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

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How about this scenario:

if a man is raped by a woman and the woman then becomes pregnant with that man's child, should the woman alone have the final say regarding the unborn?

Well the rapist certainly shouldn't.

She should abort it and have it prepared for dinner.

And she should make your stomach into haggis and your kidneys into a pie too, yes? Eat your heart out also, perhaps?

I really admire the fact that you are trying to be sympathetic to people who make stupid mistakes in life, but don't be over-compassionate. If you really need infanticide to protect people from the consequences of their action, something is seriously wrong here. It is a very bad idea to encourage irresponsibility. I don't want to punish women, I just don't want infanticide to be the only solution considered. I mean, seriously. Those are human lives that are being ended. Why not adoption instead of abortion? There are plenty of people out there who can't have children. And what is sick about punishing rapists?

Society does not really use viability as the dividing line any more. Certainly Roe v. Wade and a great deal of the literature mentions it. However, it is fair to complain that nonviable, does not equal, not alive, so as a standard it is clearly incompatible with my own views. Also, the pro-choice movement has not really embraced viability in any holistic way. Rather, most pro-choice organizations would oppose any law that made aborting all viable children illegal. So while I sympathize with your argument, it is disingenuous for pro-choice people to argue a standard that their movement really has no desire to keep to.



The language in the Canadian formulation may be worded differently, but for the most part, it is essentially elucidating the same standard that the US courts have used for a while now; that of 'undue burden'. Now, that standard has been such an open door that people can and have had huge numbers of abortions on pretty weak reasons.

The proclamation of the absolute failure of this standard was clearly presented by the 'Abortion Supervisor Committee' in New Zealand which found that 95% of abortions in NZ did not meet the standard, but were performed anyway. No one was even bothering to follow the standard; their recommendation; abandon it altogether and have no standard. If you think the standard works view any list of reasons given by women for having abortions. My personal favorite was that there was no extra seat belt in the car.

The simple fact of the matter is, that if abortions were only carried out on the tiny minority of cases that actually result from rape and incest; then we would most likely not be having these sorts of conversations. However, pro-abortion activists continue blithely on and call us misogynists for daring to state what is obviously true. The main reason I became staunchly pro-life (I used to hold to the Clinton rare, safe and available position) was the reality of the abuse of the right to choose, I simply no longer trust people to make this decisions free from oversight.



I think placing the intrinsic value of human life in law is about as close to objective as a secular ethic is likely to get. Enforced by consensus is not objective, but for practical purposes, it is highly useful and I commend anyone willing to stand by it.



Sure, it does place one right above another. It places the child's right to life above the woman's right to choose. In almost all circumstances, this seems just obviously true and I can think of no other right that is placed above life, in any other circumstance, it is the most basic of all rights, without it, there are no others.

Abortion of a rape child is the ethically correct thing to do, even though it might seem unfair. We have to send the message that forced sex is an unacceptable way to pass ones genes.

It's not the only solution considered.

I think it's unlikely that any but a handfull of clinically insane women take the decision to end a pregnancy lightly - even in cases where death or serious injury to mother, child, or both are virtually assured. If you disagree you should provide supporting evidence.

To suggest that they wouldn't consider other options unless someone talked to them about it is a little insulting. Why would you make that assumption?

When it comes to killing babies, I'm again'it. But I have a Y chromosome so i have limited say in the matter, and as far as i know I've never fertilized an egg. So it's easy for me to say that.

I think any woman has a valid argument when it comes to the irreversible physiological changes they will undergo as a result of their pregnancy and birthing. I think it is unwise to criminalize an option that they know they have, one way or another.

I think they also have a valid argument when it comes to the responsibilities and necessities brought about by 9 months of gestation and the cost of even birthing alone, not to mention the cost and responsibilities of raising a child.

I think it might be reasonable to require doctors to offer information on other options - such as how adoption works and how to get it done - but people who want to argue that all abortion should be outlawed should put their money where their mouth is and adopt a black child.

No, pro-choice is essentially pro-abortion, because you are saying it is okay to commit infanticide.

You are arguing that someone is not a human being one minute but they are the next, how about we say infants aren't human until they come home from the hospital, or a child up until the age of 2 is nothing more than property, or how about 8 years old. You can't run around saying arbitrarily that someone is not a human being one minute and they are sometime later, because it opens things up for that arbitrary line to be moved all over the place.

Sorry, but if you're arguing a child is not a human being simply because of how old they are or they haven't quite made it out of the mother's womb, I'm going to call you out on it.

You gave the perfect example as to why I have been continually saying the pro-abortion crowd continues to dehumanize children in order to say it is morally acceptible to murder them.

You don't like the fact I'm not going to sugar-coat it, tough.

Viability is still the standard most laws are based on. I personally would not support a law that absolutely forbade abortions after the 20th week, but I would not fight too hard against one that limited abortions after that time to life/health of the mother or fetal abnormality.

Yeah, and people have gone on shooting rampages with guns for pretty weak reasons. Most women who resort to abortion do so because their birth control failed, they lacked access to birth control, they lacked knowledge of birth control, their circumstances changed, a fetal or maternal medical abnormality was diagnosed, etc. In other words, women don't generally hit 20 weeks and think, 'la, I want a glass of wine so I'll go have an abortion this afternoon.' Claiming that women are cavalier about terminating pregnancy belies a dismissive attitude towards the very real life issues that women face during and after pregnancy.


Hospitals in my state will not let a new parent walk out of the hospital with their own infant unless they have a car seat and are able to install it properly in a car. No appropriate seatbelt = buy a new car in order to leave the hospital with the kid. Buy a new car = extant kids don't get new sneakers when they grow out of the old ones, and everyone eats ramen for a couple of years.

Well, there it is out in the open.
You think you know better what a woman should do with her body than the woman herself does. Ready to hand over your extra kidney? There's a deserving young father somewhere who needs it more than you do - and we can't give you a choice about the matter, because you won't make the right decision. Isn't his life more important than your right to choose?


Honey, your terminology is simply not medically accurate. Calling a zef an infant or a child only makes it clear that you are trying to speciously frame the debate in a way more sympathetic to your point than the actual facts support.

That is interesting to hear, because the just about the entire pro-choice movement is campaigning against just such a laws across America as we speak. Thankfully the lobbyists from Planned Parenthood were defeated in Alabama recently.



Your numbers don't stack up. only 2% of abortions after 16 weeks occurred due to fetal health reasons.

Aida Torres and Jacqueline Darroch Forrest, "Why Do Women Have Abortions", Family Planning Perspectives, 20 (4) Jul/Aug 1988, pp 169-176



If living life on instant noodles was undue hardship no one would go to university.



Interesting, most questions don't end with a full stop. I suppose you don't actually want me to answer it. Well I think if you are realistic, then you will realize you already agree with me. This sort of absolutist language belongs in the past of the abortion debate. Almost everyone thinks that abortion requires regulation... unless you think that it should be available up to the point of birth, then you do too? That necessitates that you think that you know better than some of the people involved. So please shelve the talking points.



Right, pro-abortionists call us all misogynistic we are the one's using spurious language... pot calling the kettle black on that one. I would take your condemnation of my language a little more seriously if your outrage was not so selective... perhaps if you also reacted with the same fire when blunnet recommends the serving of the unborn for dinner.

Regardless of the circumstances, if the woman doesn't want to have the baby, she should have the right to an abortion. Her body is supporting the fetus, and as such, it's her choice to make. What right do you have to tell somebody what to do with their own body?

as had been pointed out most pro choice people are actually for regulation to some extent.

the medical terminology is constant and cannot be changed by opinion and he is quite right on that one.

this thread went to the major craphole again.

So, medically, the fetus is a bodily organ of the gravitas?

Does it make a difference to anyone WHEN the rape victim decides to end the pregnancy? For example, do you make a distinction between a woman who takes a morning-after pill, and a woman who has an abortion in the second or third trimester? Or does the fact that she was raped make a late-term abortion more acceptable?
I am not personally in favor of allowing late-term abortions even in cases of rape. I see no reason why a woman should wait several months before ending such a pregnancy. I think there is a point at which the fetus's right to live trumps the woman's right to be relieved of emotional distress.

Since when am I bound by the political views of others? I still hold to foetal viability as a standard.

My country is in a complete legal vacuum, since Parliament failed to enact new abortion legislation in the late 80's. We have no legal restrictions on abortion, and very few non-legal restrictions. I find this circumstance problematic, and I would favour the creation of a legislative framework in this country that would establish a basis in which women and their physicians could make decisions. I would favour a ban on abortions after the threshold of viability. But I also believe that women and physicians need affirmative law that expressly authorizes their decision making authority rather than leaving them in a legal vacuum.



I do not believe in the establishment of standards. After we decriminalized abortion in 1969, women were given access to abortion provided that a panel of physicians certified that it was necessary for the physical or mental well-being of the woman. This led to gross inequities where some hospital panels would sign off in any case, and other hospital panels would sign off in none.

As soon as you set a standard, you have to have a means to evaluate that standard. It is, I suggest, impossible to establish truly objective standards that will not become coloured over time by the subjective points of view of the decision makers implementing those standards.



Here we come to a strong divergence of values.

In my clinical practice I am often confronted with circumstances in which I am fully aware that I know better than my patient. I have the training, I have the experience, I have the skill, I have the knowledge. But I am not in charge. The only circumstances in which I can impose my will on a patient are those in which I believe that there is a general risk to public health that warrants quarantine, an incapacity on the part of the patient that creates a risk to the patient's own health or safety, or circumstances where the patient is incapable of exercising informed consent.

I trust people to make their own decisions about their lives and their bodies because there is no other person or body competent to make those decisions.



But we see clearly that it is neither objective, nor practical. The plain, simple truth of the matter is that women will seek abortion in cases of unwanted pregnancy, and no legal or extra-legal barriers are going to stem that tide. Prohibition does not work, and it is pointless to pretend that it will.



You are passionate, but you are blinding yourself to the impracality of your absolute position.

Peace officers are authorized to use of deadly force in some circumstances.
Self-defence excuses the use of deadly force in some circumstances.
Physicians are authorized to discontinue life-saving care in some circumstances.

The truth is that the right to life is subordinated to the practicalities of living in a free and democratic society in more than one way.

I would certainly like to see a world in which fewer pregnancies were terminated. But my view is that the way to do that is to prevent those pregnancies from occurring in the first place by providing meaningful, respectful and age-appropriate sex education to all children, and providing facilitated access to contraception to all who want it.