Just to be clear, I do NOT think abortions should be denied to rape victims or women who’ve had incestuous relationships. Actually, as much as I dislike abortion, I don’t think it should be denied to anyone.
The ongoing Roe v. Wade thread reminded me of questions I’ve had for a long time. Why do pro-lifers believe abortion is murder but make exceptions for rape and incest? If you believe abortion is the murder of an innocent person, do rape and incest constitute justifiable homicide to you? If the reasoning is that a woman who’s been raped has been traumatized, and pregnancy and birth would be too emotionally damaging to her, why not make exceptions for women who haven’t been raped but for whom pregnancy would be seriously emotionally damaging?
As for incest, is the exclusion due to fears of fetal defects? If so, then why the OK for that but not for severe fetal defects NOT from inbreeding?
I assume there are answers. I just can’t figure out what they are.
Saying that abortion shouldn’t be allowed for rape or incest would be ballot-box suicide.
It’s the same reason why most pro-choicers don’t allow extreme late-term abortions such as aborting a fetus when it is 9 months old and literally one day away from its due date. Technically, it’s still in the woman’s uterus, and the “woman should have the right to choose what to do with her body,” but most pro-choicers wouldn’t make that abortion legal because of the political repercussions.
The abortion debate is absolutely full of self-contradictions from both sides, perhaps more so than any other political issue. It’s like why pro-lifers don’t wage a widespread violent war against abortion clinics (well, the vast majority don’t,) because they don’t truly feel on a visceral level that an unborn fetus is the same as a born toddler or young child.
Many do not make exception for it. If your reasoning to be opposed to abortion is the zygote is a human from the moment of conception and killing it is akin to murdering an innocent then there can be no exception that makes abortion ok.
But that is a harsh thing to impose on a young woman who was impregnated when her father raped her.
The realpolitik of it is forcing that young girl to bear a child forced on her by incest is a bridge too far for many. So, in the interest of getting at least some kind of abortion ban passed, they make exceptions for rape/incest/mother’s life.
Once they get those in place they can maybe revisit banning it for all reasons later.
It’s actually only about 60% of pro-lifers who do support rape and incest exceptions. The other half oppose them. Political expediency as velocity said is one of the reasons. The pro-life movement actually doesn’t come down on politicians who put in the rape exceptions because they obviously know that the sight of a crying 15 year old rape victim who can’t get an abortion is not a good thing to see on the nightly news. There’s also the reality that our morality does allow exceptions to a great many things and very few of us maintain a very strict ethical code that harbors no exceptions. It’s a different visceral reaction to a rape victim and a woman who is on abortion number 12 because she never gets around to birth control. I think that most people can understand that.
Again as velocity mentioned, 80 percent of pro-choicers don’t support third trimester abortions even though that’s also a possibly logically untenable position. The difference is that you can see a 24 week old baby and it looks a heck of a lot like a person and the ‘my body, my choice’ stance seems like just a little less of a priority.
As an aside, ‘mother’s life’ exceptions are materially different than rape and incest exceptions. If your interest is in preserving life, then the mother’s life is equally as valuable as the child’s and it’s not necessarily logically incompatible to say that choosing the mother’s life over the child’s is a hard choice, but not an immoral one.
It’s the NRA’s “Never give an inch, no matter what, because slippery slope!” strategy. They give even a millimeter of ground, even for popular, sensible, and minimal restrictions, and then they have to admit their position is not as righteous and noble as they want you to think.
The OP is asking why pro-lifers do make exceptions for rape and incest.
Your ‘crazy beats reason’ and ‘don’t budge an inch’ comment would make sense if pro-lifers weren’t making exceptions for rape and incest.
One of the reasons is that, in cases of rape and incest, the woman did not consent to the intercourse, and therefore did not give implied consent to the possible pregnancy.
Because they’re not really pro-life, they’re pro-controlling women’s bodies.
No one has any control over how they’re conceived, so if you truly believe that life begins at conception and thus any deliberate action to terminate it constitutes murder, you shouldn’t make exceptions for any case that doesn’t involve sparing the mother’s life which is undoubtedly jeopardized by continuing the pregnancy. Pro-lifers who make these kind of exceptions are exposing that it’s really about punishing women for having sex. If it’s just about political expediency, they should make that same charitable exception for women seeking to abort fetuses who are diagnosed with severe birth defects, and they don’t.
I’m also curious as to which percentage of these “pro-lifers” support social aid for indigent mothers, are pro-gun control and rebuke Trump for his anti-family policies. My guess is they exist in very small numbers compared to those who are very vocal about denying women access to abortion, so I’m not convinced that their arguments are rooted in anything other than hypocrisy and misogyny.
I agree the positions of many who call themselves pro-life exclude rape and incest and few would condone let alone commit violence to stop abortions; and somewhat likewise many if not most Americans who call themselves pro-choice would accept some limits on abortion which would not apply to all other medical procedures.
In case of late term abortions I believe they’d argue that’s different because of a practical medical difference, viability of the fetus/baby outside the woman’s body so it’s no longer 100% her choice. Whereas the rape/incest exclusion is hard to describe as other than a political difference. But some abortion restrictions that nominally ‘pro choice’ people would accept are also just political differences.
Self contradictory? I think that’s somewhat subjective. If you assume the only moral logic about abortion is either ‘medical procedure, everyone but patient and doctor, butt out’, or ‘whether a child is to be put to death’ then yes, any compromise is a contradiction. But I think many people’s opinion of abortion is based on the sense that it’s neither simply a medical procedure nor an execution. The mother has a particular role and connection that is not matched in any (reasonable) analogy one can construct, but a separate life is also involved. Thinking along those lines is heavily discouraged by activists of both sides but it’s not itself self contradictory. Rather it simply posits seriously competing interests of mother and child rather than assuming one interest or the other must be 100% paramount or else ‘it’s a contradiction’. And it would yield compromises that are not self contradictory if the logic in the first place rejects the absolute superiority of mother or child’s interest over the other in all cases.
And whether or not that’s how a lot of people consciously think of the issue, poll results on various aspects of the question tend to read as if it actually is. Hence, much stronger support for abortion bans excluding rape and incest, and general support for more restriction on abortion the further along the pregnancy. People on either side who don’t want to abandon the absolute ‘routine medical procedure v. murder’ duality would always say ‘who would decide between those competing rights!?!?’, but how is it decided now? By election results. Results in an imperfect system you can separately discuss changing, results with an element of luck as to timing, but in any case cumulative election results are why the USSC makeup seems headed toward possibly sending the abortion issue back to the states. Then if so, votes will determine the balance in each state. If state X makes abortion illegal except for rape and incest, and a pro-choice (or pro-life, or just simplistic thinking neutral) person says ‘but that’s a contradiction!’, so what?
Perhaps, but by that logic, any pro-choicer who says that late-term abortions should not be permitted is also controlling women’s bodies as well and restricting her choice/options. If a woman’s body is hers to decide what to do with, then why can’t she abort a 9-month old fetus just like a 2-month old one? In both cases, they’re in her uterus, and her uterus is hers.
I believe those opposed to abortion view mother’s life exceptions as a loophole. E.g. The doctor signs off that the mother is depressed and a suicide risk if she is forced to bear the child so therefore the mother’s life is at risk and the abortion happens.
Also, how would such an exception be respected in a scenario where abortion is otherwise totally banned? The woman would have to prove that she did not consent to the sex that lead to the conception of the fetus, so how would that go? Would a police report suffice? Or would the accused have to be charged, and would the case have to make it all the way to trial and result in a conviction for the victim to be believed? Considering how long augmenting a case to trial status takes, an abortion past a certain point would be out of the question. And that’s not even ignoring all the cases where it’s unrealistic to expect the victim to go the police about it (what about spousal rape, for instance?) Believing the victims only out of good faith obviously means women who want to abort fetuses that were the result of consensual sex will lie to get the abortions.
So yeah, not only is it a glaring contradiction to the notion of being pro-life, it’s something that’s even feasible enough to put into practice.
If you believe that a 9 month old fetus (aka a fully formed baby) is at the same stage of development as a two month old fetus that isn’t remotely viable outside the womb, then yeah.
But why should viability make a difference? The argument for pro-choice is “A woman should decide what to do with her body.” A 9-month old is occupying her uterus just like a 2-month old is, so why shouldn’t she be allowed to abort in both cases?
Because, while she can do what she wants with her body, the fetus is not a part of her body. She has only the right of eviction. This is the basis of the right to abortion. It’s just that, before viability, there’s no practical difference in kicking the fetus or embryo out and killing it.
We’d have to be fools to saying their exceptions were wrong without having a firm moral foundation for our own exceptions, wouldn’t you think?
There’s a good reason to reject “both sides” arguments. They rarely work.
That’s not actually true. AFAIK, there is never a time when a woman is given the choice of whether to just pre-term deliver a 24 week old. She can abort, but no healthcare provider in their right mind would allow a ‘right of eviction.’ Similarly, the fetuses in abortions are not simply removed and left to fend for themselves (and if they were, I would bet there would be a few more pro-life people as they watched little human-like things quivering their last in a steel tray), they are killed in utero. My guess is that the pro-life people would love if ‘a right to eviction’ is all that it were because it would lead to some wonderful propaganda clips for them.
If it’s her body and she can do what she wants with it, can she inject heroin into it? Refuse to wear a seat belt around it on a public highway? Prostitute it? It would seem like the last three should not only be legal but constitutionally protected under the “It’s my body, I’ll do what I want with it” argument.
This is the correct answer. A woman who engages in vaginal intercourse assumes the risk of pregnancy. Indeed, that’s the very reason animals do that sort of thing on a biological level.