The Anti-Choice Position Is Inherently Violent

[Content Note: War on agency; sexual violence; description of a perineum tear.]

This is a perfect example of why I say, over and over, that the anti-choice position is inherently violent:

"When a woman is raped, that's a horrible injustice against her," Live Action president Lila Rose told [CNN Crossfire] co-host Sally Kohn. "The rapist should be held to the fullest extent of the law, liable for that, culpable for that. The woman needs healing and the support of her community. But an abortion doesn't unrape a woman. An abortion just adds more violence on top of that first she endured."

...Kohn said, "You are saying, in effect, that the rapist should have more rights than the woman."

"Absolutely not," Rose insisted. "The rapist isn't allowed to kill anybody."

This is Lila Rose's shtick, and she's been peddling this despicable filth for years.

Because Rose frames her argument as "not getting an abortion," she elides the realities of pregnancy. As I've said before (and will almost certainly have occasion to say many times again, until everyone is yawning about what a goddamn broken record I am), if anyone not seeking cover under the auspices of a "difference of opinion on abortion" suggested that I should be forced to submit my body against my will to nine months of potential discomfort and pain, followed by an act that might include the skin and muscle between my vagina and anus being torn open, I don't think we'd mince words about whether they were using violent rhetoric.

And yet all Rose and her cohorts talk about is the supposed "violence" done to a fetus during an abortion. There is no discussion of the actual violence of forced pregnancy and birth.

Rose casually asserts that "abortion doesn't unrape a woman," which is correct. It does not. But what also does not "unrape" a pregnant person is further hostility to hir consent.

I'm (still) hard-pressed to see why I should be any less contemptuous of someone who seeks to legislate control of my body without my consent than I should be of the man who used physical force to make decisions about my body without my consent.

The anti-choice position is inherently violent. Their assertion that the pro-choice position is violence is nothing but sheer projection.