the victim could obtain an abortion? If so, what will be the method and cost of accelerating these cases quick enough to allow for safe abortion?
4. Thirty percent of women impregnated by rape choose to carry the pregnancy to term. In cases of rape in which a women’s body doesn’t “shut that whole thing down” and the victim becomes pregnant and decides to have the baby, will the rape-father have any custody rights or financial obligation? Currently, rape-fathers have rights in 31 states. How will you change that? Will a conviction be required to sever his parental rights?
5. In a post-Roe plan, more babies are born into poverty. Do you know how many more? What programs will you offer for this windfall of babies born to poor mothers? How much will healthcare for these children cost? Where will the money come from? MORE
RELATED: a pregnant woman in her late 30s, Carrel Hilton Sheldon, was informed by her doctor that she had a life-threatening blood clot lodged in her pelvic region. In treating the clot, Sheldon was administered an overdose of the blood thinner know as Heparin, which not only resulted in significant internal bleeding but also extensive damage to her kidneys, to the point where she was on the verge of needing a transplant. Her life was clearly in peril. Sheldon’s doctor told her that the overdose of Heparin might have also harmed her eight-week-old fetus, and, given the possible fatal repercussions to her, he recommended that she terminate her pregnancy. Sheldon, a mother of four at the time (a fifth child had died as an infant), was then a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). The LDS leader in Massachusetts at that time, her “stake president,” was a Harvard-trained physician, and he counseled Sheldon to follow her doctor’s advice to terminate the pregnancy and protect her own life. “Of course you should have the abortion,” she recalls him saying. According to an account later written anonymously by Sheldon for the LDS women’s journal Exponent II, it was after receiving this counsel supporting the potentially life-saving procedure that she experienced an uninvited visit in the hospital room from her Mormon bishop at the time, 36-year-old Mitt Romney, who adamantly opposed the abortion. Romney, according to Sheldon, “told me that ‘As your bishop, my concern is with the child.'” MORE
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Romney Has Erased Obama’s Lead With Women