That isn’t what the actual law is like right now in many states. For example, Florida requires a restraining order, police report, medical record, or other court order or documentation, in order to get an abortion for rape or incest.
Not everyone feels comfortable going to police. Some people who are being abused or trafficked feel very stuck and afraid. Leaving your abuser is the time when you are most likely to be killed by them. Many women stay in bad situations out of fear for their own lives. And many stay in bad situations out of fear for their children: either that their children will also be killed, or that if they leave their abuser, they will then be ordered to let him have unsupervised access to the children. At least if she is still in the same house, she can supervise and make sure he isn’t hurting the kids. When she leaves, she loses that option. The courts routinely grant access to abusive men even when there is evidence of the abuse. And in many more cases, there is no evidence, and it is just a he-said, she-said situation.
Also, sexual coercion in marriage and relationships is very normalized. Many women are being sexually coerced, and either do not view it as rape, or do not think that anyone else would view it as rape.
Sexual coercion and pressure in marriage is so normalized that people openly joke about it online, on their normal accounts, often under their full names. For example, this video is meant to be funny, and has plenty of comments agreeing and saying it is the truth. That same video is also on facebook, with more comments agreeing that it is both funny and true.
So if your husband is routinely coercing or pressuring you into sex, and you are giving in because it is easier, because otherwise he will be grumpy or pout and refuse to help with the childcare and housework, because otherwise he will guilt you and make you feel bad, because otherwise he will withhold financial support, because otherwise he will threaten to leave you and fight for custody of the children that he won’t take care of properly, because you are worried that if you don’t give in when he is joking it might actually escalate to real anger and violence, etc, etc, should the police be involved? I think it could be argued that they should be involved, but that actually seems like a fairly feminist position. Should those women be denied abortions if they aren’t willing to get the police involved?
That doesn’t necessarily seem shitty to me.
If she’s lying to get the abortion at all, then she is lying in order to get something that should be her basic human right. She should be legally entitled to control her own body, including controlling whether her body is used to create another life (or if you believe it is already a life, whether her body is used to incubate and save that life).
Even if she’s just lying to get the abortion for free, it doesn’t necessarily seem shitty. She’s not hurting rape victims by doing that. She’s not taking away abortions from rape victims. And if she’s lying to get the abortion for free, I assume that means she would be the one paying for it. Why isn’t the man paying? You framed this as her being shitty, but you could also see it as the man being shitty, for putting her in a position where she has to get an abortion she cannot afford, and not paying for it.
You mentioned condoms in your post, as a starting point for contraceptives. When people don’t use condoms, it is usually because the man objects, not because the woman objects. But she is the one who has to get the abortion and pay for it, and who is seen as shitty if she takes advantage of the free system.
One issue I have with this entire line of thought – I think there is a common misconception that some large number of women are out there purposely “using abortion as birth control”, and that’s just not what is happening.
Most women don’t want to get abortions. Some of them aren’t acting irresponsibly at all. Most birth control isn’t reliable enough to expect it to make unplanned pregnancies super rare. And then many women are just acting within the normal bounds of irresponsibility that are accepted in many other areas of life.
We don’t expect people to be 100% perfect. We don’t seriously penalize people if they don’t drive with the utmost caution and care, never doing anything distracting (like listen to audiobooks or talk radio or carry on conversations or switch the music), and never driving with less than a full nights sleep. Even when people cause fatal accidents, there are often no major legal repercussions for that, unless they were doing something that is seen as seriously negligent and outside the bounds of normal behavior. We also don’t try to deny people health care if they sometimes miss their medication, or if they don’t get at least 8 hours of sleep every single night and drink at least 8 glasses of water per day, or if they drink soda, or if they drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes.
But with abortion, it is seen as a personal responsibility issue, and if women aren’t completely perfect – if they ever miss a pill by 3 hours, or if they don’t stand up to coercion and pressure, of if they forget an appointment for a shot, or if they don’t notice that their IUD is out of place – then it becomes their fault if they are pregnant, and people want to deny them healthcare and blame them for the outcome. We see abortion as a failure of women, when men have the power to use condoms, or even use condoms plus withdrawal at the same time, and they are the ones who are mostly choosing not to do that.
I think the issue is that it’s not really about abortion. It is about something else. It is about things like controlling women, patriarchy, misogyny, enforcing gender roles, and slut shaming.