There are two sides to the abortion argument — and there is no room to compromise between them, no matter how many legislative arguments occur around viability and six-week bans and other restrictions.
The crux of the matter is binary: anti-abortion absolutists — among whom are the 131 House Republicans who signed the Life at Conception Act — contend that a fertilized egg (not even yet an embryo) has legal personhood and therefore is a human life that requires legal protection.
In contrast, pro-choice advocates value the mother’s life and ability to control her body above the fate of a fertilized egg, which is not a human being or a baby but merely a fertilized egg.
GOP Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance has sought to frame all arguments about abortion — especially largely unpopular ideas like restrictions on aborting babies conceived by rape — from the anti-abortion absolutist stance, and to have the arguments viewed exclusively through the imagined perspective of the fertilized egg.
This perspective leaves out the woman who harbors the fertilized egg, and also ignores how the egg was fertilized — even if the fertilization occurred through a non-consensual violent crime.
Unearthed audio
Q: Should a woman be forced to carry a child to term after she has been the victim of incest or rape?
Vance: Well look… rape is inconvenient pic.twitter.com/ZqEHclMlYa
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 1, 2024
Making that statement in the video clip above, Vance calls rape an “inconvenient” fact leading to a pregnancy, but insists that the inconvenient fact of rape does not release the government from its duty to protect the purported personhood of the fertilized egg.
The result of Vance’s conviction is that rape victims would be forced to carry their pregnancy to term — though Vance objects to focusing on the raped women in the situation, as opposed to the fertilized egg.
Vance makes his priority clear, as he says “it’s not about whether the woman should be forced,” but instead “about whether a child should be allowed to live even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.”
The Harris campaign, previewing what are sure to be the most incendiary topics of the debate between Vance and Tim Walz, the Democratic VP nominee, shared the “unearthed audio” clip on debate day.