Objection #9: Abortion Should Be Permissible in Cases of Rape (or Incest)
First,
Planned Parenthood’s Guttmacher Institute reports that abortions due to
rape or incest account for approximately 1 percent of all abortions.[9]
Other reports indicate the number to be even lower, less than one tenth
of one percent. But assuming the higher number is correct, even if we
grant that abortion is permitted in these cases this does nothing to
justify abortion on demand in the remaining 99 percent. This is
important to remember: pro-abortion choice advocates are usually arguing
for abortion on demand, not merely in cases of rape or incest. So why
appeal to the hard cases? Rape and incest alone do not justify abortion
on demand. As Francis Beckwith notes,
To
argue for abortion on demand from the hard cases of rape and incest is
like trying to argue for the elimination of traffic laws from the fact
that one might have to violate some of them in rare circumstances, such
as when one’s spouse or child needs to be rushed to the hospital.[10]
In
other words, proving an exception doesn’t prove a rule. When the hard
cases of rape and incest are raised there is an important question to
ask, which Scott Klusendorf words this way:
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 that, as
studies on your side of the issue show, make up the overwhelming
percentage of abortions?[11]
If
the defender of abortion answers “Yes” to this question then you have
won an ally in opposing abortion in 99 percent of cases. But if they
answer “No” (and this is the important part) then the abortion advocate
is being disingenuous and resorting to emotional appeals. How so?
Because if they refuse to oppose abortion on demand in the majority of
cases it shows that their appeals to rape and incest were superfluous.
There is obviously another reason they support abortion. At this point
we can inquire,
Then why did you bring up rape except to mislead us into thinking that you support abortion only in the hard cases?[12]
Here’s
the point: raising the issue of rape or incest is often an appeal to
emotion made for its rhetorical value and to make pro-lifers look bad.
This is fallacious, as well as intellectually dishonest. Even more, it
is demeaning and cruel to those women who have regrettably experienced
the morally repugnant act of rape because it attempts to exploit their
tragedy for selfish and dishonest reasons.
Second, this objection begs the question by assuming the unborn is not fully human and can be exposed with a simple question: “Are we justified in killing a newborn baby who was conceived through rape or incest, even if that newborn causes the mother emotional pain and duress?” Someone may object, “That’s different. The newborn is a human being.” But that’s the issue, isn’t it? If the unborn is a human being then she cannot be killed because of how she was conceived anymore than the newborn. So the question is not really about rape or incest but rather “What is the unborn?” (See objections #1 and #2 above regarding the question “What is the unborn?”)
Third, because the unborn is a human being we must acknowledge there is not just one victim of rape but two. The unborn had no control over how she was conceived and is just as much a victim as the mother. But this raises the question, “Why should the unborn entity be killed because her father was a rapist?” Is this just? Does a child lose its right to life because its father was a sexual predator? Is a human being somehow less human because of how it was conceived? Should the mother be allowed to kill the child for the crime of the father? Certainly not. The violence of abortion doesn’t solve the violence of rape.
Second, this objection begs the question by assuming the unborn is not fully human and can be exposed with a simple question: “Are we justified in killing a newborn baby who was conceived through rape or incest, even if that newborn causes the mother emotional pain and duress?” Someone may object, “That’s different. The newborn is a human being.” But that’s the issue, isn’t it? If the unborn is a human being then she cannot be killed because of how she was conceived anymore than the newborn. So the question is not really about rape or incest but rather “What is the unborn?” (See objections #1 and #2 above regarding the question “What is the unborn?”)
Third, because the unborn is a human being we must acknowledge there is not just one victim of rape but two. The unborn had no control over how she was conceived and is just as much a victim as the mother. But this raises the question, “Why should the unborn entity be killed because her father was a rapist?” Is this just? Does a child lose its right to life because its father was a sexual predator? Is a human being somehow less human because of how it was conceived? Should the mother be allowed to kill the child for the crime of the father? Certainly not. The violence of abortion doesn’t solve the violence of rape.
Hold
on a minute. Isn’t all of this extremely uncompassionate? Isn’t it
cruel to force a mother to carry her unborn against her will, especially
given the horrifying and traumatic experience surrounding a conception
through rape? Do pro-lifers lack compassion? Francis Beckwith responds,
Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the rapist who has already forced
this woman to carry her child, not the pro-lifer. The pro-life advocate
merely wants to prevent another innocent human being (the unborn
entity) from being a victim of another violent and morally reprehensible
act, abortion, for two wrongs do not make a right. What makes abortion
evil is the same thing that makes rape evil: an innocent human person is
brutally violated and dehumanized. Unwillingness to endorse unjustified
homicide is no lack of compassion.[13]
No
one is saying this would be an easy decision for the mother. Victims of
rape need to be cared for by family, friends, and their church. While
carrying a child conceived through rape may be burdensome and
emotionally stressful, adoption is always
a better alternative to abortion. Many women have made this choice. The
question should not be “What is my right?” but rather “What would a
virtuous person do in this circumstance?”
Objection #10: I’m Personally Opposed to Abortion but I Think Women Should be Able to Choose
This
is a stance commonly heard repeated amongst politicians, sometimes
referred to as the “modified” pro-choice position. It sounds politically
correct and is attractive to many, but the position is ultimately
flawed.
A
good question to ask someone who adopts this view is, “Why do you
personally oppose abortion?” You would be surprised to hear how many
respond by saying, “Because abortion kills a baby, but that is my own
personal view.” Opposing abortion for this reason makes sense. After
all, if abortion doesn’t kill an innocent human being, why would you oppose it?
On the other hand, if abortion does
kill a human being, why would you support a woman’s right to do that?
Upon reflection this position is strange indeed. The problem can be
exposed by asking a follow-up question: “Let me see if I understand. You
think abortion kills a human baby, and you believe women should have
the right to do that?” Of course, when you word it this way, the
“modified” pro-choice position doesn’t seem so attractive. And rightly
so. If abortion does in fact kill an innocent human being then no one
should have that right.
Another
way to expose the inconsistency of this view is to once again simply
change the moral issue under discussion. Imagine if someone said, “I’m
personally opposed to slavery, but I think slave owners should be able
to choose” or “I’m personally opposed to rape, but I think rapists
should be able to choose.” Now the silliness is easily detectable.
Here’s
the problem: if you say that people should have the right to choose a
particular thing you are saying there is nothing inherently wrong with
the thing being chosen, regardless of whether or not you would personally
choose it. To say “women should be able to choose abortion” is to say
there is nothing inherently wrong with abortion. But this is
inconsistent, for if the person advocating the modified pro-choice view
thinks that abortion takes the life of a human being then it is prima facie morally wrong.
To
put it another way, to claim that something is wrong is to claim that
it is impermissible. But if it is impermissible one cannot claim to have
a right to do a wrong, otherwise the impermissible has become
permissible.
Randy Alcorn summarizes the problem with this position:
Some
people have the illusion that being personally opposed to abortion
while believing others should be free to choose it is some kind of
compromise between the proabortion and prolife positions. It isn’t.
Prochoice people vote the same as proabortion people. Both oppose legal
protection for the innocent unborn. Both are willing for children to die
by abortion and must take responsibility for the killing of those
babies even if they do not participate directly. To the baby who dies it
makes no difference whether those who refused to protect her were
proabortion or merely prochoice.[14]
The Top 8 Pro-Life Books Every Pro-Lifer Should Own
1. The Case for Life by Scott Klusendorf
2. Defending Life by Francis Beckwith
3. ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments by Randy Alcorn
4. The Ethics of Abortion by Christopher Kaczor
5. Embryo: A Defense of Human Life by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen
6. The Unaborted Socrates by Peter Kreeft
7. The Party of Death by Ramesh Ponnuru
8. Natural Rights and the Right to Choose by Hadley Arkes (I have not yet read this book but it comes recommended by Scott Klusendorf)
Posts
7 comments:
Hi. I don't think your points are necessarily bad (in fact, some are well thought out), but I don't find them particularly convincing. Maybe if we dig a little deeper you can convince me that these arguments actually lead to the conclusions you draw.
I'm going to focus for now on your ninth objection and if the conversation stays civil I'll move on to the other objections.
I read the entire objection, and there are a few things that stood out, so I'll summarize them. Before I do that, I'd like to point something out, and I hope you don't take offense. When I clicked to comment on the post, I see this warning:
1) Rape and incest are tiny (1%) or less of abortions.
2) Pro-choice folks want abortion on demand.
3) It's misleading, fallacious, intellectually dishonest, selfish (generally), demeaning and cruel (to rape victims) because it's superfluous and doesn't accurately represent what the pro-choice person really wants.
Hopefully that sums it up properly, I tried to most use the words you did. Now first, I'd like to point one thing out, and it's something that I noticed generally through most of your writing. When I hit the button to make a comment, I noticed this:
"In an effort to honor God in the spirit of 1 Peter 3:15, comments that include ad hominem attacks will be removed. We ask that you not attack other commenters as a substitute for dealing with their positions."
So, to clarify, you don't want people to use ad hominem attacks (which I'm totally on board with), but in just a few sentences you've said, essentially, that anyone who disagrees with you on this point is misleading, intellectually dishonest, selfish, demeaning and cruel. You are the Moderator, so I don't suppose you necessarily have to follow your own rules (or the rules in your belief system, like 'he who is without sin cast the first stone', 'don't judge lest ye be judged', and 'treat others as you yourself would like to be treated'), and I certainly don't want to respond in kind because that's just not how I am, but could you really think of no other reason why someone would bring this up?
Let me share a few possibilities, none of which would be brought up because someone is misleading, intellectually dishonest, selfish, demeaning or cruel:
1) Your 1% statistic (or lower) is highly questionable for several reasons. First, and this is widely acknowledged by law enforcement and by virtually every peer-reviewed study on the subject, rape is the most under reported crime in the world. Aside from unreported rape, there is also the issue of unacknowledged rape (many women don't actually know they've been raped, either because they were drugged, they thought they did something to deserve it or they said 'no' but justified it somehow. Wikipedia cites a study, for example (at the bottom of the United States section) which indicates "According to a statistical average over the past 5 years, about 60% of all rapes or sexual assaults in the United States are never reported to the authorities. For college students, the figure is 95%, noted in the Fisher, Cullen and Turner study cited above." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#United_States)
There's no reason to believe that these women would report the rape for the first time to a clinician or doctor (in fact, the 1% you cite is probably coming primarily from states that only have a rape or incest exception). My point is, you really can't objectively say it's 1%, you can't objectively say that it's any actual percentage. Given that up to 95% of college age girls don't report rape and 20-24 year olds are the biggest single four year demographic among women get abortions, it stands to reason that much more than 1% of those women getting abortions are getting them due to rape. Now you could say it's only a percentage point or two higher, but there simply is no way of knowing. If we extrapolate generally though, if only 5% are reporting then we might guess (and admittedly this is a guess) that the % of women getting abortions due to rape is 19X higher than our 1% number, so that means potentially 19% of abortions are actually the result of rape or incest (among 20-24 year old women). This doesn't include women who don't understand or acknowledge something that was rape was indeed rape, but just know that the act was horrible and don't want a child as a result. The primary issue here is that we simply don't know, and probably never will know, so it's just as valid as any other reason to bring up.
2) You also seem to ignore that 6% of abortions happen due to worries about the Mother's or child's potential health issues (split pretty evenly). These are non-socioeconomic reasons. So now we have the additional percentage of non-reported and unacknowledged rapes AND potential health concerns. Most conservatively we're talking 7%, more liberally it could be 10-50%, there is no way of knowing. There is also the issue of health in general. For years, the pro-life camp in general has tried to prove that abortion is unhealthy for women, but peer reviewed science has thoroughly debunked this idea. In 2006 13.3 out of 100,000 women giving birth died during child birth (so at least in the thousands). Now, that's a fairly insignificant number, only about 8 murders occur per 100,000k people and murder is actually fairly rare. But here's the problem, the amount of women who die from abortion (legal) is virtually nil. Literally a dozen or less. Which means it's hundreds of times more likely that you will die from childbirth than having an abortion, in fact, it's only more dangerous to have an abortion after five months of pregnancy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#Maternal_death) than to bear a child.
3) You seem to believe that anyone that asks about exception for rape and/or incest is really behind some evil scheme for have you admit something you don't want to admit. It's probably more likely that they just want to know where you stand. If you asked me that question my response would be that it cuts both ways, if you are willing to make an exception for rape and incest then you probably don't have as much of a problem with a abortion as the people who take the hardline and suggest that there should be no exception, even in the case of the life of the Mother.
In any case, having read through most of your arguments, I think they completely miss the point. In fact, I couldn't really find anything that even mention why I'm pro-choice. I'll grant you that you are killing an innocent baby. I'll grant you that it's preferable that the Mother carry the child to term. I'll grant you that women don't have complete control over their own bodies and that one of the two won't survive the procedure. None of these objections to choice impact my argument for choice. My argument is based on a simple premise, women have the right to who occupies their body. Someday, if science created a method (and the state paid for it) where a zygote could be removed from the a woman using a transporter (think Star Trek) and without costing her any money it would be whisked out of her body then I would be completely opposed 100% to abortion. The earlier pre-term baby born was a little over five months of pregnancy. I'm totally fine with restricting abortion after five months (which is approximately 1.3% of all abortions), but until then it is not the state's place to force women to carry another person or sacrifice their body for another person. Let me put it this way. Right now there are people who are dying because they are on organ donation lists and can't get the organ they need. Many of these organs are ones that most of us have more than one of (or in the case of the liver, can regenerate). To save these innocent lives, would you make it mandatory for a matching donor to sacrifice their body? Another analogy that people use would be that you go to sleep one night and the next morning you wake up and attached to your body is a another person (child, guy, girl, it doesn't matter). This person is innocent, but someone has attached them to you. You go to the doctor and they say that they can remove the link between you, but they will die if it's removed, and you will live. You may decide that it's okay, for a day, or a month, or nine months or forever. Some people may not. The question is, do you believe there should be a law enforcing someone to sacrifice their body to save another person? Do you believe that you should be able to force someone to give blood to save a person?
Maybe you haven't thought of this stuff, maybe you have, but essentially your answers ignore the objections that matter to me completely.
Hello Voceangeli. I apologize for the ridiculously late response. Your comments are below in bold with my response underneath.
First, regarding the charge of ad-hominem, you are taking my comments out of context. The context of those comments was regarding the pro-abortion choice advocate who appeals to rape in order to justify abortion on demand. As I explained, abortion on demand does not follow from the hard case of rape. And so, it is intellectually dishonest, etc., to appeal to cases of rape in order to justify abortion in all cases. I would hope we can both agree on this, so, I am not engaging in any ad-hominem.
Second, the rape figures you provide are mostly conjecture on your part and their relevance debatable. We are not talking about rape per se but abortions which are procured because of rape. But more importantly, you seem to be missing the main point of what I said. Even if I grant that abortions due to rape are higher, abortions due to rape are still not morally permissible since the unborn is a victim as well, the mother should not be permitted to kill the child for the crime of the father, etc. You didn't even begin to address the status of the unborn which is the main issue.
Third, you need to define what you mean by "health" issues and provide sources regarding your statistics.
Fourth, even if it is true that early abortions are "safer" than childbirth, so what? This is a red herring, completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not the unborn is a human being with rights who deserves to be protected under the law.
Fifth, you stated, My argument is based on a simple premise, women have the right to who occupies their body.
But this is an assertion, not an argument. You need to explain why this is the case and give reasons to back your conclusion.
I'm totally fine with restricting abortion after five months (which is approximately 1.3% of all abortions), but until then it is not the state's place to force women to carry another person or sacrifice their body for another person.
Why should there be restrictions after five months? What happens from 4 months and three weeks to five months that transforms the unborn into a human being with rights?
Lastly, the analogies you provide in the last paragraph are false analogies. They have been argued by individuals such as Judith Jarvis Thompson and responded to by others such as Scott Klusendorf, Francis Beckwith, and Christopher Kazcor. I recommend you look at their writings, or we can discuss it further here.
And if you noticed, in my opening paragraphs I noted that the objections I am addressing are not the more philosophically sophisticated arguments but more popular objections. However, as I said, if you would like to raise an argument that you find persuasive please do and I will do my best to respond.
If someone were going to kill you I'm sure you could understand that killing is wrong- no matter what anyone's opinion of your worth.
I am no different having been conceived when 8 men raped my mother.I have a right to live. Any baby can cause a mother duress but should she be able to kill a 3 yr old causing the same duress? NO
It is very illogical to kill an innocent baby and set a criminal free to attack again. Misplaced compassion and society doesn't even ask the mother.
Everyone assumes that giving birth to a rape conceived child is the worst thing possible. But in my research I've found the opposite. Women who aborted their rape conceived babies were more likely to be suicidal. They see that they were attacked and lived but they turned into an aggressor and killed their own innocent baby.
My mother's mother wanted me dead. Then when my mother wanted to give birth she wasn't even believed to be raped. My mother is grateful for the help she got so that she could give birth.
Women don't regret giving birth but they do regret taking it.
www.choices4life.org for more stories that set the record straight.
We can speak for ourselves and find it insulting and dehumanizing for people to discuss whether we should live or die from an abstract viewpoint.
Thank you for addressing the issue and opening up discussion though. It helps.
Juda,
Thank you for your thoughts and comments, and thank you for sharing your story.
You stated, "We can speak for ourselves and find it insulting and dehumanizing for people to discuss whether we should live or die from an abstract viewpoint.
My intention was not to discuss the topic from an "abstract" viewpoint. I'm also a little confused as to why it would be considered insulting and dehumanizing to defend the lives of the unborn. Am I not allowed to speak on the topic because I am a man? It seems to me we should all be grateful for the help and support from various organizations.
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