Abortion Illegal Even in Cases of Rape

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CaptainDan

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Hi there,

I’m a strict anti-abortionist, and I am generally conservative in my politics (for example, I believe in low taxes, spending, etc.). In most cases with the economy, I believe the government should stay out and let the private market run itself.

When it comes to issues of life, however, I do believe it’s the government’s role to protect life, and part of this includes the illegalization of abortion, even in cases of rape.

A friend recently brought this up in a thread at my web site:
Dan's friend:
If I kidnap you, and hook you and some other guy to a machine where he’s using some of your organs to keep him alive, are you obligated to stay hooked up forever? It might be nice of you, but I wouldn’t say you HAVE to…
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…he also said this:
Dan's friend:
And if it’s ok for the government to force you to use your body to keep others alive, then we should all be mandated to give our kidneys and blood and all sorts of ****.
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Now, of course, I still don’t think you’d have the right to kill the person “hooked up” to you, and I’m sure you see the point he’s trying to make about rape. Of course I wouldn’t want the government stealing my organs to donate to other people.

I believe the government should protect the life that is depending on the mother. Here’s my question: At what point does the protection of life start to violate our rights?
 
The point is, we don’t give the death penalty for rape. In particular, why should we levy the death penalty on the child of the rapist?
 
Captain Dan:

The analogy is inappropriate. The child only needs to be “hooked up” to the mother until birth. The mother has other choices after birth if she doesn’t want to continue the mother/child relationship.

Why would it be okay to punish the innocent child for it’s father’s act of violence? Why is it legal to kill a child, but the act of violence that occurred that produced the child is illegal? Just because something is legally allowed does not mean it is a good thing.
 
A rape by force causes a pregnancy which is the start of the most intimate and total natural dependency of one human being on another: motherhood. The force was not God’s will, but the new motherhood is. The mother must care for that child. The mother most certainly must not kill it!

Being forcibly connected to the organs of another human being is not comparable to the God-given life of a new baby human growing in the womb of its mother.
 
If someone taped a 40 pound weight to my abdomen for 9 months and I was later going to get in to a non-lethal but painful car crash with him, would I be justified in killing him? The "hooked up to his organs analogy is not good because the baby isn’t an aggressor, you are comparably more mobile with the baby, and the baby is temporary.

Finally, I like the argument “I’ll walk around with a lot of weight on my abdomen and cut off my leg (with painkiller) if you agree to be ripped limb from limb and then have scissors jammed in to your skull, or burnt to death with saline. I’ll even let you have a bit of painkiller too.” (Yes, I know being pregnant isn’t so simple, but it illustrates the point of why abortion is even worse)
 
Thanks for the responses (and an apology for not posting this in the right forum right away).

I think it’s pretty simple: it shouldn’t be legal to KILL someone, including unborn children, and the government has a right to restrict your freedoms in order to protect life (kind of like how they would restrain your hands if you tried to stab someone).
 
Captain, just wanted to add…there’s a wonderful book written by Randy Alcorn called ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments. More people should read it and learn the truth.
 
JanetF said:
Captain, just wanted to add…there’s a wonderful book written by Randy Alcorn called ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments. More people should read it and learn the truth.
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Thanks Janet, I may check that out.
 
CaptainDan said:
Here’s my question: At what point does the protection of life start to violate our rights?
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Who do you include in “our”?

I think it begins at the moment someone decides to stick a needle in my brain and fill it full of saline, or suck my body parts out of my mother’s womb while I am defenseless and can’t fight back.

That child has the right to live, just as much as you did when you were in your own mother’s womb.

And rape is not a sufficient excuse for murdering a child that never asked to be conceived in the first place. How in the world can we possibly justify killing the innocent child who had nothing to do with the crimes of its father? That is the most ridiculous reasoning I’ve ever heard for abortion.

I know two wonderful and amazing women who were children of rape (they are not related). Both of them are ardent pro-life supporters, both of them have beautiful children and families of their own. Should they have been denied that just because their father committed a crime? They don’t think so.

~Liza
 
I’ve heard similar arguments about a woman being forcibly connected to a person to give them life-support. I think they all fail on a couple levels at least:

Firstly, the analogy lacks one major relevant making property. The female body is naturally developed for carrying, nourishing, and birthing children. In this way, it is wrong to compare it to the parasitic fashion in which the person would be forced to provide use of their organs, which is decidedly unnatural.

Secondly, as has been pointed out already, if the offender required you to be connected in such a way that you would retain much of your mobility and would be able to live a fairly normal life for nine months, after which you would be freed and the other person would live, I think a case could be easily made that it would be morally impermissible not to agree to keep the dependent person alive.

To re-emphasize the first point, saving a person’s life who is terminally ill (which is presumably why they would need the use of another’s organs) is not like nourishing a healthy fetus unto birth. One requires an extra-natural (or unnatural) relationship between nourisher and nourishee and the other is a purely natural relationship between mother and child. Again, this doesn’t mean that it is, in fact, morally acceptable to let the hypothetical dependent die, but simply that it is fundamentally different than the case of pregnancy. Thus, the analogy lacks the necessary relevant-making properties to be properly used as an argument.
 
lizaanne said:
And rape is not a sufficient excuse for murdering a child that never asked to be conceived in the first place. How in the world can we possibly justify killing the innocent child who had nothing to do with the crimes of its father? That is the most ridiculous reasoning I’ve ever heard for abortion.

I know two wonderful and amazing women who were children of rape (they are not related). Both of them are ardent pro-life supporters, both of them have beautiful children and families of their own. Should they have been denied that just because their father committed a crime? They don’t think so.

~Liza
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I’m with you, Liza. The point the other side is trying to make here is that in order for the child to be born, the mother has to be forced to carry it to birth, which means that the government is taking control of her uterus.

By making this point, he’s trying to catch me being inconsistent (because I generally believe in little government intervention), but my point is this:

In order to protect life, it’s reasonable to restrict peoples’ freedoms - that’s why murders are thrown in jail, for example. In order to protect the unborn child from being murdered, it should be illegal to kill it, and the government should be able to enforce that law.
 
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