Why should a woman who was the victim of rape or incest have to bear a child?
Abortion for rape and incest victims is a very cynical way to address this issue, and it trivializes the harm that the victim suffered. It is as if someone pats her on the head and says, "Now everything's better. You've had an abortion."
When pregnancy occurs as a result of rape or incest, the baby is indeed the child of the perpetrator. What is often overlooked is that this baby is also the child of the woman. To suggest that inflicting violence on her baby will somehow benefit the mother is cruel to each of them. As a society, we have an obligation to see that every rape or incest victim is offered whatever assistance is needed to put her life back together again.
In recent years, there have been many books, reports, studies, etc., written about this very subject. Some were written by sociologists, some by professional researchers, and others by rape and incest victims. Naturally, this wide range of backgrounds and experiences leads at an equally wide range of suggestions for how to help rape victims cope with the problems they face. However, they almost universally agree what the problems are. They will tell you that these victims feel dirty. They feel helpless, no longer secure in their own homes. Some even experience shame or guilt, as if they were responsible. Often their sense of having been violated fills them with anger and rage toward all men. Many suffer low self-esteem. These are the most common hurdles which experts say rape victims have to overcome. Interestingly, pregnancy is seldom listed.
The reality is, having an abortion at a time when she's not yet over the shock of what's happened to her may actually make it harder to put this episode behind her. There are many examples of women saying that while they will never forget the rape or incest, they have learned to accept and live with it. But among those who had abortions, many say they will never be able to accept the fact that they killed their own baby. Through abortion, these women became not only victims of someone else's violence, but of their own as well. For many, it will be this second act of violence that "re-victimizes" them for the rest of their lives.
On the other hand, you never hear a woman who decided not to have an abortion later say she wised she had. Once she is able to deal with the feelings of shame and guilt, of feeling dirty, the anger, the rage, the feeling of helplessness or low self-esteem, she seldom views the child as another bad thing that happened from the situation, but maybe the only good thing that came out of it. If she keeps the child, that will certainly be the case for her, and if she decides to place the baby for adoption, it will be the case for another family.
Although it is understandable that some rape and incest victims will not see these children as a blessing but a curse, placing the babies for adoption will mean this "curse" will last for a few months. Killing these children could haunt them forever. Regardless of the circumstances, abortion never results in fewer victims but more. So, while the contention that abortion should be allowed for rape and incest victims may be driven by compassion, the reasoning behind it is severely flawed.
Unfortunately, when a sexual predator deprives someone of her right to decide for herself whether to have sex, he takes from her something neither the law, nor society, nor any individual has the power to give back. There is simply no logical basis for believing that allowing a woman to inflict violence upon her own child will lessen the effects of the violence that was done to her or benefit her in any other way.
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Every unborn child is a living human being, and that remains true even when a baby is conceived through the most deplorable of circumstances. Further, if the legal protection afforded unborn children can differ based on the circumstances of their conception, there is absolutely nothing which says this discrimination has to end at birth. If an unborn human being conceived through rape or incest is less valuable than one conceived through a loving act of its parents, that same thing is true about a five-year-old. If a drunk driver runs over and kills a child, are we going to give him a lesser sentence if we find out the child was conceived through rape? If a parent kills their two-year-old and their defense is that the child was conceived through rape or incest, are we going to let them off?The bottom line is, children do not find their right to life in the circumstances of their conception, and it is disgusting that someone would painfully execute a completely innocent baby for a crime that was committed by his or her father.
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If the guiding principle for abortion in rape an incest cases is that the woman shouldn't have to have a child that was fathered by a rapist, consider the following scenarios. A married woman discovers that she is pregnant after being raped by a man of anther race. She wants the baby if it is her husband's but not if it was fathered by the rapist. Should she be allowed to wait until the baby is born so she can see what race it is, and then have it killed if it is not here husband's child? Or what if a woman had an ultrasound, was told her baby was a boy, but learned at birth that it was a girl. Should she be allowed to kill the child because she would have aborted it had she known it was a girl?***
If the argument for abortion in rape or incest cases is that the cause of the pregnancy was beyond the woman's control, imagine that woman who was impregnated through rape has an abortion scheduled but she gives birth in the care on the way to the abortion clinic. The pregnancy is far enough along that the baby might survive. Should she be allowed to legally kill the baby there in the car? After all, the circumstances of its birth were no more within her control than were the circumstances of its conception. If we were willing to let her kill her child on the basis that the pregnancy was beyond her control, why would we take that right away because of a second event which was also beyond her control?11Crutcher, Mark. On Message. Life Dynamics Incorporated, 2005, p 54.
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