By Branca Lessa de Sa
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the views of Her Campus.
State Representative Tony Tinderholt has announced plans to criminalize abortion in Texas under House Bill 948. He argued that this would make women feel more “personally responsible about sex.”
Tinderholt’s language is not only deeply flawed, but also inherently misogynistic. Women simply aren’t “personally” responsible for sex, for it is an act that invariably involves two parties, two sets of conscience. If Tinderholt can ignore this, he cannot ignore the fact that it is woefully unreasonable to want women to feel personally responsible for a sexual act they didn’t will, as is the case in instances of rape.
Thus, in addressing the question of rape, Tinderholt shifts his argument, suggesting that all life, even that of the unborn or of the result of rape, is “sacred.” Tinderholt’s arguments are wonderfully adaptive—criminalizing abortion is necessary if women are to feel personally responsible about sex, but in cases where women are forced into sex against their will, when the sex is entirely beyond their “responsibility,” abortion is still unacceptable for a completely different set of reasons. The lostigics of Tinderholt’s argument attest to the fact that these are not arguments based on logic, but rather on an instinctual gut feeling against women and their sexual agency.
Tinderholt’s language is the language of shame, a language that has been historically associated with women and sex, from the Bible to contemporary slut-shaming tabloids. The state representative seems to imply that it is inherently shameful for women to have sex—as if sex itself were a crime, a condemnable act for which women must admit “responsibility.”
Tinderholt goes on to argue that the problem with abortion is that women are using it as an emergency contraceptive, due to it being “real easy” to obtain. I am not sure which women he is referring to. Abortion is not only a costly procedure in the US, it is a protracted and bureaucratic one. Texas already has several major abortion restrictions in place, including a 24-hour waiting period after an obligatory counseling session that often involves misleading questions. Many abortion clinics have shut down because of such stringent protocol. It seems very unlikely that any woman actually says “oh, I can just go get an abortion” before engaging in unprotected intercourse, as Tinderholt avers they do.
There are numerous reasons why Tinderholt’s case for the criminalization of abortion is flawed. Abortions will continue to take place, as they do in those countries where the process is already illegal. However, this will occur in a manner that puts both the unborn child’s and the mother’s life at risk (tens of thousands of women die in the developing world each year from unsafe abortions). The “pro-life” policy will be anything but. In addition, by stripping potential parents of the right to abortion, families will be raised on dangerously insecure foundations—financially, physically, and emotionally—and the allegedly “sacred” life of the child will be one of suffering and hardship.
However, the real problem lies not necessarily in the Bill itself but in Tinderholt’s “argument” for it. This argument, so blind to any form of logic or evidence, so easily debunked, is the argument of a man completely unable to accept female sexual agency.
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