Abortion and Rape

Abortion, Rape, Pro-Choice, Pregnant, Pro-Life, Hard Cases

Those who defend abortion often try to bring up the “hard cases.” These include the involvement of rape, incest, or danger to the life of the mother.

This article will focus on pregnancies that are the result of rape.

Far from being callous towards victims of rape, those of us who are pro-life actually have every bit as much concern for the life and well-being of the pregnant mother as we do for the preborn child.

Everyone can agree that rape is a terrible act of aggression.

While the abortion industry has put great effort into creating the illusion that abortion can help make the pain go away, the reality is that it just makes the situation even worse.

If A harms B, that does not entitle B to harm C.

Again, this is not to say that the mother isn’t in a terrible situation.

What we are arguing is that legalized homicide of an innocent human being is not an ethical response to this terrible situation.

In fact, the supreme court has ruled that legalized homicide is not an ethical response to the rapist himself, by prohibiting the use of the death penalty against rape [1].

So if killing the rapist is not seen as justified than how can killing his son or daughter be seen as justified?

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References

[1] U.S. Supreme Court. (1977). “Coker vs. Georgia.” FindLaw, 11 Jun 1986. Web. 29 Jun 1977. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=476&invol=747

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2 thoughts on “Abortion and Rape

  1. The only reason why you say that is because you have never been raped. I was raped and I got pregnant. I had my abortion when I was 6 weeks along. I could not care for a baby that I did not even want, that I could not afford to take care of. I was only 17 years old, no job, nothing. I feel that people who say stuff like this has never experienced it. And I feel as though people who do not understand should not even speak like they do. It was not alive when I got the abortion. No heartbeat. Nothing. I did not kill a human. If anything I saved it from the hard life they were going to go through. So please, before you talk about something so important make sure you understand how it feels, put yourself in a young 17 year old girls shoes who had just got raped by a man that she did not even know and then got pregnant with no money, no job, no clue on how to raise a child. Put yourself in my shoes. Granted my abortion upset me but it was the best thing to do.

    1. Lauren,

      In reply to your comment, I first want to say that I could not imagine the pain and emotional trauma that you must have gone through, and possibly still experience. I fully desire that you found the support you needed and that you have been able to recover as much as one can after something like that.

      However, though I cannot relate or empathize with you (I cannot get pregnant), I feel that I am obligated to defend the unseen member of your situation. Although any situation of this sort is life altering to say the least and incredibly complicated in the psychological sense, when we get right down to the moral fiber of the event, I know that the right conclusion can be found. Consider this example:

      A woman that is raped and impregnated decides to carry her pregnancy to term and gives birth to a healthy baby girl. After three years of caring for her child, the finances are not meeting the needs of both the mother and the 3 year old child. The mother is also constantly reminded of that painful event because, every time she looks at her child, she cannot help but think of that event almost 4 years ago. She decides that, since her child was conceived of rape, that she will kill her child to ease the mental and financial burdens.

      I would assume that you would not approve of the mother’s decision in this case, in fact, I think that if you were a witness to the event, you would do everything in your power to stop the murder from occurring. But what has changed about the child between the time when it was in the womb and when it was out? Why is it that it would be acceptable to kill the child in the first 9 months of her life, but not after? The truth of the matter is, there is no difference between the unborn little girl, and 3 year old little girl. From an embryological standpoint, the undisputed scientific facts are this: from the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct, living, whole human beings. And philosophically, there is no relevant difference between the embryo you once were and the adult you are today, such that those changes would justify killing you at that earlier stage of development. Differences of size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency are simply not good reasons to say that the child had no right to life in womb, but that she does when she is 3 years old.

      I hope this clears up the reasoning of the pro-life position. We as pro-lifers contend with science and philosophy that the unborn are just as valuable as those who are born. Therefore, even in the case of rape, the unborn child is just as valuable as the 3 year old child, and thus, it cannot be morally justified to kill the unborn by means of abortion.

      In all sincerity,

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