Fetus Bill Dismisses the Rights of Women

President Bush and the Republican leaders of Congress might be surprised to discover that there is legislative precedent for the Fetal Protection Act, the bill passed by the House late last month seeking to protect an “unborn child” from criminal acts. Legislation was “passed” about 3,000 years ago that covered the exact circumstances. The earlier bill was Exodus 21:22-23, sponsored by a representative from the great state of Israel, Moses. If Bush and the GOP leaders had read their bibles, they might be less strident in their condemnation of people who oppose their view, because the Bible they claim to cherish disagrees with them.

According to Exodus 21:22-23 (in the King James version): “If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow; he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life.” (Although the King James version refers to a woman with “child,” it should not be taken so literally, for in the next breath it refers to the fetus as “fruit.”)

For those more familiar with the New Revised Standard: “When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life.”

What is clear in both versions is that the miscarriage does not constitute murder--the penalty is a fine paid to the woman’s husband. “If any harm follow’--any injury or death to the woman--then the penalty is “life for life.”

The circumstance legislated in Exodus is the same one contemplated by Republicans in Congress. However, in the Bible the rights are not rights of an unborn child but of a husband deprived of the value of his offspring.

If it becomes law, enforcement of this legislation--which would establish federal criminal penalties for an assailant who harms or kills a fetus by treating the fetus as separate from the pregnant mother, even if the assailant does not know the woman is pregnant--would require grotesque violations of a woman’s right to privacy.

Logically, in order for prosecutions to go forward, the state would have to investigate the maternal status of every assaulted woman of childbearing age. What if the woman didn’t want the state or her husband or her employer to know she was pregnant? What if she didn’t know she was pregnant?

If a woman is assaulted, the state should administer a pregnancy test, otherwise, in the words of F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, “crimes against these innocent victims will go unpunished.” But the innocent victim here is the woman, who having once been assaulted, would be assaulted again by a law that puts her rights second to those of third parties who wish to use her fetus as a political chip in their war against legal abortion.

The anti-abortion strategy seems to be to eat away at the right to abortion at both ends. At the access end, it seeks to restrict distribution of mifepristone, or RU-486, to doctors in clinics where abortions are already performed surgically, thereby eliminating two main benefits of the drug’s introduction in the U.S.: broader access and privacy from rabid protesters. At the other end, anti-abortion advocates supported eliminating U.S. aid to family planning groups around the world that use their own funds for abortion counseling or services.

Leaving aside, for the moment, whether the fetus is a person in the biblical view, it is clear that the woman is not. She may have moral personhood, but she would not be a legal person with standing before the judges who determine the fine. In this regard the Democrats seem to have it right. The penalty should be determined by the injury to the woman, the victim of the assault; not her husband nor the fetus in her womb.

In our enlightened age, let us give women the full legal rights to which they are entitled. To do otherwise is to diminish the tenuous personhood won by women over these last three millenniums.