A relative of mine says that abortion is acceptable if a woman is raped or the child will have crippling deformities. An abortion clinic in my state is allowing abortions up to (I’m not quite sure) 24 weeks. Opinions?
No.
Think about just what abortion means. It is the destruction of a human life with a human soul. The thing growing in the womb - the zygote, embryo, or fetus - is an unborn child. A human being. This is the ONLY reason I oppose abortion - because the child in the womb is a living human being with a living humans soul. It isn’t about being mean to women (women suffer from abortions constantly such as in forced abortions and gender-selective abortions), and it isn’t about religion (if Pope Francis snapped one day and gave Papal approval for abortions I would still oppose the practice vehemently).
The arguments citing Rape and Disability are especially sickening in my opinion.
If someone claims that it is acceptable for a raped woman to abort a child resulting from rape, they are simultaneously telling every man and woman actually conceived by rape: “You should never have been born. You do not have the right to exist, you are not welcome, and the world would be better off if you never existed.” Whether or not they meant to say this, that’s the message being sent.
A rape victim who aborts a child conceived by rape is worse than her attacker. Filicide is worse than rape, and someone who suffered so much should by all account know better than to inflict suffering onto others.
A lot of people think that helping a rape victim means “being supportive” and “respecting their decisions”. But that is false: often people who suffer such trauma make decisions that should be avoided. Suicide, usage of hard drugs, self-harm, and cultism are all decisions a victim of assault might turn to. Choices anyone who holds the victim’s best interest at heart would oppose and do their best to discourage.
If I knew a rape victim who was impregnated as a result of the rape and intended to get an abortion, I would do my best to talk her out of it. If she went through with it anyway, I would at best feel pity for her (“She made a terrible irreversable mistake while her mental faculties were absent”) and at worst would condemn her (“She murdered her own child in cold blood”).
So yes, a woman who was raped should have to bring the child to term. The child is it’s own living human being; a separate entity, not a copy of the rapist. The only reasons children concieved by rape are so disliked is that society holds onto the false and destructive belief that personality is hereditary. No, that child is not a “Rapist’s Baby”: it is just a baby.
feministsforlife.org/what-about-rape/
The Argument from Crippling Disability makes me angry on a personal level, and that is because it hits close to home. I have high functioning Autism; everything is more difficult for me than for others, and when I was a young child experts (incorrectly) predicted that I would never learn to read. Yet here I am, living a very good life and experiencing many good things of life (because I’m God’s Creation, a reasonable creature).
Saying that a child with down syndrome or malformed limbs would be better off dead is downright insulting and patronizing. Even someone confined to a hospital bed in bouts of agonizing pain can still experience beauty and truth. And his condition might be cured in his lifetime. Don’t tell me that my life isn’t worth living: YOU don’t have the right to decide that.
There is never a good reason for abortion. It is an act of murder, and should be treated as such.
