CARLTON FLETCHER: Fighting for the unborn … until they’re born

God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in her shoes. Then you really might know what it’s like to sing the blues.

— Everlast

While most Americans outside Ohio know John Kasich as a failing Republican presidential candidate, women’s groups nationwide know the Ohio governor as the politician who has done more to combat their legal right to have an abortion than almost any other elected official in the country.

With chances of reversing the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that, essentially, made abortion legal in the United States very slim, Kasich and a supermajority Republican Ohio legislature have passed 17 laws (and counting) that place increasingly restrictive roadblocks in the pathways of women seeking an abortion. Called TRAP (targeted regulation of abortion providers) laws, these strategically designed pieces of legislation make it all but impossible for abortion clinics to stay open and for women — especially poor women — to jump through all the hoops necessary to terminate a pregnancy.

Which would make a lot more sense if abortion weren’t legal.

I can throw all kinds of statistics at you: that 3 of 10 women in the United States will have an abortion by the time they’re 45 … that 699,202 legal abortions were reported in the U.S. in 2012 … that a reported 11,500 women a day die worldwide from unsafe abortions … that 50 percent of the pregnancies in this country are unwanted … that fully a third of all pregnancies worldwide are unplanned.

I could even add a few sensationalistic reports about attacks on doctors — David Gunn and Barnett Slepian, slain; Garson Romalis, Hugh Short and Jack Feinman, all shot — who perform abortions; about the 30 clinics in California, 19 in Florida, 14 in Texas that have been either bombed or burned; about the dozens of Anthrax scares, and other threats that have been called in.

I could write about the “Right to Life” protesters who have not even an inkling of an idea of individual circumstances yet stand outside abortion clinics and call usually frightened pregnant women and girls “whores” and “murderers” when they visit the clinics. I could tell you about the false propaganda — the most recent, and egregious, example being a hoax of a video purportedly chronicling how Planned Parenthood profits from selling aborted fetal tissue — used to convince willingly gullible, as it turns out, believers.

But I’m not a woman, and thus, I have no real say in women’s reproductive rights. And yet, most of the laws that are enacted to stop abortions or to make them all but impossible to get are passed overwhelmingly by men. Mostly rich, white men.

And here’s their logic. Poor people are using their tax money to pay for procedures that are necessary because of those women’s promiscuity and their unwillingness to protect themselves during sex. Which is great for stirring up the masses, but really just a mound of hooey.

I’ve read story after story about the wives, girlfriends and sometimes both of some of these wealthy lawmakers and even some of the prominent “Christian soldiers” whose purported motivation is cleanliness of spirit who’ve been involved in “oopsy” mishaps in which they’ve impregnated someone or a member of their family has been unintentionally impregnated. And while they may try to hide this bit of information from the public and they may call in any favors they’ve amassed to get things done quietly and below the radar, word often gets out.

And even if it doesn’t, they have to live with what they’ve done.

Surely there are more qualified advocates for both sides of the abortion issue who can passionately and eloquently argue their cases better than I. But this is what really tips the scales for me toward allowing women to make informed decisions about their own bodies.

So many of these self-righteous advocates for the unborn who condemn women who seek abortions and who pass laws to protect the rights of fetuses are the same people who, once those fetuses they’re fighting to protect are born, call them “welfare babies” and demand that our government take away any funding available to support them.

That “precious life that begins at conception” becomes worthless once it leaves its mother’s womb and takes its place in the real world. I’m sure it exists, but I know of no greater hypocrisy.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_Fletcher in twitter.