Forced birth is a form of rape

A funny thing occurred to me on the way to the State House. Okay, it wasn’t that funny, at all. It was about abortion.

I was preparing to give testimony at the annual RI House abortion / choice exercise (hearing) last week when two facts or arguments occurred to me that happen to support my pro-choice position. The first is that a potential-father’s contribution to the mass of a fetus just before birth is miniscule, so he has no say in what the woman decides to do. The second is that forcing a woman to give birth is a form of rape.

Hear me out.

To my first point, we can see that the man’s contribution to a potential birth is about nil by looking at the science. A sperm cell weighs about 4.9 x 10^-14 lbs (mass = 22 picograms). The weight of a just pre-birth fetus averages about 7.5 lbs. So the father’s ‘part’ of the fetus versus the Mother’s part is about one in 155 trillion. Put another way, about 99.999999999999% of the fetus is from the mother. Therefore it only makes sense that the man should have little to say about anything having to do with the fetus. Note: spousal consent is no longer required nationally, but a Rhode Island state law to that effect is still on the books. Should the national ruling be overturned by the US Supreme Court, the RI law would take affect.

To my second point, that forcing a woman to give birth is a form of rape, what else can we call it? The state would be forcing a woman to create human tissue against her will. And then forcing her to expel it via the vagina. The state would force something through a woman’s vagina? Doesn’t sound too good to me; sounds like rape. Either the creation-of-tissue aspect or the expulsion part is anathema to the nation’s fundamental sense of personal freedom.

Similarly, any attempt to aid in a forced birth makes someone an accessory to rape or guilty of attempted rape. This means that any regulation or law aiding or abetting forced birth makes the state complicit in rape. For example any law requiring “informed consent” before an abortion falls into this category.

No, it really wasn’t all that funny.

Uhtime No. 3