Young: Say you're 'pro-life'? Please be more specific

WACO, Texas — If Sports Illustrated were a defensive back, its treatment of Lynn Swann, Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor, would be called "giving him a big cushion."

Swann was a great Pittsburgh Steeler receiver. He holds a microphone well. He's running against Democratic incumbent Ed Rendell. A possible GOP primary field parted for Swann like waves of taxi-squad pretenders. Now he's all alone, the GOP nominee. Smooth.

In a Feb. 27 feature, instead of wondering why someone without a shred of public policy experience would be a major party's choice for governor, in contrast to Rendell, whose previous post was Philadelphia mayor, SI essentially did downfield blocking. People are charmed, it reported, by Swann's microphone presence and demeanor, and Super Bowl rings.

If that wasn't fluffy enough, SI even committed propaganda on the candidate's behalf by using the anti-abortion movement's preferred term to describe Swann: "pro-life."

It did point out that the candidate verged on cluelessness about the abortion issue. On ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulus," Swann was under the false assumption that if Roe vs. Wade were repealed it would ban abortion. No, it wouldn't. The matter would be put in the hands of the states, maybe in the hands of wide receivers turned governors.

This week, with South Dakota having enacted an abortion ban in a quest to force a Supreme Court showdown on Roe, it suddenly has become quite incumbent on each of us to inquire: "Pro-life"? Would you please be more specific?

Would you require a teen impregnated by a rapist to bear the villain's child?

Would you require an incest victim to bear her step-daddy's child?

South Dakota would. How about you?

These are the questions that should arise every time the issue of abortion is broached anymore. Because if the balance tips at the Supreme Court, how states deal with these excruciating contingencies could be in the lap of everyone who runs for statehouse.

South Dakota's abortion ban would allow an exception to save the mother's life. Talk about an imposition in a drama-drenched decision. Doctors don't know if childbirth will endanger a woman's life. They only have probabilities.

If "pro-life" to you means banning abortion except in cases of rape and incest, think for a moment how hard it is to get victims to step forward to press charges and how hard it is to prove. We would put that standard on the shoulders of one seeking to end a pregnancy conceived in violence?

And not all rape is violent. A vast number of teen pregnancies result from statutory rape, adults sweeping young girls off their feet, then skipping out: "But he said he loved me."

Back to the state intervening in the patient-doctor relationship. Much political hay is made about so-called partial-birth abortions, a term physicians didn't even use before a light went on in the heads of abortion foes in search of a mainstream wedge issue.

With late-term abortions already banned in all but a handful of states state, except to protect the life and health of the mother, what we're talking about by and large are extreme situations, such as when the brain develops outside the fetus's head or when for other reasons the child won't and can't survive outside the womb. If the woman's health isn't in danger, it's illegal anyway.

These intensely personal decisions, and the clunkiness of one-size-fits-all social policy, are where the rhetoric hits the road. It's where a wide receiver-turned-candidate's claim to being "pro-life" demands a follow-up.

You understand, sir, that what you propose is that the state require all pregnant women to gestate to term unless the state gets compelling reason why they shouldn't. Explain the contingencies, if any, in which the state should step aside.

Asked in that way, maybe more politicians would fund family planning zealously, and more would say: "You know, we all value the sanctity of life. But this is one of life's dramas where politicians should back off."

John Young writes for the Waco Tribune. E-mail: jyoung AT wacotrib.com