Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: The Egg-ception

I expected PolitiFact's ruling on a twittered statement by Obama's campaign about Republican vice presidential Paul Ryan regarding abortion to be a fairly straightforward, simple one:

Make sure the women in your life know: Paul Ryan supports banning all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest.

PolitiFact's Dave Umhoefer agreed with the statement in principle, except for an implicit "except for" for which he made it unduly complicated--where the life of the mother is at stake. But for that it is ruled as a Half True? According to the website Reproductive Health Reality Check, the reality is that Ryan wants it both ways:

Abortion rights supporters say that his previous vote on a "no exceptions" late abortion ban, the so-called "partial birth" abortion ban, means that he does not believe in exceptions ever. Ryan apologists claim that he has never stated he would ban abortion in all cases, and his support of "personhood" bills is simply an affirmation that the issue of whether abortion should be legal or not should be returned to the states.

Can Ryan have it both ways?

Polifact tries to give him cover. At the same time that they report that both the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the National Right to Life Committee agree that the only exception Ryan supports is in the case of the "life of the mother" being at risk, they also point out that the "Sanctity of Human Life" bill that Ryan supported in 2011 doesn't actually do any banning of abortion.

That's true. More likely to actually ban abortion would have been another bill sponsored that year, called the "Life At Conception" Act. It too declared "life" began at fertilization, but that there was a right to life from that point on.

It goes on to note that Ryan received the ready vice-presidential endorsement of the Catholic pro-life group CatholicVote which stated that Ryan understood Catholic "social teaching" which in the case of CatholicVote included no exceptions, even for rape.

 

Umhoefer failed to take note of Ryan's avoidance of taking a stand on that exception by making it implicit--or I should say, hiding it beneath the language of personhood at conception: (emphasis mine)

And while right wing pundits helpfully point out that Paul Ryan doesn't want to make abortion illegal (which: hahahahahahah), he just wants to give states the right to make abortion illegal, Mother Jones' Kevin Drum notes that Ryan's Sanctity of Human Life Act states,

(B) the life of each human being begins with fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent, irrespective of sex, health, function or disability, defect, stage of biological development, or condition of dependency, at which time every human being shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood; and

(2) the Congress affirms that the Congress, each State, the District of Columbia, and all United States territories have the authority to protect the lives of all human beings residing in its respective jurisdictions.

Which actually means that states would have the right to ban all abortions with no exception for rape, incest, or the life of the mother. Further, in those states, if a woman was raped and wanted to have an abortion in another state, her rapist could theoretically sue her to stop the abortion, and Drum suspects that he'd probably win.

Further, yesterday another Mother Jones columnist pointed out that if the Sanctity of Human Life Act had become law, it likely would have made many forms of IVF illegal, and since Mitt Romney's two newest adorable grandbabies are the product of IVF and a surrogate mother, Ryan's big idea would turn Romney's kids into criminals. Most awkward political bromance ever.

The Republican Party Platform states under the sub-heading "The Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life"-- "We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children." This has been the pro-lifer legal loophole: “Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" with that person being the newly fertilized egg.

Calling a fertilized egg (a zygote) a person opens up a huge ugly can of worms with regard to the law. How does the law deal with the fact that a large percentage of zygotes get naturally sloughed off instead of growing in the womb? And of course, most forms of birth control, such as the Pill and in-vitro devices, which "unnaturally" interfere with the growth of the zygote, must be banned as abortifascients.

But let's get back to the "health of the mother" exception. Pro-lifers do not like the "health" exception because it is too general a term, as described by Monte Harms in ProLifeBlog.com:

In other words, the "woman's health" aspect could cover almost any reason for abortion. A woman could say that her child would cause her stress, or she is not ready to have a family, and that would be sufficient.

According to Harms, the only condition that "will cause a mother to die" is ectopic pregnancy, where the zygote implants inside a Fallopian tube. Other than that, all other conditions are "treatable."

In other words, the mothers' life is only as important as preserving her life to give birth to the child, unless both would die.

 

Often the health of the mother is focused on in respect to late term abortions, and Paul Ryan has been very clear in regard to that. He called the exception a loophole so "wide" you could drive a Mack truck through it.

“I’m very proud of my pro-life record,” Ryan told WJHL-TV in Virginia in an interview aired Thursday. “I’ve always adopted the idea, the position, that the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life.”

That jibes with Ryan’s longstanding opposition to abortion rights even in cases of rape and incest and his criticism of “health of the mother” clauses in other legislation.

“The health exception is a loophole wide enough to drive a Mack truck through it,” Ryan said in a 2000 floor speech in support of a late-term abortion ban. “The health exception would render this ban virtually meaningless.”

Ryan has evaded the question of health of the mother but minimal research should have told Umhoefer that Ryan, because of his previous criticisms and his championing of personhood amendments, would likely support banning the exception.

And then there's the fact that this was a "tweet"--limited to 140 characters, which would have been exceeded to include the "exception." I'm not using this as an excuse, but the campaign tweeters probably had that in mind when they put out it out.  Absolutism is more of a conservative characteristic, so they're less likely to make any exceptions, and it is also known that their stand on abortion has grown stricter (with less "exception") over the years.

Basically it's a true statement even minus the exception. Given Ryan's side-stepping stance on the issue, a Mostly True would have been more appropriate. There is no inconclusiveness or "partial truth" here to make it Half True. Neither is it misleading.