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Herman Cain’s “Monty Python” Moment

Posted by: Linda Carbonell on October 30, 2011.

Herman "My Sperm's More Important Than A Woman's Life" Cain

On CBS’s Face The Nation Sunday morning, Herman Cain finally clarified his confusing position on abortion – he’s agin it no matter what. In his view (not God’s, read Leviticus 17:11 for His view), life begins at conception and no embryo, fetus, or baby should ever be aborted, not because of rape, nor because of incest, nor to save the life of the mother.

Of course not. In Herman Cain’s view, the result of a man’s sperm penetrating a woman’s egg is more valuable than the life of a woman. Man’s seed must always take precedence over a woman’s life, her reproductive health or her sanity. Every sperm is sacred, just as Monty Python told us.

Well, Monty Python was talking about birth control, but the position is the same….nothing must prevent the replication of man, impede his sperm or kill his child. Man is supreme and female humans are nothing but vessels for providing men with proof of their virility and power. Woman’s role in the human race is to pop out those sperm-products to be cannon fodder for man’s wars.

So, in Herman Cain’s world, we must never consider aborting an ectopic pregnancy but just let a woman die as her organs rupture. We must never think about aborting a pregnancy when a woman develops a complication or illness that will kill her….just let her die but keep that baby alive! And we definitely must never abort a grossly malformed fetus, but should allow it to be born and die in agony. After all, the pain of being mercifully aborted is too much to inflict on a fetus.

Check out the entry in Wikipedia on abortion. Even the most religious countries allow abortion to save the life of the mother. In many countries, it is the only exemption for abortion.

We didn’t fight for legalized abortions to use abortion as birth control. Most thinking women would prefer easy access to contraceptives and scientifically-based sex education. We fought to legalize abortion to prevent the deaths of women who were aborted illegally. We fought to legalize abortion to save the lives of women with catastrophic complications. We fought for legalized abortions because we believed that a woman’s life has as much or more value than a fetus.

There were other issues. The abortion debate went into overdrive because of a drug, thalidomide, and the birth defects it created. Thalidomide babies were born with flippers instead of limbs. Most went on to lead productive, if not normal lives. But we also knew that the thalidomide babies were a small portion of the types of birth defects that could occur, and some of them were death sentences. We did not have, and still do not have, the nationalized health system that would pay the exorbitant costs of keeping these babies alive or easing their deaths. We did not have, and still do not have, the social network that makes it possible for a family to care for such a child without going bankrupt and placing destructive strains on the family. Parents facing the knowledge that the wife was carrying such a child were caught between a society that said “don’t put the baby in an institution” and a society that said “you’re on your own here.”

Rape victims may be a grey area in this debate. Some rape victims are capable of carrying the baby to term and either raising it or giving it up for adoption. For others, the trauma of the rape was too destructive and carrying the pregnancy to term risks pushing that victim to suicide. For incest victims, a pregnancy can be a matter of life and death. Pregnant incest victims are frequently little more than children themselves. Menarche is occurring at younger and younger ages. What kind of danger does a pregnancy pose for a nine-year old?

If people like Herman Cain truly want to see an end to abortion, there are better ways than pushing women back into the hands of criminals on kitchen tables. Early and comprehensive sex education to reduce unwanted pregnancies, easy access to birth control, easily obtained funds for the expenses of a complicated pregnancy or a baby with extreme needs, funds for caring for those children so that a family can choose to keep the child. Education, contraception and national health care – those are the ways to end abortion.

In the meantime, Republican women need to really think about this issue. It’s easy to be pro-life, but what does that really mean? There is a chasm between saving the life of an unborn child and killing a mother to do so. Do Republican women really want a Presidential candidate who considers his sperm to be more important than their lives?