“I’m as pro-life as a person gets.”
~Paul Ryan, 2010
Paul Ryan (R-WI) and the now politically toxic Todd Akin (R-MO) both co-sponsored the Sanctity of Life Act that failed in the House of Representatives … but not out of a lack of trying thanks to these two conservative gentlemen. When it comes to the matter of “life beginning at conception” – the voting records of Paul Ryan and Todd Akin are simpatico; they are practically identical twins. If you don’t know who Todd Akin is – you need to climb out of your hole and read HERE.
The bill I’m referring to says HERE:
“The life of each human being begins with fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent, irrespective of sex, health, function or disability, defect, stage of biological development, or condition of dependency, at which time every human being shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.”
In other words – as soon as the sperm hits the egg … that is a human being that is to be protected at all costs (until its born and then its on its own). And legally … since this “human being” that just fertilized is to be given all legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood … when a woman is impregnated by her rapist – this bill would force her to give birth to that child.
Politifact points out this bill creates a whole host of problems for other common non-abortion related procedures HERE:
Bioethicists agreed that the bill, if it became law, would pose serious challenges for the procedure.
“If this law passed, it would not outlaw IVF, but it would make it next to impossible to do,” said Arthur Caplan, who heads the division of medical ethics in the department of population health at New York University’s Langone Medical Center. “It would not allow any destruction of embryos, and since nearly all IVF depends on the overproduction of embryos the law would drastically alter how IVF is done, raising the cost of doing it and hugely decreasing the success rate.”
But all of these men proposing laws for what rape victims can and can not do with their bodies aren’t paying attention to the facts; they’re being led by their religious beliefs. A three year study of over 4,000 women found pregnancy among rape victims was more than twice as likely as consensual sex HERE:
The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. Among 34 cases of rape-related pregnancy, the majority occurred among adolescents and resulted from assault by a known, often related perpetrator. Only 11.7% of these victims received immediate medical attention after the assault, and 47.1% received no medical attention related to the rape. A total 32.4% of these victims did not discover they were pregnant until they had already entered the second trimester; 32.2% opted to keep the infant whereas 50% underwent abortion and 5.9% placed the infant for adoption; an additional 11.8% had spontaneous abortion.
And with all of that – the Romney campaign has put out a statement that both Romney and Ryan would allow abortion in instances of rape:
“Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan disagree with Mr. Akin’s statement, and a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape.”
Except – as we’ve shown above … that is not what Paul Ryan’s record shows at all. He may say he wouldn’t make it illegal now but then does that mean he would oppose his own “Sanctity of Life” bill that he proposed as is? Or is he just changing his position publicly to prevent being linked to Todd Akin any further since their views on abortion are nearly identical?
The Minnesota Star Tribune says however that Paul Ryan’s record on abortion is clear – he isn’t for it except for if the mother’s life is in danger HERE:
In a 2010 essay for a conservative think tank, Ryan compared the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion to the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, in which the court ruled that black slaves were not legally people. “After America has won the last century’s hard-fought struggles against unequal human rights in the forms of totalitarianism abroad and segregation at home, I cannot believe any official or citizen can still defend the notion that an unborn human being has no rights,” Ryan wrote.
When he first won election to Congress in 1998, Ryan vowed to oppose all abortions unless they were needed to save the life of the mother. He voted for a bill requiring that women who receive abortions first undergo an ultrasound, and another barring anyone besides parents from transporting minors across state lines for abortions. He also voted against a measure to allow women in the military to receive abortions in military hospitals.
