"[M}any pro-abortionists are quick to bring up dire and extraordinary circumstances in order to divert our sympathies from the unborn child to the expectant mother. The most common of these circumstances are pregnancies resulting from sexual assault and ones that directly threaten the life of the mother. These situations need to be taken seriously, but are comparatively rare justifications for the procedure, which is performed more than 90,000 times in Canada every year. This argument...has been employed to justify all abortions, most of which are actually performed as a form of birth control. Anyone should be able to see through such casuistry, which tries to establish a rule based on exceptional cases."
Secular Humanist, Jackson Doughart Link
Secular Humanist, Jackson Doughart Link
In examining the question of whether rape is justified in an instance of rape, I came across this email in today's Townhall that columnist Mike Adams recently received from one of his readers...
"I know you always get lambasted by the intolerant left. It means you're doing what's right. Anyway I wanted to send you this message, because I appreciate all your efforts. Almost 30 years ago, when I was 19 I was raped. I learned a month later that I was pregnant as a result. Everyone urged me to abort, but what struck me at the time was that that baby was as much a victim of the rape as I was. And it didn't deserve to be punished for it. I decided to carry the pregnancy to term, and place the baby up for adoption. In 1982, that baby was born and he was given to a wonderful Christian family, and I know that he has been a joy to them. I lost nothing by carrying that pregnancy to term. It didn't hurt me, or cause me to miss out on anything. There is nothing that can't be postponed to preserve an innocent life."
So we can see that delivering the child to term apparently did no harm to this lady. Scott Klusendorf sometimes gets the rape exception question when speaking on abortion and he describes how he deals with it...
"The abortion-choice position [that a pro-abortion 'crusader] defends is not that abortion should be legal only when a woman is raped, but that abortion is a fundamental right she can exercise for any reason she wants during all nine months of pregnancy.
Instead of defending this position with facts and arguments, he disguises it with an emotional appeal to rape. But this will not make his case. The argument from rape, if successful at all, would only justify abortion in cases of sexual assault, not for any reason the woman deems fit. In fact, arguing for abortion-on-demand from the hard case of rape is like trying to argue for the elimination of all traffic laws because a person might have to break one rushing a loved one to the hospital. Proving an exception does not prove a rule.
To expose his smokescreen, I ask a question: “Okay, I'm going to grant for the sake of discussion that we keep abortion legal in cases of rape. Will you join me in supporting legal restrictions on abortions done for socioeconomic reasons which, as studies on your side of the issue show, make up the overwhelming percentage of abortions?”2
The answer is almost always no, to which I reply, “Then why did you bring rape up except to mislead us into thinking you support abortion only in the hard cases?”
Again, if abortion-choice crusader thinks that abortion should be a legal choice for all nine months of pregnancy for any reason whatsoever, including sex-selection and convenience, he should defend that view directly with facts and arguments. Exploiting the tragedy of rape victims is intellectually dishonest."
Instead of defending this position with facts and arguments, he disguises it with an emotional appeal to rape. But this will not make his case. The argument from rape, if successful at all, would only justify abortion in cases of sexual assault, not for any reason the woman deems fit. In fact, arguing for abortion-on-demand from the hard case of rape is like trying to argue for the elimination of all traffic laws because a person might have to break one rushing a loved one to the hospital. Proving an exception does not prove a rule.
To expose his smokescreen, I ask a question: “Okay, I'm going to grant for the sake of discussion that we keep abortion legal in cases of rape. Will you join me in supporting legal restrictions on abortions done for socioeconomic reasons which, as studies on your side of the issue show, make up the overwhelming percentage of abortions?”2
The answer is almost always no, to which I reply, “Then why did you bring rape up except to mislead us into thinking you support abortion only in the hard cases?”
Again, if abortion-choice crusader thinks that abortion should be a legal choice for all nine months of pregnancy for any reason whatsoever, including sex-selection and convenience, he should defend that view directly with facts and arguments. Exploiting the tragedy of rape victims is intellectually dishonest."
I hope I've provided you with a little food for thought today. Unfortunately, I've tried Klusendorf's method of argumentation in public discussion forums several times recently and I have always met similar results. If, for the sake of argument, I am willing to set aside the so-called 'hard cases' and I try to get the person I am communicating with to look seperately at the issue that the overwhelming amount of abortions are committed NOT out of an instance of rape, they don't want to talk about it. They just insist that I'm trying to take away a woman's 'choice' on the matter an thust the vast chasm between the pro-abortion/pro-life camps remains and little if any productive talks can take place.
What are your thoughts on the matter? Feel free to leave your comment on this topic below in the combox.
4 comments:
Abortion is killing an innocent victim of the crime.
By the way, it's my understanding that because of the trauma of rape, there are very few conceptions because of it.
I believe that there should be exceptions to every rule... and since this one violates MY conception of the word conception... I'm still FOR a rape exception. There is no willing desire to "conceive" in a woman's involvement in a rape.
I wonder if there's any statistics as to how often preganancy occurs through rape?
I would just pont out that one rape victim's experience isn't representative of all rape victim's experiences.
The violence of the crime varies as does the psychological trauma and the imprint it leaves on the woman or man who was raped.
But men who are raped don't have the added trauma of having to bring a life into the world and then care for it or find someone who will.
That shouldn't ever have to be the rape victim's burden to deal with because the bottom line is the rape should have never happened.
It's immoral to say now it's your responsibility to find a family for this bastard growing inside you. If the mother, however, chooses to bring the bastard to term and give birth and give it up for adoption--then that is her choice.
It's about respecting her choice whether she chooses to give birth or have an abortion.
But unless we are the victim in the scenario, we have no right to dictate how she responds to the trauma that affected her (not us).
Post a Comment