Abortion alright in cases of rape?

Issue #8 - THE HARD CASES OBJECTION: Does Rape Justify Abortion?

By Scott Klusendorf

How should we treat innocent human beings that remind us of a painful event? That single question clarifies everything.

Whenever possible, I take questions from the audience after my talks. I don't need to guess what the first one will be because it's nearly always the same.

"Okay, say a woman is raped. If she gives birth, the child will remind her of the rape forever! Do you think abortion is wrong in that case?"
Even at the national level, the rape issue seeps into presidential and congressional debates. One member of congress recently stated that if John McCain wins in November, raped women will suffer both legally and emotionally.

Two types of people ask about rape and abortion, the learner and the crusader. The learner is genuinely trying to work through the issue and resolve it rationally. The crusader just wants to make you, the pro-lifer, look bad.

In either case, it's our job to demonstrate wisdom and sensitivity. I begin with the following:

"That's an important question and you are absolutely right: She may indeed suffer painful memories when she looks at the child and it's foolish to think she never will. I don't understand people who say that if she'll just give birth, everything will be okay. That's easy for them to say. They should try looking at it from her perspective before saying that. Even if her attacker is punished to the fullest extent of the law, which he should be, her road to recovery will be tough."

Then, very delicately, I ease into my reply by asking a question:

Me: Given we both agree the child may provoke unpleasant memories, how do you think a civil society should treat innocent human beings that remind us of a painful event? (Pause and let the question sink in.) Is it okay to kill them so we can feel better?

Listener: Well, no, I guess not.

Me: And why is that?

Listener: Because they are human?

Me: That's right. So if the unborn are human beings, how do you think we should treat them when they remind us of something painful?

Listener: Hmmm. I don't know.

Me: Think of it this way. Suppose I have a two-year-old up here with me. His father is a rapist and his mother is on anti-depressant drugs. At least once a day, the sight of the child sends her back into depression. Would it be okay to kill the toddler if doing so makes the mother feel better?

Listener: No

Me: And that's because he's a human being?

Listener: Yes.

That first question, "How should we treat innocent human beings that remind us of a painful event?" , gets to the crux of the issue that must be resolved: What is the unborn? Only after clarifying the primary issue do I make my case:

Me: Here's the point I'm getting at. If the unborn are human, killing them so others can feel better is wrong. Hardship doesn't justify homicide. Admittedly, I don't like the way my answer feels because I know the mother may suffer consequences for doing the right thing. But sometimes the right thing to do isn't the easy thing to do.

Listener: These are hard things to think about.

Me: I agree. Here's one more example that may help. Suppose I'm an American commander in Iraq and my unit is captured by terrorists. My captors inform me that in 10-minutes, they'll begin torturing me and my men to get intelligence information out of us. However, they are willing to make me an offer. If I will help them torture and interrogate my own men, they won't torture and interrogate me. I'll get by with no pain. Can I take that deal? There's no way. I'll suffer evil rather than inflict it. Again, I don't like how the answer feels, but it's the right one. Thankfully, the woman who is raped does not need to suffer alone. Pro-life crisis pregnancy centers are standing by to help get her through this. We should help, too.

What I've said so far usually satisfies the learner. She may still feel uncomfortable thinking about the rape victim suffering for doing good, but she's begun to grasp the moral logic that's in play.

The crusader, on the other hand, will hear none of it. He's out to score debate points. He appeals to the hard case of rape, but his appeal is flawed because it is not entirely truthful.

Here's why. The abortion-choice position he 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.1 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?"

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.

Sadly, some abortion-choice crusaders totally disregard the horror of rape when it's convenient to their argument. Steve Wagner recounts one such example from the University of New Mexico in 2006.3 A pro-life advocate was making her case in front of a jeering crowd. At one point, the crusaders present demanded to know if she had ever been raped. She replied, "Yes." They responded with more jeering. They didn' stop for even a moment. They kept calling her a pawn of the Republican Party.

Pro-life advocates aren't mean when they insist that one human should not be killed to benefit another one. They're simply refocusing the debate on the one question we can't ignore: What is the unborn?

1 Francis Beckwith uses this example in Politically Correct Death: Answering Arguments for Abortion Rights (Baker, 1992) p. 69.

2 Warren Hern, Abortion Practice, pp. 10, 39. Dr. Hern is America's leading abortionist and he writes, "The impression of clinical staff is that all but a few women seek abortions for reasons that can broadly be defined as socioeconomic, and many cite strictly economic reasons" (Abortion Practice, p.10). See also Akinrinola Bankole, Susheela Singh, and Taylor Haas, "Reasons Why Women Have Induced Abortions: Evidence from 27 Countries," International Family Planning Perspectives, Vol. 24, Number 3, September 1998.

3 Steve Wagner relayed this sad story in an email.

Abortion any time if the woman wants it.

Why only with rape cases? So aborting a baby cause it's father is an asshat is ok, but a mother aborting a baby because she completely believes she cannot take care of it properly, that is just wrong?

her body, her baby.

Guess where the choice lies.

Here is an argument that Scott Klusendorf points out from going to the 2010 Friends For Life Camp, these are part of the advanced notes he handed out. All credit to him.

#2: Bodily Autonomy Argument (overview): Does a mother have no more duty to her own child than
she does a total stranger who is unnaturally hooked up to her? In her famous 1971 essay entitled “A Defense of Abortion,” MIT professor Judith Jarvis Thomson bites the bullet:: She concedes for the sake
of argument the humanity of the unborn. However, she contends that no woman should be forced to use
her body to sustain the life of another human being. Just as you have no right to demand use your
neighbor’s kidney should yours fail, the unborn, though human, does not have the right to use the
woman’s body if she wishes to withhold such support.
A. Summary of Thomson’s famous violinist argument: Just as one may withhold support and detach
himself from the violinist (we are asked to assume), so too the mother may withhold support and
detach herself from the child. Abortion is such a detachment.
You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist, a famous
unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has
canvassed all available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have
therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys
can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, ‘Look,
we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still,
they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only
for nine months. By then, he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.’ Is it
morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be nice of you if you did, a great kindness.
But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or still longer? What if the
director of the hospital says, ‘Tough luck, I agree, but you've now got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into
you, for the rest of your life. Because, remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons.
Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right
to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.’ I imagine that you would
regard this as outrageous.
B. Analysis and refutation:
1. Ask, Are the parallels parallel? For Thomson’s argument to work, a woman being forcibly hooked
up to the stranger violinist must parallel (in morally relevant ways) a mother who is hooked up to
her own child. Are there important differences between pregnancy and kidnapping? Yes, many.
(a) Thomson's argument tries to justify abortion as merely the withholding of support. But it is
also something else--the killing of a child through dismemberment, poison or crushing. As
Beckwith points out, "Euphemistically calling abortion the 'withholding of support' makes
about as much sense as calling suffocating someone with a pillow the withdrawing of oxygen.”
(b) Thomson assumes that a mother has no more obligation to her own child then she does a total
stranger (or a burglar). Clearly this is mistaken. What if the mother awoke to find herself
hooked up to her own child instead of the violinist? We may not have the obligation to sustain
strangers who are unnaturally plugged into us, but we do have a duty to sustain our own
offspring, both legally and morally. As Schwarz points out, "The very thing that makes it
possible to say that the person in bed with the violinist has no duty to sustain him; namely, that
he is a stranger unnaturally hooked up to him, is precisely what is absent in the case of the
mother and her child."
(c) Pro-abortion philosopher Mary Anne Warren poses one other objection to Thomson's
analogy: Other than in the case of rape, a woman cannot claim that she is not responsible for
the pregnancy. Hence, she is not like the woman who finds herself plugged into the violinist
against her own will.
www.prolifetraining.com / www.caseforlife.com
2. Present counter examples that challenge bodily autonomy claims:
(a) Dr. Rich Poupard’s “thalidomide” example
(b) Accutane example
(c) Abortion-choice blogger “Paul W”
(d) Melissa Ann Rowland
(e) Amputee (voluntary)
C. Eileen McDonagh: Abortion is self-defense. Just as a woman has a right to use deadly force against a
rapist who invades her body without consent, so she may use deadly force against a fetus who invades
her body without consent. For McDonagh, consent is everything! That is, just because a woman
consents to sex does not mean she consents to pregnancy.
1. Response to McDonagh:
(a) Why should anyone think that a rapist has the same relationship to the mother’s body as does
her own child?
(b) Pregnancy is not violent assault. It changes the mother’s body in ways it was designed to
handle.
(c) McDonagh is mistaken about the nature of consent and pregnancy. Can I consent to a
winning lotto ticket? A successful surgery? We consent to initial behaviors, not outcomes.
Fathers must pay child support to children they never consented to conceive.
D. Key problem for McDonagh: Her parallels fare no better than Thomson’s.
E. David Boonin’s Defense of Thomson: We must distinguish between being responsible for someone’s
neediness and being responsible for the fact they exist, with the result that they are needy.
1. Problems with Boonin’s argument:
(a) Patrick Lee’s “speeding boat” example
(b) Rich Poupard’s “mother in cabin” example: If a mother is in a secluded cabin and gives birth
to a child she consented to conceive, but not sustain, can she leave it to starve to death (refuse
to use her body to breast feed it) on grounds that although she is responsible for the child’s
existence, she is not responsible for its neediness?
2. Review of why bodily autonomy arguments in general fail to persuade:
(a) Abortion is not merely the withholding of support, but the direct killing of a child. If the only
way I can withhold support is to kill another person, I may not do it.
(b) We may not have the obligation to sustain strangers who are unnaturally hooked up to us, but
we clearly do have a duty to sustain our own offspring.
(c) Even if the child is an intruder, that only justifies removing her from the woman's body, not
killing her. If the only way I can remove an intruder from my home is to kill him by throwing
him off a cliff, I may not do it.
(d) It is unfair for Thomson and McDonagh to portray pregnancy as a nine-month prison bed.
Many women enjoy the experience.
(e) We clearly do have certain moral obligations to others even if we do not voluntarily assume
them. Since Thomson assumes that the unborn child is human, why should the parent's duty to
care for the child differ before birth?

Pro choice!

Pro choice every time..

Pro- choice:

ice cream flavor,
what to wear,
college major.

anti- choice:

human slavery,
holocaust,
abortion.

Like Planned Parenthood, these people aren't giving women the information about other choices and the full details about what is going on.]

One day we'll look back and laugh that this was ever an issue we took seriously, along with I hope gay rights (still waiting on that one).

Honestly, if this isn't a church issue getting in the way of common sense I don't know what is.

I can't think of many things worse than being the child of a parent who doesn't want you, never wanted you and thinks you ruined their lives.

Pro choice is the only way to go on this, and if you aren't pro choice all that means is you've never slept with a stripper in Vegas. That's a phone call no one wants 9 months later.

"guess who is coming to dinner, little Candy Junior!

"NOT IF MY $400 HAS ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT!"

In all seriousness though, this is a no brainer usually brought up by teenagers who have zero life experience and just want a cause to fight against.

Kevin, this is one of the world's greatest injustices and nothing that should be "lightly taken" as such.

Take a look at these photos:
http://www.prolifetraining.com/abortionpics.asp#self

Now please tell me that wrong is wrong no matter what. The circumstances and conditions a woman is put in should not affect the seriousness of the wrong.

Pretend that I have a two-year old in front of me. Would I be able to kill him because his mother saw her rapist's face in her child's face?

of course not, but

Can we, for instance, kill toddlers who remind us of painful events? Again, my claim here is really quite modest. If the unborn are members of the human family, like toddlers, we should not kill them to make someone else feel better.

It is better to suffer evil rather than inflict it. 2 Peter Kreeft, The Unaborted Socrates (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1983)

I agree that we should provide compassionate care for the victim and it should be the best care possible. That’s not at issue here. It’s your proposed solution I’m struggling to understand. Tell me, how should a civil society treat innocent human beings that remind us of a painful event? Is it okay to kill them so we can feel better? Can we, for example, kill a toddler who reminds her mother of a rape? (Scott Klusendorf: Toddler Tactics)

Adoption is always an option, hundreds of thousands of people in the world are waiting, but there is a shortage of babies.

I would love to debate with you, do you have any specific reason why you think so strongly pro-choice is the only way to go? Because it is the mother's body and choice? Because the fetus isn't human? Because abortion isn't murder?

Mary Ann Glendon sums things up nicely: Pro-lifers are not imposing their views on anyone. They are proposing them in hopes their fellow citizens will adopt them. That’s called democracy.

It isn't all just religion or science. It is metaphysics.

Those photo's are harsh, but I've seen worse in video form, doesn't change my view that it's the woman's right.

It's her body
the baby is growing from her body, inside her body.
It's a life long commitment that needs serious consideration (giving up your baby for adoption is failing).

If a mother chose to get pregnant, and then changed her mind and wanted rid of it, then you might have a case for being pro life on the grounds of her being irresponsible. But with rape, someone being forced to have sex, and then being forced to give birth to a baby they don't want, can't or won't look after and if they know how crap the system is, refuse to put a newborn into the social care system...if, with all that they decide it's better for the baby never to be born.

yeah, I'm pro life.

PS, there is not a shortage of babies, don't be absurd. Do you know how overpopulated this world is? We don't need anymore new people, the club is full. We're pissing away the natural resources of this planet like warm beer at a frat party and you are whining about women who decide another life on this planet might not be a good idea.

74 million new people land on this planet every year. Don't tell me there is a shortage of babies. there are too many, we should be enforcing sodomy laws or giving abortions for free.

Rape is a very brutal experience. i came near to that experience and it scarred me for the rest of mi life. I'm very much against abortion but if that woman decides to get an abortion than i wouldnt say otherwise because that is a very painful memory. Not only that if the mother somehow told the child of how he/she came 2 be here wat might the child think and feel of its own existence?

Me, mi boyfriend and mi sister and her boyfriend had talked about abortions. We feel that we are all too young to have babies. we're only between 17-19. The guys thought that if a mistake happened, one time wouldn't matter. Mi 18 y.o. sister was stuck in the middle. and i said that even though i am 18 y.o. and it would be a mistake i wont kill something thats growing inside of me. its just really immoral (to me). the guys think them unborn so they are not "technically" alive. but i argue that i have very strong beliefs and im willingly to take responsibility for mi irresponsible acts. i feel that apart of me would also being dying for what im letting happen. what are your views everyone...?

You've got a really simplistic view there bob, that murder is murder and abortion is the same as a fully formed adult killing another fully formed adult.

It's not even in the same ball park. Sure, technically it is the ending of a life, but no one has an abortion because they want to kill a baby, in the same way a murderer wants to end someones life.

People have abortions for other reasons, the end result might still be the death of a life, but the motivation and intention is very important.

I always feel like something is missing when people say...her body, her choice....she carries a unique and separate body inside of her, one that is innocent of all wrong. Why is this the time that it is ok for someone to murder another human being?
If these arguments were applied to anyone else would they be reasonable...no! but to the most innocent of all they are?

It's not that it's ok to murder another human being, because it never is. What people mean when they say that it's her body, her choice is that she alone, (since she is the one pregnant) should be the one making the final decision on whether she should give birth to the baby or not. She shouldn't have any harassment from her family, friends, or society based on the decision she chooses, whether it be pro-life or whether she chooses abortion (but sadly, the harassment happens all the time). Being though regular pregnancy is tough enough with all the emotional and physical pain, let alone pregnancy as a result of rape.

I see what u mean about the confusion. I hope I helped clear the confusion a little at least. :)

On a different subject--I have to also agree with what Illuminatix RTVW is saying. ^ The discussion is kind of a one way street (especially in the beginning). I'm just saying that in general, if a person doesn't want to be at least a little open to other peoples' views then he or she shouldn't start the discussion at all. That's just my opinion.

One question you have to ask yourself is why do the vast majority of scientists and politicians support abortion before the stage it has developed something resembling a brain. the simple answer i that before this stage it might be living tissue but it is not alive in its own right. a tumor is composed of living human tissue yet we don't have religious fanatics supporting its right to life do we. so to until the embryo has reached a certain stage of development it is just an extension of the mothers body, without any brain functions at all it is ridiculous to call it alive in its own right even if it is composed of living tissue.

and when you come down to it , 95% of the people against abortions are religious fanatics against it for religious reasons. and i think we can all agree that history has firmly taught us that state and religion should be firmly separated, otherwise the state can commit every evil in the name of god. think of the Salem witch trials for one of the many examples from history. lol , come to think of it i don't even need to go so far back for an example, as the suicide bombers from the last couple of years have taught us the highly religious shouldn't be trusted to make sane, logical decisions

I dont see how any woman can have an abortion.. its just wrong.. your killing an a baby who didnt do anything wrong.. murder is murder even if its your body..

im a teenage mom and i never thought about having an abortion its just so wrong to kill a baby when they didnt do nothing to deserve it.. im pregant with my second one and i would never think about killing her at all..

sure i been though alot of hard times and wish i would of wated when i was older but its still not right to have an abortion no matter how you got pegant its just wrong..
if you were the baby would you of wanted to have you mother kill you because of some reason like she was rapped or wasnt ready for a baby.. i bet not so how could you do that to a poor little human when they dont deserve it

Rubberlips, seriously you need to learn to read and comprehend. why did you think i said 95% not 100%? even if every single last native American is against abortion for non religious reasons( and that is debatable but doesn't matter anyway) then that still only equals a very small percent of the people against abortions. the greatest majority by far against abortions are religious, the bible is even firmly against any form of contraception. so therefore what i said holds up perfectly fine as i didn't say 95% of native Americans are against abortion for religious reasons.

secondly believing very strongly in a religion and its dogma does make you a fanatic. it is the very definition of the word fanatic . and you say there would be hell to pay if pro life activists called pro choice heathens. lol i mean seriously , I've heard pro life calling them every name under the sun, heathen is actually quite mild for some of the names pro choice supporters have been called by pro life

and of course abortions main use is as birth control . that's like saying a knifes main use is to cut something . and no it is not pathetic. firstly because other forms of birth control aren't 100% affective. i have twice had a condom break on me and we had to go the next morning for the morning after pill. which is technically no different to an abortion. first time it happened we were both 16, now how is it pathetic that we understood that we where both to immature for having a child. that if we did have it we would resent it. and also we couldn't support it financially or give it the love and care it would deserve. it would have been pathetic for us to have that child

and secondly I'm gonna let you into a big secret here.
" we have a serious over population problem on this planet"
if 70% of all woman who fell pregnant over the next 1000 years decided to have an abortion then this world would end up a better place for it. so i will tell you what is really pathetic. it is the selfish people who care about nothing more than themselves bringing even more children into an already over populated world. it is the people who believe in religions that prohibit abortion as a form of birth control so there practitioners end up with children they didn't want in a world that would be better off without them. now i have seen alot of arguments that if people are irresponsible with safe sex they should then have to deal with the consequences, instead of simply getting rid of it. but there are 2 main problems with this. firstly no form of contraceptive is completely effective. and secondly it isn't only there problem it is the whole worlds. in the not to distant future with a population of over 30 billion people we will have children looking over a ruined world with nearly all the forests cut down, no clean water or food and the oceans poisoned beyond belief. and they will then curse us for being so selfish and short sighted in not making abortions mandatory for any woman who is selfish and stupid enough to keep on getting pregnant after her first child

And XxbabiigirlxX i have already argued why an embryo isn't a separate living essence until it has developed brain functions so i will take a different tack here.

alot of pro life activists give the impression that aborting a pregnancy is completely unnatural . but in fact this isn't the case. there are many different reasons why a woman's body will naturally abort a pregnancy. first there is the situation where it notices the developing embryo is deformed in the first stages. if this is the case then most the time the pregnancy will be aborted. also high amounts of stress or low nutritious food also often causes a pregnancy to be aborted. as the body decides it isn't viable to bring a new child into this sort of situation. an interesting study i read about had to do with the time proceeding 9/11, in the months after 9/11 the rate of miscarriages increased by 30%. but the interesting part is that this increase was all male embryos. the main reason for this was that in times of disaster it is more viable to have lots of females and a few males because this allows the population to bounce back quicker. so obviously here there bodies decided that male children weren't the best idea so it naturally aborted them. now isn't it interesting to notice that aborting an embryo is an automatic function built into our bodies keyed by certain events in the world around us. it is obviously an important survival technique or it wouldn't have been passed down in our genes. but the problem with this is it can only react to things happening now. not things that will happen in the future. but then we are supposedly intelligent so we should be able to react to stuff we can notice is starting to happen. ie the gross overpopulation of the world. we can see already that we have to many people for this world to support properly and that we need to drastically cut down our population to not completely mess this world up. and so then what are we doing about this problem? absolutely nothing. i mean look at you babiigirl. your profile says your 18 and you have 2 kids already. how many are you gonna have by the time you reach menopause? 4 ? 5?or maybe even 6? it is because of people like you that this world is gonna be 2 destroyed to support life as we know it. but then i guess this doesn't bother you at all as it wont be your problem. it might affect your great great great great great grand-kids but not you so who cares. right? and then you have the cheek to have a go at people who have abortions. atleast they are not bringing more kids into a world that is better off without them

Yea im still young and stuff but im doine having kids.. im not going to have anymore than that..
and i do care about how this world is goin to end up for my kids and my kids kids.. but doesnt mean that its okay to a=have abortions.. its just wrong

Our body aborts babies cause it knows its not healthy or whatever the case is but it doesnt give us the right to do it our selfs.. what if we all decided to have abortions and the older people start dieing but no ones having anymore kids us humans whould die off.. were made to have kids.. yea its not all we do but if it wasnt meant for us too then we wouldnt be able to.. yea i think people who have over 4 kids are crazy and if they want more then they should adopt kids who dont have a family.. i myslef will do that if my husband and i decide we want more kids we will adopt them.. im making sure i wont have anymore than the ones i have already.. and you make it seem as if having kids is a bad thing when its not.. every thought about have it happens and how the grow.. its amazing.. i kinda see your point but i still dont think its right for girls to have abortions unless theres a health reason not cause they got rapped or just dont want it.. if you dont want kids dont have sex.. its that simple!!

XxBabii GirlxX

"i kinda see your point but i still dont think its right for girls to have abortions unless theres a health reason not cause they got rapped or just dont want it.. if you dont want kids dont have sex.. its that simple!!"

I see what you mean by it's not right to have an abortion if they don't want it. If they can't take care of a child or don't want to take care of a child, they shouldn't have had sex in the first place! But, rape is completely different!!!! In this case, the victim (most likely the girl) was FORCED WITHOUT CHOICE into sex. And rape is a horrific experience. And actually, I maybe alone on this, but yeah, I would have wished my mom got an abortion if I was the result of rape. I wouldn't want to be my mother's reminder of that horrific event, and the horrible rapist. Think about it, I would, in theory, be the physical image of the rapist, since his own DNA would be inside of me. If I knew my mother was raped and I was the result of it, I wouldn't be able to even look at myself in the mirror again. The shame would be unbearable. And the thought that the only reason why I am here is because my mother was raped is an extremely terrible thought. I would think that since I was only the result of a rape, that I was not wanted at all. And that is extremely depressing for any child or mother to have to go through.

Xxbabbigirlxx - the impression i got is that your 2 kids weren't exactly planned in the first place. i mean how old where you when you had your first one, 16? and if they weren't planned then how are you gonna completely insure you don't accidentally fall pregnant again? are you and your husband gonna get yourselves fixed so you cant? and that isn't even 100% effective

but anyway you say people are crazy for having more than 4 children , but i think they are crazy to have more than 1 or 2. the reason i say this is simple. if the male and female population of the worlds is roughly equal, and every female had 2 children who go on to in turn have 2 children and so on. then the population of the world would equalize. but the problem is we already have more people than this world can comfortably support. if we could get the world population down from around 7billion to 1 or less then maybe we wouldn't destroy the world faster than it can recover . maybe we could do something about poverty and famine and people living in lands that can no longer support them.

and you say as we were made to have children it is therefore natural and right to do so. yes that is right but have you seen what NATURALLY happens to any species that's birth rate far outstrips its death rate. it starts to grow exponentially until it has complete stripped its environment of all its resources and destroyed the very land it needs to live on, then they naturally nearly all die in droves. and the main problem with this is that it doesn't only affect them but hundreds of other species that require the same resources 2. you should read up about locust swarms to understand just what we are doing but on a far wider scale. so excuse me for not being a fan of the natural order of things.
but then we are human, we should be more intelligent than any other animal ,intelligent enough to see the eventual consequences of our actions and therefore unnaturally lower our population. we should but i guess we aren't, it seems all that our intelligence has given us is the power to live far longer and breed far more to make the eventual collapse far worse. and then funny enough but you have large religions against any solution to the problem, take the Catholics. not only are they against abortion but any form of birth control 2 . it is quite common for catholic families to have over half a dozen children. and this isn't the only large religion against it

and you say your against abortion unless its for health reasons, well i guess the health of the entire human race and world doesn't count for you then. because when you get down to it every single one of the millions of abortions every year is 1 less person to help us destroy the world faster. so as far as i am concerned we should praise every woman who has an abortion for whatever reason not revile them

And rubberlips why the hell would i be talking about America specifically. i was born in Zimbabwe, i moved to south Africa and now i live in the UK. I'm not really interested in America . so i think your the one who is ignorant of the subject, because over 40% of the worlds population is split between china and India. and both these countries have very liberal abortion laws and the right to have a abortion is supported by the majority. then take a look at the majority of non-Arab Asian countries and again you will find that pro choice is supported, and again look at most the European countries that aren't largely religious and you will again find the same thing. 18 out of 27 European countries allow abortion on request and the ones where it isn't is like Ireland , Poland or spain, and these are the largely religious countries

now lets look at the countries that are against abortion, firstly you have the largely Muslim ones, Pakistan, Iraq etc etc. they are all against abortion for religious reasons. every largely catholic country like Ireland is against abortion. most African countries are against abortion yes, but you obviously have no clue that most African countries are largely christian or Muslim.

so you are wrong on both points, a) the large majority of the world are not against abortion b) you will find nearly every country against it is one where one religion like Christianity or Islam dominates.

and i don't care just what god they believe in, whether its the christian beard in the sky or a giant purple stick with the head of a fish. if they believe in it completely then they are fanatics, and if they are against abortion because of said god ,even if he is a giant purple stick with fish's head ,then they are against it for religious reasons

and as for your paragraph beginning "again in case you didn't grasp it, just because the brain ........"
while that may be true upon a technicality it is in reality utter BS. lets say i cut your finger off ,by your definition i have then murdered you. or how about a cancer. do you support said cancers right to life because killing it would be murder?
or how about that human ear they grew on the back of a rat. does that ear have the same right to life as a complete working human being? no of course not, and why, because though it may be composed of living tissue it is not alive in its own right. and why is that? because it lacks the central consciousness developed by having a working brain. lets take a hypothetical example. lets say a baby is born completely and irreversibly brain dead. should we then hook said baby upto a life support machine and keep it alive for the next few decades because it is a living human being and letting its body die would be murder, i am sure even you can see how ridiculous that would be. so it isn't hard to see how a working brain is the difference between simply a collection of living tissue and actual life itself. and an embryo doesn't develop anything resembling a working brain until quite late into the pregnancy .so it is not murder getting rid of it before that stage anymore than if i get my appendix removed.

and as for your last 2 paragraphs i can only surmise you didn't read anything but the first 2 sentences of what i had to say. as i gave a few of the many examples where a humans body would naturally destroy or abort a fetus. how can it be unnatural if it is something which the human body does naturally. all you have done is taken the first 2 sentences of what i said out of context, why don't you go and read what i said again and then argue to me why the cases i gave are unnatural?

Rubberlips,
For one thing, we can both agree that the vast majority of rape victims are female.
I don't seem to understand what u are trying to say.
(an example) Are you saying that if I got raped and I had a child as a result of that rape, all I would need to do to get over that whole rape incident is to get out of my head the obvious fact that the father of my child is a rapist!!!??? I really don't think it works that way. A lot of rape victims both men and women alike have mental trauma from that incident and sometimes have to spend the rest of their lives getting therapy whether it be professionally or constant comfort from friends and family. The point is is that rape is a traumatic experience and it doesn't just go away (and I don't even have to experience it to know that). The worst negative in this case can never be the best positive. Sure after a while, the victim can start to forget and start loving the way they live again. But for a rape victim, their life will never truly be the same again.

^Easy for you to say..have you ever been raped, then left with the consequences..??

^^You are talking about a different consequence..so, no, sorry you're not qualified...

And if your sister had become pregnant, you would no doubt expect her to carry the child to term and everybody would be better off for it......!

Rubberlips i never once said it was only a few people against abortions. and of course most of the opposition against abortion is religious. why the hell else is abortion only really banned in highly religious countries. while in more moderate countries it is legal? and also how many times have you read of groups of atheists picketing abortion clinics, or sending the workers there death threats. or even blowing them up and killing people who work at them? no every time i have ever heard of that it has been Christians doing that sort of thing . and when you come down to it even most atheists who would never get an abortion them self, still support another woman's right to choose for herself. if you don't believe me go and look up on the web what most atheists have to say about there view on abortion, then go compare that to what most Christians have to say about their view on abortions. . atheists are mostly pro choice while it is mostly the damned theists out there who insist on making everyone else live by there own religious views.

and seriously here , but if you cant see the affects of over population you are a blind fool. let me give you some facts.

world population by date.
1 billion in 1804
2 billion in 1927 (123 years later)
3 billion in 1960 (33 years later)
4 billion in 1974 ( 14 years later)
5 billion in 1987 (13 years later)
6 billion in 1999 ( 12 years later)

now tell me again that "because as many that are born, there are as many that die"
it is estimated that we now have 134 million births each year and only 57 million deaths, also the best estimates place the number of abortions each year at 40-50 million. so you can see abortion alone is taking a rather sizable chunk off the number of humans born each year to further mess up this world.

and are you also 2 blind to see just what we have been doing to this world over the last few hundred years, how many species have we driving to the brink of extinction or beyond because we have turned there habitat into a concrete jungle, how many thousand of acres of rain forest have we cut down to farm there instead. how much of the very air we all breath have we polluted by burning coal, and wood and oil to power our industries and motor vehicles. just how much have we polluted the very water we drink and the worlds oceans?
but then if we were to cut the world population down to 5 or 10 % of what it is now we wouldn't be using so much of the worlds resources as we do now and also we wouldn't be destroying the world faster than it could recuperate. so in all honesty you must really be a blind idiot to not see that the world is grossly overpopulated at the moment and that the problem is only getting worse as our population grows exponentially.

Yea your right my first kid was not planned at all but i did want my second on and she came.. just cause babies arent planned doesnt mean anything at all..

and yes i will be makin sure i cant have anymore kids.. i know its not 100% save but its better then not doing it at all..

and i have a close friend who was rapped by a friend and kept the baby and she says it helped her get over what happened and she would change anything cause if that did happen she wouldn have her lil girl with her and she means the world to her now..
i know thats not how ever girl who has been rapped is going to feel.. but not all of them want to get an abortion either..

Like I said in the previous thread... you can't make a 100% ethical choice in these matters. Bringing a life into this world is a huge responsiblity, if you bring a child into this world you are responsible for giving the child it's emotional and physical rights... even if it's by adoption, but you can never be sure with adoption. There are two ethical issues here: killing an unborn child and ensuring a childs rights. You can't bring a child into this world unloved and neglected... to me that is a bigger crime than having an abortion.

I'm completely against abortion but if it comes to rape then I think it should be ok...because if not the person would have to remember that everyday but not because the child is human and no matter what when a mother caries her baby for so long she will love it because it is her baby...I read in seventeen magazine about a girl who was raped and got pregnant and kept it and she loved the baby and that is what she was thankful for yeah she would remember that she was raped. It all depends on the person some people it may not affect as much as others but at a time like that I believe that whatever feels right to the person...if she feels to keep it then keep it and if she doesn't well she had a reason not to and not to just kill a innocent baby.

^ True... it does depend on the person, and that's what we're trying to say... not pushing anyone into having an abortion, nor are we saying that it is the better choice... because it isn't, in any case.
Still I think ethically it's hard to make a choice, I know what you're trying to say rubberlips; but you can't be sure... many people out there have kids and throw them somewhere, they get moved from orphanage to orphanage and from foster home to foster home, their lives are very hard and sometimes they wish they were never born... life without parents is hard, and it is a childs right to have parents... true that the child might have parents and might be loved, but it's not 100% sure... children are people and bringing them into the world is not a game...

I agree with you dark secrets

I think abortion is okay if raped but.. I mean I think the girl should go through the pregnacy and see how she feels after having it and then she can decide then..if she wants to give it up for adoption..