Making Things Up

The theory that rape cannot result in pregnancy is somewhat shocking.  Thousands of women each year claim that they became pregnant as a result of rape, and there is nothing in the medical or scientific literature that would lead a rational person to doubt their allegations.  Nevertheless, many hard core pro-lifers – those who want to criminalize abortion without exception – accept that theory and, implicitly, call the women who claim that their pregnancies were the result of rape “liars.”

The logic goes something like this:  A fetus is, from the moment of conception, a full human person – a “someone.”  As a full human person, a fetus is entitled to the full range of legal protections enjoyed by all persons, including legal prohibitions against being killed.  The fact that you became a person as the result of rape is irrelevant to the question of whether prohibitions against being killed apply to you – as a “person” they do.  Therefore, a “rape” exception to an abortion ban is inappropriate.

The logic of this argument is airtight.  By that I mean the conclusion follows from the premises, logically.  If the premises are true, the conclusion is true.  However, the vast majority of people are uncomfortable with a law that would force a scared, fourteen year-old girl to bring her rapist’s baby to term.  It seems pretty obvious there should be an exception in such cases – and rightly so.

In a normal person’s mind, the presence of this kind of cognitive dissonance leads them to reconsider the premises they are relying on.  If I think there should be an exception for rape victims, perhaps I don’t really believe that a fetus is a full person from the moment of conception.  Maybe there is a period between conception and person-hood when an abortion is not tantamount to killing “someone.”  Of course, there is no logical problem adopting the view that, as unfortunate as forcing the young girl to bring her rapist’s baby to term would be, the law must do so in order to honor the embryo’s right to life.  However, there is a huge moral/psychological problem with adopting this view, which is why very few hard-core pro-lifer’s ever articulate it.

Enter the “make things up strategy.”  A certain faction of the pro-life camp has latched on to the theory that pregnancy cannot be the result of forcible rape.  They argue that a woman who is being forcibly raped is so traumatized that her body will not produce the hormonal “juices” that make pregnancy possible.  There is no science behind this claim.  It contradicts the testimony of thousands and thousands of actual women.  And it implies that all women who allege that rape caused their pregnancies are liars.  But no matter.  The theory dissolves the cognitive dissonance and exempts the believer from any need to reexamine their original premises.  I can go on believing as I wish.  Whew!

Unfortunately, this is not a strategy unique to the abortion debate.  The GOP has discovered that you can undermine any scientific finding or resolve any cognitive dissonance threatening an ideology by the following method:  (1) make something up; (2) find someone with impressive credentials to endorse it; and (3) keep repeating it until it sticks in people’s minds as “truth.”

The fact that it works for so many is really worrisome!

 Joe Huster