I have to take issue with how Sarah Palin answered Katie Couric's question, "If a 15-year-old is raped by her father, do you believe it should be illegal for her to get an abortion, and why?"
What Sarah should have said:
Katie, it is utterly wrong for society to embrace the position that we put people to death for crimes their fathers committed. If a woman or girl is pregnant as a result of rape or incest, we have a victim -- the rape or incest victim -- and an innocent bystander. To kill that bystander on the grounds that he or she is the rapist's child does not undo the violence -- it escalates the violence.
While a desire for revenge or retaliation is understandable in any victim of a violent crime, we as a society do not sanction vigilante justice. We do not allow the families of murder victims to choose death for the perpetrators -- much less for the perpetrator's immediate family members. Neither should we allow our understandable sympathy and compassion for the rape victim lead to allowing her to exact vigilante justice against her assailant's innocent child, no matter how understandable the urge to do so might be.
And this urge does pass, if the woman or girl is given love and support.
Abortion brings neither healing nor justice to the rape or incest victim. It only makes her a perpetrator of an even greater violence. A loving response is to help her get past the original shock and outrage, and to support her as she turns what her attacker meant for evil into something good: the love of an innocent child.
13 comments:
Oh for God's sake. How can you sit there and pretend that the rape victim and the fetus have nothing to do with one another? It's like you think fetuses and rape victims can live on opposite sides of town, and that rape victims hunt them down in the night and kill them for no reason. It's preposterous!
Rape victims don't deserve to be forced by the state to carry and give birth to babies they never wanted, and it's repulsive of you to argue otherwise.
Thank God three-quarters of the US disagrees with your heartless, immoral, disgusting view.
Anonymous:
We human beings have a fundamental right to a full human lifespan and this is why it is a violation of rights and therefore a crime to kill us human beings in either the unborn or the born stage. This is the case regardless of the circumstances of our conception. We either have a right to our biological existence or we do not. If we do, we cannot be killed at any point in our lives. If we do not, we can then of course be killed at any time throughout our lives and then we would have to accept murder as well as abortion. There is no middle ground here; we either have rights or we do not.
If people who are conceived from rape have a human right to live their lives (they do) then we cannot kill them in either the unborn or the born stage. If they do not then we can kill them throughout their lives. If you believe ALL human beings conceived from rape or incest can be destroyed in the unborn stage, then logic requires you to argue that such human beings can also be killed (murdered) at any time from birth to old age, given that they do not have a right to live their lives.
We are not trying to make life difficult for mothers who are pregnant as a result of rape, but no matter the difficulty of dealing with an unwanted human being, the fundamental right of every member of our species to a full human lifespan must ALWAYS take precedence over ALL other considerations.
Oh for God's sake. How can you sit there and pretend that the rape victim and the fetus have nothing to do with one another?
I didn't say that they had nothing to do with one another. After all, the victim is the child's MOTHER.
How does killing her child help? Because it gets revenge on the rapist, supposedly, depriving him of "his" offspring. The child is always referred to as "the rapist's child" as if a woman who has been raped is somehow less than any other woman, less a woman, less a mother.
I agree, Joe. However, most pro lifers would allow abortion in hard cases like rape or incest. They wish to outlaw all other abortions. Pro abortionists would not agree to that, of course. They want ALL abortions legal even for the flimsiest of reason, but use the hard cases to justify abortion, which is inherently dishonest. The movers and shakers behind legal abortion have no interest in promoting women's rights. Their goal is to promote abortion, even when it hurts women, and it would hurt many rape victims rather than help them. That is also why they never object to sex selection abortions, or to forced abortion in China. That is also why they hate Sarah Palin. She is a highly accomplished and successful woman, who ordiarily should be hailed as an inspiration and role model for our sex. But she does not believe in elective abortion, and so she is maligned by abortion promoters beyond the point of slander. It is depressing to me how many of my sex swallow this cant that abortion on demand is good for women. It is merely using and manipulating women to promote the evil of abortion.
i would rather be raped than have an abortion any day.
Abortion was a far far far worse abuse.
I am over rape - well over it.
I will never be over abortion.
(((anon)))
I second the anon post above "Granny Grump"!!!!
I don't even give the rape that much thought anymore..I am not kidding. When I do?
I now seethe guy as the pathetic, power hungry bully that he truly is. He had to force himself on a woman to feel like a man. That's pretty much any man's standard of a TOTAL LOSER. NOT!!!
So, he did it. Yes it was crushing. I refused to allow his evil permeate my sense of self. I laugh at him now..what a weakling.
Rape changes you, no doubt. Still? It can make you stronger than ever before.
My abortion? Oh, yeah people, that still SUCKS!! It always will.
Abortion changes you too. No doubt. The differnece is.. I am RESPONSIBLE for my abortion.
I was NOT responsible for my rape. (Big Difference)
You can heal (and scar)from either tragedy but...with Abortion? You always know, you killed your child because you weren't strong enough to see the crisis through.
...It undermines the self esteem of most women, whether they admit it immediately or let it toxicly fester for decades.
Peace,
Angele
Thanks gg. Angele thankyou for writing this.
I should add that the rape did not result in a pregnancy. This man committed suicide. I feel guilt.
The father of my baby was actually a worse man in some ways than the man who had raped me years before.
Although i disagreed, my mother tried to convince me that abortion would be the only choice because the father of my baby is sometimes evil, and therefore so would the child be.
But when i saw my child (i had a non surgical abortion) i felt the purest love ever known, i knew that i had injured my childs soul, to look at my child like that.
I had been told by a hospital psychiatrist that i had been severly abused by the father of my baby.
But abortion was the wrong decision. It's never the right choice. You look down at your aborted child, hold your child and you will see that.
I wish you peace.
I was not raped, but got pregnant on purpose by my HUSBAND. Shortly after that he decided to leave me and take everything out of the house, I had no furniture, no job and no insurance. Because of his income I did not qualify for public assistance.
His family wanted me to have an abortion, my family thought it would be the best thing because I would basically be on the streets pregnant, it would be hard to find a means of income in my situation.
I really did not want an abortion, I don't believe in it. My family couldn't help (poor and live across the country), they were hinting that I should have an abortion as well. I had no one to help me. I could not imagine giving birth alone, much less doing anything else but live in a homeless shelter. I applied for medical coverage, never even got that, and it was months ago I applied! I'd have no prenatal care, and be stuck with a huge hospital bill! I even called a crisis pregnancy center asking for help, I never got a call back about any way to get assistance or housing.
My husband said he wouldn't give me any money or buy anything for the child, yet he'd find a way to pay for an abortion.
Before I could actually make it to the clinic I miscarried, probably due to the intense stress. I don't think I could have gone through with the abortion anyways.
The sick thing is, now he is saying he wanted me to have the child.
So, the underlying problem is not that women want abortions, it is sometimes the only option, because the world can be so evil towards them. I mean, my own in-laws just wanted him to throw me on the street, for what? And it would have been my mother-in-law's only grandchild!
I'm not making this up. I'm at swisscheese86@yahoo.com.
swisscheese86, it's a copout on society's part to just let an abortionist ply his trade in town and congratulate ourselves on having given women "choice". Yeah -- a choice they don't want!
There is NO excuse for families and communities to fail to rally around people in need, and that includes pregnant women.
Obviously one thing we need to do is advertise national pregnancy care hotlines better, so that if a woman contacts the local CPC and gets no real help she has somebody to turn to, and then while they are helping her they can get to work on figuring out what's wrong with that CPC.
No woman should EVER be in a state where she feels like abortion is her only choice. But we can't eliminate that predicament when we celebrate it as some form of liberation or freedom!
Thank God three-quarters of the US disagrees with your heartless, immoral, disgusting view.
Just because people agree with it doesn't make it right.
Love how pro-aborts look at a rape victim and their response isn't, "Gee, let's get you counseling and emotional support" it's "Gee, let's get you over to Planned Parenthood pronto for that abortion."
Then, of course, they turn around and deny that women who have abortions suffer any ill effects (physical or otherwise) from it.
That's the immoral position.
The thing that comes to mind is this quiz I saw once...
A. The mother of a family of 14 is pregnant again. Her husband — the father of all 14 of these children — has a history of alcohol abuse and mental disorders which frequently causes him to abuse his other children. The mother herself is already worn out from trying to care single-handedly for her large family and doesn't feel she can care for another child at this point. On top of all this, two sons in the family also have a history of alcohol abuse, one of the children is in a mental institution, and none of the other children have steady, dependable jobs with which to support mom and dad. Would you abort?
B. A poor black family in the South is expecting a fifth child. This family, because of its skin color, already has difficulty receiving help and are already at the bare minimum poverty level. The outlook for their present children does not look bright. Would you abort?
C. A woman is engaged to a man some years older than she; she finds out that she is facing an unplanned pregnancy. The child she is carrying is definitely not the son of her fiancé, and he is worried for her sake and for their repution in their community. This child could put a serious strain on their relationship and on any future children. Would you abort?
Okay, everybody finished? Here are the results:
A. If you answered Abortion for A, you just aborted Ludwig Van Beethoven.
B. If you answered Abortion for B, you just aborted Martin Luther King, Jr.
C. If you answered Abortion for C, YOU WIN THE GRAND PRIZE! You, my friend, have just aborted Jesus of Nazareth.
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I know sometimes these things are dramatized, etc, but the point is very clear. No matter how a person comes to be, they have just as much potential as anyone else. You never know who that person could have grown up to be, and the circumstances surrounding their conception becomes almost irrelevant when they do. Not in the short-term, of course not. But in the long run, a woman can experience the joy of a child and that love can help her heal, help her see the good even in a terrible situation. If she aborts the pregnancy, she becomes a murderer, and no better than her rapist. In fact, I do believe murderers are considered by law to be even worse than rapists.
I applaud those who have posted about their experiences here--you are strong women, stronger than I hope I ever have to be. May God bless you.
Amy, I'd add that anybody who thinks that it's a "heartless, immoral, disgusting view" to say "Don't kill a child for the crimes of his father" sounds like a mafioso.
Since when is it "heartless, immoral, and disgusting" to refrain from taking an innocent life?
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