If a girl is raped and pregnant, should she keep the baby?

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I assure you, 91, that I am not trying to shock anyone; I am trying to clearly express just how repulsive this entire idea is to me.
As for your friends whose fathers were rapists, I wish that I could say 'good for them,' but I can't and be honest. What I actually feel for them is profound pity. I would not want to be the offspring of a rapist.

The repulsive nature of the act does not follow on to the 'intrinsic' nature of the children. Only God has the power to decide if sin is transferred from father to child. If you don't believe in God, then we can at least agree that society/individuals are NOT empowered to make such a distinction.



Neither would I. My friends are quite well adjusted; one is a youth worker, they deserve more than pity as they have turned their own disadvantage into an example to others.

By "this entire idea," I did not mean merely the act of rape but also forcing the woman to bear the rapist's offspring. Of the two crimes, the latter is worse in my mind because the victim not only has to have her body turned into a ventilator/sewage processing unit/food processor/etc for an entity she wants nothing to do with, but even if she gives the child up for adoption after it is born she will know for the rest of her life that she contributed to furthering the genes of a rapist. It is a punishment that will never end, inflicted on a woman who did nothing wrong but be the victim of a heinous crime. The rape, at least, ends.

...an example to others...!?
Usually, when people say that, they mean a good example. Is that what you're saying? You'll have to forgive me that I don't agree, if so.

I am not sure I agree with the sentiment behind this comment. A rape is an intrinsic wrong. Carrying a child can always be seen from more than one perspective. I would prefer if you stopped referring to the decision to keep the child as 'furthering the genes of a rapist'.



Well, if one born of such exceptionally poor circumstances, makes a life for themselves... then in addition to this decides to spend their life helping young people.. then not only have they overcome the disadvantage, that could have been used as an excuse for not achieving anything, but they have in fact overcome and contributed, far more than many of us ever will.

In this world the one things we are always free to do is have our own perspective. Right or wrong it is always our own. Some of those views, perhaps your own in relation to the children of rapists, are unhealthy and although we are entitled to have them; we ought to review them in light of how they eat away at us. I usually find you to be a logical and clear thinker, even though we seldom agree. You seemed to have abandoned some of those more admirable traits in this discussion.

My second cousin was sexually molested by her employer (she was underage) she ended up having the child and keeping him, he looks nothing like the scumbag that did that to her (whom I wish was rotting in jail). He is very intelligent, he isn't some demented monster.

I will also say my second cousin got married recently to someone she knew from when she was in high school, and now the kid has a step father.

I don't blame my second cousin for what happened to her, and I don't place blame on the kid. I blame the scumbag that did that to her. I'm really glad the kid looks nothing like the scumbag.

The trend I am noticing in this thread, is that for some pro-life posters, it seems it ends as "rape should not be an exception". While it seems that other pro-lifers would make rape an exception.

I agree with the "the rapist's fetus feeding off the rapist's victim to survive" thing to be as horrendous. I mean, let's think of the constant reminder that you were raped for long nine months and that part of him is inside, to not cause a constant repulsion and some sort of psychological torture for some women.

So I'd side with the victim's wishes to get rid of anything pertainting from the perpetrator, as the fetus is his.

You blame him, yes, a problem I tend to see with this is that you are condenming the kid's existence when blaming the actions that bring him/her to exist in the first place, in some way, I know you and 91 would like to dismiss this or ignore this, and I'm not surprised, but I see it like that anyway. Wether you like it or not, thanks to what the rapist did, the offspring exists and lives, otherwise they wouldn't.

What I mean is that the children of rapists are people who should not exist, because they are the consequence of an act that shouldn't have happened.

So, I believe that's a reason to pity them.

I think that nothing about those children impacts on their intrinsic value.

Thank you.

The child of a rapist is not "half-rapist". Rapist is not a genetic quality.

As Obi-Wan said, I think a great many things in life depend upon one's point of view. I have heard of women who looked at the pregnancy and child as something good coming from something terrible. Choosing to continue the pregnancy actually helped them heal emotionally, even if they then placed the child for adoption.
It all depends on how one looks at the situation. I think continuing such a pregnancy is a beautiful path to choose, but I do not think the law should insist on it. What helps one person may be devastating to another. The main thing is that we not assume every woman's reaction and course of action should be the same.

Perfectly stated. There is no one-size-fits-all reaction here. Some women may indeed feel that giving life to the fetus, whether they keep it or not, is a path to healing. Some may feel like a vessel for atrocity. Neither reaction is inappropriate.

It's her choice to do as she sees fit.

the problem is when you examine why we give humans a special value it is because of conscoiusness not only because of human dna,or your sperm, your skin cells and everything else would need the same rights
so when you examine what goes behind these decisions you time and again end up with defintions that has nothing with humans to do, it could be extended yo anything with those values, that is an argument, saying humans simply have value because they do is not.

it is one of the most common arguments on boarrds so go see if you can come up with some arguments that actually hold up.

^^^^

If you think intrinsic value requires a justification then you may have misunderstood the concept. I perfer to think of it being based on human uniqueness. The mind cannot be proven in adults, at least not to the point where even strict empiricists would be satisfied (see Ruveyn) so using it as a standard simply does not work.

human consciousness can (with certain forward facing limitations), mind is a redundant expression, that is ruveyns beef.

an "intrinsic value" does require justification, dont you think the animals who show language and social understanding might have thoughts about themselves?
this whole intrinsic value system without justification would also crack under the pressure of not only strong AI's but might even do so under biological conditions on earth, not to mention whats beyond.

not to mention you would run into the same issue of human cells, they are as much human as a whole person under those circumstances.

f**k this s**t, it's very simple. Nobody should have to go through suffering because someone has abstract beliefs about the rights of something that hasn't even a conscious brain yet. That f*****g lump of gelatine doesn't suffer. She does.

Yes, I'm rude. Deal with it. I've given up trying to be nice about this.

That's what I meant.

I'm sure that you would prefer that. However, any time a woman chooses to bear a child she is bearing a being, half of whose blueprints come from its father. She is propagating those blueprints. There is, of course, a lot of other stuff involved as well, but on a geologic time scale the functional impact is the propagation of genes.


This is not a subject that 'eats away at me' unless I hear people saying that they would prefer that I be forced to bear a rapist's offspring if I were raped. In the same way, you might find that it 'ate away at you' if you heard people from some other religion talk about how christians are stupid and should be physically tortured until they renounce their god. Or, say, that all men should be forced to donate one of their kidneys to those in need because, hey, they never get pregnant and they should contribute something from their bodies, right? And most men will survive just fine with only one kidney, just like most women come through pregnancy ok.
Kind of a repulsive thought, right?


@Inuyasha: I'm glad for your cousin that her son did not physically take after his father.


Are you sure about that? Parasitic breeding is genetically inherited in many lower animal species, why would it not be in humans?