John Koster: “The rape thing” is not a valid reason for a woman to terminate a pregnancy

Anoth­er week, anoth­er insen­si­tive and offen­sive com­ment about rape from a self-right­eous male Repub­li­can who does­n’t believe in the right to privacy.

Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Todd Akin and Richard Mour­dock, our own local arch­con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­date for U.S. House — John Koster — has can­did­ly stat­ed his own extreme (and igno­rant) views on repro­duc­tive rights and wom­en’s health for the ben­e­fit of vot­ers in the dis­trict he’d like to represent.

We’ve known for some time that Koster — who is run­ning for Con­gress for the third time — does­n’t believe that women should have the free­dom to make their own repro­duc­tive deci­sions. But in a secret­ly-record­ed con­ver­sa­tion with an activist from Fuse Wash­ing­ton, who recent­ly attend­ed one of his cam­paign fundrais­ing events, Koster made it plain­ly clear he believes abor­tion should be ille­gal except if a wom­an’s life is in dan­ger. What about preg­nan­cies result­ing from incest or rape?

As the tran­script below shows, Koster believes women should not have the right to choose abor­tion in those circumstances.

QUESTIONER: Is there any time that you would agree with abortion?

JOHN KOSTER: Um.… When a moth­er’s life is in dan­ger, I’m not going to make that decision.

QUESTIONER: Yeah.

JOHN KOSTER: You know, I know they go out and… incest is so rare, I mean, it’s so rare. But, uh… the rape thing, you know… I know a woman who was raped and kept her child, gave it up for adop­tion, and she does­n’t regret it.  In fact, she’s a… she’s a big pro-life pro­po­nent. But on the rape thing, it’s like… how does, how does putting more vio­lence onto a wom­an’s body and tak­ing the life of an inno­cent child that’s not… that’s a con­se­quence of this crime… how does that make it bet­ter? You know what I mean?

QUESTIONER: But she has to live with the con­se­quence of that crime.

JOHN KOSTER: Well, you know, crime has con­se­quences. But how does it make it bet­ter by killing a child?

In oth­er words, what Koster is say­ing is, the law should not give women who are raped any recourse if they decide they do not want to car­ry a preg­nan­cy to term. Koster would have the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment insti­tute a total and com­plete ban on abor­tion, with only one excep­tion: to save the life of a woman. Then, and only then, he would refrain from hav­ing gov­ern­ment inter­fere. “The rape thing” (as he put it) is sim­ply not a valid rea­son for a woman to ter­mi­nate a pregnancy.

As far as Koster is con­cerned, blas­to­cysts and fetus­es are real­ly human beings, so abor­tion is wrong and should be out­lawed, no mat­ter what the cir­cum­stances. He’s enti­tled to his beliefs, of course. We strong­ly dis­agree with his world­view, but we can respect it. What we can­not respect, how­ev­er, is his desire to impose his world­view on every­one. If Koster and his ilk were to pre­vail, Amer­i­can women would not be free to make their own repro­duc­tive health deci­sions. Abor­tion would cease to be safe or legal. Preg­nan­cy pre­ven­tion and med­ical­ly-accu­rate sex edu­ca­tion would not be wide­ly avail­able, either.

Access to abor­tion is a mat­ter of lib­er­ty. Advo­cates for wom­en’s health talk often about choice, but women are not free to choose what’s right for them if there’s no clin­ic, hos­pi­tal, or oth­er facil­i­ty near­by pro­vid­ing a full range of ser­vices. With­out lib­er­ty, there is no choice. Koster is unapolo­get­i­cal­ly anti-lib­er­ty; he wants his own per­son­al views to be the law, and he’s not con­cerned about the consequences.

Koster’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent, Suzan Del­Bene, is cur­rent­ly run­ning ads ham­mer­ing Koster for his extreme views. The spot they’re run­ning does­n’t fea­ture the audio released today, but we would­n’t be sur­prised to see a new ad debut that does.