Many, if not most, of those in the pro-life camp make an exception to the abortion ban for cases of rape or incest. While this has a nice warm feeling to it, it has always struck me as logically and philosophically inconsistent.
If your anti-abortion stand is based on the idea that life begins at conception, then how is the child of rape or incest any less a human being as the child conceived any other way. By your own definition, it’s an innocent human life you’re taking by aborting it just as you would with any other abortion.
So the debate here is how the rape/incest exception can fit into a sound anti-abortion position.
Well the right wing religous conservatist were recently up in arms because John Kerry did not vote to outlaw third trimester partial birth abortions because it did not make exceptions for rape and incest victums. They made a major campain issue over this and Kerry lost a large voting block for making a stand on the issue. So I would say that there stand is that they don’t make acceptions for rape and incest victums based upon there stand in the recent election. Your premise seems loaded.
The justification is that its a compromise that keeps the pro-lifers from being too far marginalized. Without it, their position is too unpalatable to most citizens.
I agree with you that support of abortion caused by rape or incest is a philosophically inconsistent position with the pro-life movement. I am marginally pro-life and I don’t think that these cases should have a special exemption. I suppose that there are two ways that other pro-lifer’s get around this. One is that it makes their position more palatable to people in the middle. Most people don’t work their positions out through consistent philosophy; they base their beliefs on what they were taught as well as emotion. The other way to get around it is to believe that those fetuses are somehow tainted by the method of conception and should not be considered as innocent human life.
Pro-lifers in general would I think a) view a unborn baby as the product of two parties (father and mother) and b) consider the mother to be someone with responsibilities and obligations, as much as someone with rights. Obviously the rights of the unborn baby, who cannot really be said to have any responsibilities, loom large too.
In the case of rape or incest, the responsibility of the mother is set at zero, and the right of the father likewise so (for his criminality) - this over-rides any rights the baby might have. It is for similar reasons that many pro-lifers believe that abortion is permissible in situations where the mother’s life is in danger. Her right to live is stronger than that of the potential human being.
A 12 year old girl is raped. Should she be forced to be a mother at her young age?
A 25 year old woman is brutally attacked and raped at gunpoint. Should she have to endure the emotional trauma for 9 full months, knowing that the offspring of her attacker is growing inside her?
I think pro-lifers make exceptions for rape because it was not the woman’s choice to engage in intercourse, and they have compassion for the emotional trauma the pregnancey would cause.
In the case of non-coerced incest, I cannot think of a good reason why a pro-lifer would make an exception. The risk of birth defects and genetic disease is not usually listed among their allowed exceptions.
So why did the senate pass the bill on banning partial birth abortions in the third trimester without a provision for exceptions for rape and incest. Why did they think this was a good political move, surly they must have thought they had the support of the right to lifers.
In my opinion, most pro-lifers are not in it because they truely believe abortion is murder akin to gunning someone down on the street. Most people pro-lifers believe it is just “wrong” and that a human life shouldn’t be destroyed without a good reason. They consider rape and incest to be good reasons. But they believe that if a girl chooses sex, she should take the responsiblity that comes with it.
This is kind of a flawed argument, in that abortion is a “solution” to the problem. I think mostly they want to create punishments for women that choose sex willingly.
I can’t offer a justification, because I think it’s BS. What it says to me is that anti-choice people who offer this out are using pregnancy and motherhood to “punish” young women for their badness in choosing to have sex. “She should have kept her legs shut” being a common song. Those who are raped were not bad, so they get a pass. It makes no logical sense.
An anti-choicer who is against abortion in all situations (perhaps all situations except saving the life of the mother) is the only internally logical anti-choicer. If you believe life begins at conception and a fetus is a human being with full rights, then a fetus conceived via rape is no different. It’s not a logic I share, mostly because I don’t believe life and rights begin at conception, but I can understand it.
But, as others have said, logic looms small in the abortion debate.
It’s quite possible to believe that life begins at conception, while not believing that a fetus is a human being with full rights. It’s also possible to believe that other human beings with full rights have no right to kill the unborn baby, as well as that the unborn baby has a right to live.
I fully agree. Like the old saying goes, “I only support abortion for people in exceptional circumstances: rape vcitims, incest victims, and me (or “my daughter”).” The problem with creating a division between “good girls” who were forced into sex and “bad girls” who chose it and should be punished (forcing something between a woman’s thighs and into her body=bad, making her keep something unwanted inside her for 9 months=good) is that it ignores the grey area of girls who, while not technically victims of rape, are not mentally or physically prepared for sex or under extreme pressure from members of the opposite sex.
In the end, though, while I definitely understand the hypocrisy involved in this viewpoint (being anti-abortion with exceptions), like liberal religion, it’s ultimately a move in the right direction.
However I find your explanation untenable. To arbitrarily create a new definition of life, that exists somewhere between non-life and “a human life with full rights” is intellectual and moral contortionism at it’s very worst.
It is inconsistent to fault abortion rights groups for discounting the sanctity of life and then define situations in which it is acceptable to abort a fetus. That smacks of “my reason for abortion has more societal justification than yours.”
If it is a life, than it is a human being. As such he/she has all of the rights that I have. Rape is a tradegy and should be punished in the harshest manner. But murder is a tradegy as well. And if it is a child, than murdering it in the name of saving the rape victim any more suffering simply creates another tradegy. If it is a child, than society has two extremely distasteful options. Abort the baby, therefore committing state sanctioned murder, or require the mother to carry to term. (with the mental anguish that would entail)
Both choices suck. But both bnorton and WhyNot have pointed out that the only consistent position to take is to defend all life, even if conceived through rape.
Perhaps the pro-lifers have made this exception so as to not marginilize themselves. Paradoxically, I think it hurts their positions. By ackowledging that they too are willing to put convenience (even if for the noble objective of reducing trauma) ahead of the life of a child, life continues to be devalued.
I agree with everything that you said here, and I am as anti-abortion as it comes. Of course, my stance on abortion is based upon its use as a method of birth control, and that is clearly not the case in this situation.
Airman, would you mind elaborating on what you mean in the above sentence?
Abortion seems to me to be the ultimate in birth control, though not a method that is practical for everyday use, of course. What other use could it have?
It’s really pretty simple. Abortion should be maintained as a method of saving the mother’s life in cases of extreme risk to her, or it should be used in cases of rape/incest. Anything else as far as I am concerned is due to irresponsibility on behalf of both parties to the child and at that point, in my opinion, it becomes murder. If you’re too stupid to take precautions ahead of time that’s your problem, in other words. Abortion should not be used to cover for stupidity.
There are a lot of bold statements made in this thread about what “most” or “many” pro-lifers believe. Does anyone have any actual data on how many self-described pro-lifers, people who firmly believe life begins at conception, agree that abortion is OK in the case of rape and/or incest? Without that data, I’m going to call bullshit on the premise.
What fault is it of the fetus’ that it was the product of rape/incest. What does that have do with the rights of the fetus? Either it has such rights or it doesn’t. Either the right of the fetus to live trumps the desire of the mother to not carry it to term, or it doesn’t. Why the exception for rape/incest?
Because the “mother” didn’t consent and the sex was both forced and undesirable. Therefore she should be excused from responsibility for what was a situation over which she had no control. Most reasonable people instinctively understand that.
What difference does responsibility make to the innocence of the “child?”
When anti-abortion people make this exception ther basically just admitting that it’s got nothing to to with saving “babies” and everything to do with punishing women for having sex.
No one in the history of the world has ever used abortion for “birth control,” btw.