robertliguori
Should a man have a right to an abortion if he is raped?
Hypothetical: A man is raped by a woman (and no smart remarks. Strong women exist. So do drugs. Hell, so do weapons). This woman gets pregnant. Should the man be able to force her to get an abortion?
Not having been on line long, I find this quandry not at all boring, a little disturbing maybe, and going a long way in inciting my beautiful amazon rape fantasy…I would not be at all surprised if this has not happened somewhere on earth…possibibly in the hotel housing the Eastern European women’s shot put team,(wonder how one applies for towel boy?). It would be easy enough to consider if someone was to break into a spem bank, or by otherwise means pilfered a guys sperm (although the method described in Hannibal doesn’t exactly ring with romanticism). Restitution by insuring that any fufutre social or financial obligations would be considered null and void would be as far that could be taken. As I understand it (and only by watching a especially raunchy episode of CSI) that male erectile response is damn near outside the realm of self controll when proper stimulation is applied…and even in the case of a violent encounter, such as a rape. So I guess this could happen.
I don’t see how a judically decreeded abortion could ever be considered…even as I am fervently pro-choice, still the aspect of it being the body and decision of the woman in question outweighs any rights of the victim to seek anything more than what normal sentence the crime carries.
I am not a lawyer, so I have to admit I don’t know if that is theft or not. I was under the impression that it was illegal to dig through someone else’s garbage.
If you gave me the loose strands of hair from your hairbrush with the understanding that I would throw them away, but then I use them for some other purpose (lord knows what), I think that is theft of a sort. Of course, it’s a theft with virtually no tangible harm whatsoever. In the case of stolen sperm being used to create a child, there is a good chance that some emotional harm could occur.
If any lawyers are reading this thread, perhaps they can clear up the issue of whether it is legal to take something that someone else has discarded.
And the solution to this would be to force a woman to have an abortion against her will, something guaranteed to harm her emotionally and with “a good chance that some emotional harm could occur” to her family, the biological father’s family, and possibly even the biological father himself? Doesn’t sound like a very good plan to me.
I think we’re all missing a vitally important point here.
The criminal justice system is sssssllllloooooowwwww. From the time a crime is commited, to the time the perpetrator is caught and charged with the crime, to the time a trial is arranged if the perpetrator doesn’t plead guilty, to the time of the trial and the guilty verdict, to the sentencing of the convicted criminal, can take over a year. Particularly for a felony crime such as rape.
By the time the rapist has been convicted, the baby will have already been born!
I would not be surprised to learn that this would not matter to the sort of person who sits around trying to think up ways to justify forcing women to have abortions. If they don’t care about the fundamental human right to control one’s own body or the US Constitutional right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, why should they care about a little thing like waiting for a conviction?
Well, this might violate some city ordinances, but nothing I’m aware of. There’s no expectation of privacy in garbage at a curbside, for instance, so the police are allowed to rummage and take whatever they want even without a warrant or other justification. I don’t see why a private citizen wouldn’t be able to do the same, barring municipal ordinances to the contrary.
This is alot like breaching the duties of a bailee. When you give something of yours to another, not as a gift, but for them to do something with, that creates a bailment. The bailee (person holding the item) has a duty to the bailor (person who gave the item) not to exceed the scope of the bailment. If the bailment were created with a specific limited purpose in mind (I give this to you, you can take it and throw it away) then maybe that person is in breach of their duties as a bailee if they do something else with it (keep it for their own use.)
Semen is clearly property you can own, you can sell it, you could save it in a cup and make it a gift, basically you control it. In a rape situation, it would almost be right to say that your semen has been converted (stolen) by the rapist. In a consensual sex scenario, is the semen a gift? Perhaps. It can’t really be a bailment, because you don’t expect to exert any sort of control over it hereafter…but I’m really not an expert on personal property (they do mostly real property in law school these days), so I won’t say for sure.
Unfortunately, a situation much like one described above did indeed happen to Boris Becker a few years back. A woman administered oral sex upon him, then saved the semen in her mouth and used it to impregnate herself. The court, alas, held that even if this account was true that Becker still had to pay child support, because the standard for child support has nothing to do with fault, fraud, or deceit. Surely there needs to be some provision in the child support laws to accomodate rape or fraud in creating the child, it’s a change we should look at. In general, we see it as more just that the father pay for the child rather than let it become a burden on the state or the charity of others, but in this situation that’s manifestly unjust so some exception must be allowed.
I’m glad you’re being a good sport.
I think we can clean up the rules regarding things like this if it were phrased something like “The usage of genetic material from any individual for reprodction without that individuals consent is considered rape and treated as such.”
Then it would work for both men and women even in cases of cloning.
Its pretty common for NICU bills to run into $100K+. Only a tiny handful of people in the world can afford that kind of care without insurance. Good luck convincing the insurance industry they should drop a couple hundred thousand a pop to care for a baby you would have just as soon aborted for about the same cost as a normal delivery.
In addition many of those early babies still die after days and or weeks of care. Anyone here feel like tossing $50K+ on the table to pay the bills for a baby who still may not make it. Most of us here probably don’t even make over $50K a year.
Uh, you do know what rape is, right? It’s a violent crime, and for many victims far more traumatic than any other violent crime. Being cloned without your consent or having your genetic material “stolen” is not even remotely comparable to rape, unless the generic material is obtained through violent force.
But I don’t think it would make much difference in current abortion law even if genetic “theft” were considered rape, because in the US the right to abortion is not a right given to rape victims. It is a right given to people who are pregnant, a group that just happens to be made up entirely of women. The question of whether or not the pregnant woman seeking an abortion was raped doesn’t even comes into it from a legal standpoint. As long as she’s seeking an abortion early enough in her pregnancy that she isn’t past her state’s legal cut-off point for elective abortion it doesn’t matter how she got pregnant or why she wants to have an abortion. She has the right to have one for any reason she likes, because she’s the one carrying the child. When it comes to abortion it doesn’t matter whether the pregnant woman is a rape victim or not, and it certainly doesn’t matter whether someone else who isn’t even carrying the fetus is a rape victim or not.
Yet because of these laws, if “abortion for men” (or more accurately “abortion for women forced on them by men”) were to be legalized in cases of female-on-male rape or other special circumstances, the legal precedent would seem to indicate that it must be legalized in all cases – that is, any man could force any woman he impregnated to have an abortion, for any reason he liked. And if you think that is a good idea…well…it sure makes me glad we’re not discussing this face-to-face.
Doesn’t sound like a good plan to me, either. As I said in my very first post in this thread: “I don’t believe he should be able to force the woman to have an abortion, even though she used his sperm in a manner he did not consent to.”
Murder victims are rarely in any position to feel traumatized by being murdered, although I suppose individual beliefs about the afterlife may be a relevant factor when it comes to that issue!
Why yes, of course. On any subject. Even – no, make that especially – Coke vs. Pepsi.
Oh, and since I suspect some people may be a little unclear on this point, forcing an unneccesary medical procedure on an unconsenting patient is not only illegal but an extremely serious violation of medical ethics. There is no way the American Medical Association would support a law that would allow pregnant women to be forced into abortion, and even were the law to pass despite their protests no doctor with a shred of integrity or respect for the responsibilities of his or her profession would agree to help enforce it.
I should have been more clear on the point of egg theft. I was thinking in terms of one swiped from a fertility clinic not a “strap her down and go fishing with a vending machine crane” situation. I wanted to present a scenario where a woman would experiance a theft comparable to the “condom from the trash can” to give a broader perspective on the sbject because situations tend to subconciously get interpreted differently in subtle and not so subtle ways depending on if it’s a man or a woman involved.
True, however many would still feel an emotional connection just knowing and be strongly affected by it even if they never saw the child. This does not mean I think biology should be the determining factor in custody cases, clearly the one who can raise the child best should get custody. What I am saying is that the existence of a child can affect this person emotionally even if the person has no leagal responsibility to it so in a case of unconsenting birth some recompense is in order. No, not a forced abortion.
I never said rape entitles somone to an abortion, or the right to force another to have one, I said genetic theft should be treated as rape. My reasoning behind this is partially based on the ease with which genetic theft can occur- stolen condoms or a scrap of skin used for cloning. If a crime that has the potential to affect somone that much is so easy to commit the penalty has to be severe to be an effective deterrant.
The factors that make genetic “theft” so easy to carry out are the same factors that make it so obviously unlike rape. It does not require the perpetrator to use force, violence, or coercion. The experience is unlikely to be painful, frightening, or humiliating for the victim and so the victim is unlikely to resist. In fact the victim need not even be present when the “theft” occurs! This “crime”, if it is indeed a crime, is not remotely comparable to rape in the way that it affects the victim and there is no reason to treat it as such.
Even the potentially negative emotional effects of learning that genetic “theft” has left one with unwanted genetic offspring out there in the world somewhere are a mere shadow of the negative physical and emotional effects of rape. For rape victims, concerns about unwanted genetic offspring must take their place among other concerns like serious physical injury, sexually transmitted disease, permanent harm to the reproductive system, fear, and humiliation. I would appreciate it if you would stop belittling the suffering of real rape victims by comparing it to something that, while it may be emotionally unpleasant and morally questionable, isn’t even in the same ballpark as rape.
