As many may be aware, in February 2006 the state of South Dakota passed legislation to ban all abortions save those necessary to save the life of the mother. This would include making it illegal to abort even in the situation of rape or incest. It was the culmination of the state’s pro-life agenda: a previous attempt was vetoed by the governor on a technicality in 2004, and in 2005 several laws were passed restricting abortion.
In the midst of this latest development, pro-life state senator William Napoli commented on the controversial law. In an interview with PBS, when asked under what circumstances an abortion would be allowed, he immediately replied:
“A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.”
After the shock of reading about the extreme brutalities that would justify an abortion according to Senator Napoli, I invite you-be you pro-life or pro-choice or undecided-to consider the reactions and implications.
This remark drew incredulity and disgusted criticism from the feminist bloggers (who are, on the whole, pro-choice) although it drew scant attention elsewhere.
Some speculated that the description was too pat, glib, and lurid to be anything other than a rape fantasy. Ad hominem attacks aside, one blogger, Digby, wondered if an abortion would be allowed if only some of the criteria were met under Senator Napoli’s lurid description. For example: if the woman were a virgin, raped and sodomized, but was not religious. Too bad for her, apparently. The feminist bloggers of “Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels” responded by ‘Google-bombing’ a definition of ‘Napoli.’ (Google-bombing is an attempt to influence the ranking of a given page in the results returned by Google; the most famous Google-bomb is tied to the phrase ‘miserable failure’, which brings up the official George W. Bush biography.) Their definition of the word ‘Napoli’ is:
I. To brutalize and rape, sodomize as bad as you can possibly make it, a young, religious virgin woman who was saving herself for marriage.
II. To hella rape somebody.
Example of usage: “Did you hear? Laura’s dad totally napolied her, but according to Utah law, she still has to obtain his permission before getting an abortion.”
While I have not yet found any written responses to Senator Napoli’s comment from the other end of the spectrum, the pro-life friends to whom I showed the remark all reacted with disgust.
The initial outrage against the hypothetical situation and the speaker aside, this incident does brutally illustrate the moral quandaries for pro-lifers. Should there be exceptions to the rule? To what extent must the woman’s life be threatened in that case? If one does allow for exceptions, even situations as extreme and narrow as Napoli’s, is the precedence on the fetus’s life being compromised for the woman’s circumstances? Is the change to South Dakotan legislation really such a victory if its harsh standards exact an additional toll upon impregnated survivors of rape and incest? Is there an acceptable abortion?
Planned Parenthood intends on challenging the law, but until then, woe betide the woman who wants an abortion whose circumstances may be dire, but not as dire as those described by Senator Napoli.
