So much about the \u201cTodd Akin affair\u201d has focused on the Missouri congressman\u2019s unfathomable and demeaning attitude towards women as well as his faulty logic and \u201cknowledge.”At times, the situation is referred to as the Akin-Ryan syndrome. The two of them have completely refocused America\u2019s views on choice and life by moving the goal posts far to the right.<\/p>\n
When Roe v Wade<\/em> was decided in 1973, America was in many ways divided in two. There were those who supported a woman\u2019s right to choose whether or not she wanted an abortion. While there was concern about aborting a child in the third trimester, even this was accepted by many, if the mother\u2019s life was in danger.<\/p>\n Pro-life, or anti-choice, advocates simply opposed abortion. Some of them were willing to make exceptions in the case of rape, incest, or the life of the mother, but these were footnotes to their basic point that women simply should not be allowed to have control of their reproductive organs.<\/p>\n The line was drawn clearly, using the metaphor of a football field; it was located right on the 50-yard-line. There were obviously shades of gray as one got closer to or further from the 50-yard-line, but essentially one described him or herself as pro-choice or pro-life.<\/p>\n In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, the common ground movement began, in which the two sides looked for areas where they might agree. This actually turned into substance as both sides agreed that if a woman was pregnant, and if she did not want to assume the responsibilities of motherhood, then adoption would be a desirable path to follow. In St. Louis, MO, Reproductive Health Services, the area\u2019s largest choice provider, started its own adoption agency. Not only did it counsel women in the three choices that they have in the case of a planned or unplanned pregnancy, but they offered actual services. In a city with a high minority population, it did not do what many other adoption agencies did. RHS welcomed minority children and did all that they could do to find placements for them.<\/p>\n My fear about the Akin \u2013 Ryan fiasco is that it has moved the goalposts. This has been happening gradually over the past few decades, as the right has worked to limit women\u2019s rights and to dictate its own social policy that insisted that a woman carry a fetus to term, whether she wanted to or not.<\/p>\n When Todd Akin made his comment about \u201clegitimate\u201d rape, it reignited the debate about whether anti-choice advocates should at least support an exception for abortion in cases of rape, incest, or the mother\u2019s life. Paul Ryan went so far as to say that life is so precious that it doesn\u2019t matter how a fetus in conceived.<\/p>\n