Gov. Greg Abbott has been criticized for defending his state’s restrictive new abortion law against pregnancies caused by rape and incest stating that the state would eliminate rape itself.
A reporter recently asked Abbott “Why force a rape or incest victim to carry a pregnancy to term?”
“It doesn’t require that at all because obviously it provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion,” Abbott said. “Goal No. 1 in the state of Texas is to eliminate rape so that no woman, no person will be a victim of rape.”
Abbott received mounting criticism from pro-choice advocates with former Republican state Sen. Don Huffines saying it turned into a “disgusting” look for Abbott to advocate for women to get an abortion anyway.
State Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, defended Abbott tweeting, “Is it humane to kill an innocent person because of the violent crime of another person?” earlier this week.
Dr. Jennifer Kerns, an OB-GYN and associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco, said, “What we’re really detecting is a grouping of cells that are initiating some electrical activity. In no way is this detecting a functional cardiovascular system or a functional heart.”
She added the term “fetal heartbeat” is not widely used in the medical practice and can be misleading in the instance of the new abortion bill.
“I think this is an example of where we are sometimes trying to translate medical lingo in a way that patients can understand, and this is a really unfortunate side effect of this type of translation,” she concluded.
In 2019, the state reported that the majority of sexual assaults happened in homes where the victims knew their rapist with 14,656 rapes and attempted rapes reported that year.
Studies have also shown that a great number of sexual assault victims never report their rape to law enforcement with only about 9.2% of victims in Texas reporting sexual violence to the police.
