Women stabbed for refusing abortion

Thomas Peters covers the tragic story of a women who was stabbed by her boyfriend after refusing to have an abortion. The woman was in critical condition when the story was published, but “the fetus survived.”

There are all sorts of complicated issues related to these all-too-common stories — violence against women, an inability to recognize unborn victims of crime — but I think what’s least talked about are the pressures on women when their partner’s don’t want children. Call it the Askmen.com effect. Take a look at this shocking comment on the article:

She’s 28 and he is 18 sounds to me like she forgot to take the pill purposely and got pregnant because she just wanted a kid and this guy got trapped. I am not saying stabbing her is right at all but man this kid got sucked in.

I realize this commenter is trying to separate out the pregnancy from the response to the pregnancy… but this is still way too far in the victim blaming direction for me to be comfortable with. But it’s not hard to see where this is coming from. It’s an extension of the how-to-get-your-girlfriend-to-abort mentality. The logic goes: if this guy didn’t want to become a father, but couldn’t convince his girlfriend to abort, why does her choice have to be his too? Wasn’t he being taken advantage of here? The only thing he did wrong was to react with violence..

That’s a disgusting train of thought. And it’s not empowering women.

(Nevermind the messy contraception connection…)

Now, all this is speculation, but we need to take a more honest look at the connections between abortion and violence against women. In cases like this, abortion doesn’t offer women “choice” or freedom. Rather, it sets up an excuse for their male partners not to support them in a crisis pregnancy situation. If this guy didn’t take it to such extreme violence, the underlying tragedy of abandonment would still remain.

Let’s hope she makes it through…