Chris Jepson: It's a woman's choice . . . and hers alone

“I don't know what these Republican congressmen drink that make them experts on women's reproductive health.” — Congresswoman Jackie Speier

I’m always fascinated when I here Republicans claim as did Marco Rubio recently that all pregnant women should be required to take a Zika-infected fetus to term. Rubio is also on record opposing abortion as an option if your daughter is impregnated through rape.

Marco Rubio claims he’ll, “err on the side of life.” What exactly does that mean? Whose life should “we” err on the side of? This seems an important question when the government would – as Republicans advocate – require all women to take all fetuses to term.

Let’s review some numbers regarding the projected costs of a Zika-infected fetus if taken to term. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation forum estimated that the lifetime cost of a microcephalic child would be anywhere from $1 million to $10 million per child. Much of that expense would be borne by parents and relatives. But much of the expense would also fall on our already over-extended health care system, on all of us as taxpayers.

By some estimates nearly 2 million American women will get pregnant this summer and fall. Again, estimates suggest that nearly half of those women live in areas potentially at risk for the Zika virus. If 10 percent bear a Zika-infected child, the costs would be anywhere from $13 billion to $130 billion.

My point is there is a direct cost to all of us for every Zika-infected fetus taken to term.

More importantly, however, than the monumental financial expense is the horrific toll such a child takes on the life of the mother and family. It is not a one time expense, it is a lifetime of on-again/off-again sorrow, a lifetime of one’s attention diverted from one’s healthy children and spouse to that one child that will never be normal or remotely capable of sustaining itself.

Marco Rubio would insist that all of us pick up the costs of such hospitalization and healthcare. Far worse (to me), that regardless the consequences to the family, regardless the unimaginable hardships and sorrow inflicted on the mother and family, Marco Rubio and his Republican brethren know best what is right for her and her family.

Rubio righteously claims he’ll, “err on the side of life." I ask Marco Rubio the question that my father put to me when I spoke with pious certainty, “Who died and made you Pope?”

The public health threat Zika poses to motherhood is real and undeniable. And I venture as the virus spreads in the United States, we’ll observe more women seeking abortions because they carry an infected fetus.

Zika is but one reason a woman might select to abort a pregnancy rather than have a child now. Let me rattle off a few reasons. Poverty. Absent father. Unloving spouse. Abusive home environment. Just ended a relationship yet finds herself pregnant. Too young. Too old. Too many children already. In medical school. Wants to go to medical school. New employment. Recent job promotion. Birth control failure. Not committed to motherhood. Simply does not want to have a child now. Or, ever in her life. Oh, and of course, rape and incest.

When Republican politicians (men essentially) argue they want to “err on the side of life,” I suggest they first err on the side of the woman. Start there. Always. She, too, has a life. Reproductive choice is her decision and hers alone.