Idaho Anti-Choice Law Rejects Rape Exception Because “The Hand of the Almighty Was at Work”

Recently, an anti-choice law in Idaho was passed that would outlaw abortion after 20 weeks. The law, based on unsubstantiated and controversial claims that the fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks, follows suit after a series of anti-choice laws that have been passed recently in both Nebraska and Kansas. However, what makes the Idaho law so appallingly unique is that it fails to provide exceptions for rape, incest, severe fetal abnormality, or the mental health of the mother. Basically, only when continuing a pregnancy would result in the death of the mother would an abortion be performed.

How in the world could legislation like this get passed? Well, according to the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Brent Crane, when a woman is raped, this “tragic and horrific circumstance” is still the “hand of the Almighty” at work. “His ways are higher than our ways,” Crane said. “He has the ability to take difficult, tragic, horrific circumstances and then turn them into wonderful examples.”

I’m not here to debate the nature of God, and this may indeed be the view that some rape survivors take. But to restrict a woman’s choice on the basis of your own personal beliefs, as Crane is doing, is so fundamentally wrong that I have trouble wrapping my mind around so large a logical fallacy. Not all rape survivors believe in God, and not all rape survivors who believe in God would see their experience as “the hand of the Almighty”; one man’s view cannot and should not dictate the lives of thousands of women.

To read more about the new law, including citations for information provided here, go here.