To me, this statute isn't just about abortion (an issue on which I have a rather complicated view myself). The thinking behind the statute is, as Emily Bazelon pointed out, "paternalistic." A similar attitude seems to pervade the thinking of a lot of doctors and nurses in this country - female as well as male.

Basically, a lot of doctors seem to think that a woman's life revolves (or should revolve) around her reproductive capacity. Various friends and acquaintances of mine have told me horror stories about not being able to get the most effective treatment for conditions like serious infections or epilepsy because the doctors don't want to give them something that might harm their theoretical unborn child - although these women were not pregnant, used birth control and were not planning on getting pregnant.

This statute seems to come from the same attitude at the root of those horror stories: that if women's lives don't revolve around pushing out babies, they are either messed up or will be messed up. It's sickening, and I think it's just as bad as viewing women as sexual objects.