[B]oth pro- and anti-abortion groups are focusing on the “legitimate rape” part because it distracts from the very issue Akin himself was trying to hide from: What about pregnancy that results from rape. Akin doesn’t want to confront that this happens, which is why he put forth his dumb rape-doesn’t-cause-pregnancy theory. Pro-choicers, for the most part, don’t want to confront that an abortion that happens after a rape is still just as much an abortion as one that happens because nobody bothered with birth control.Rush Limbaugh had a similar theme on his show today:
I think both sides should own it. Stand in your truth and be straightforward about what you really believe.
The Democrats are gonna try to go to town on this Akin thing as much as they can. Their convention is gonna be the pro-abortion convention. They're gonna end up celebrating abortion at their convention. And, folks, psst, let me tell you something. I don't want you to tell anybody. Let them do it. Let them turn over their convention to Planned Parenthood and to NARAL and every other feminazi out there, you let them do it. Let them go right ahead and turn their convention into pro-abortion. If that's what they think is gonna win the election for them, if they really think this War on Women thing, that they can play it out, let them do it...
"The Democrat Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right." Well, this includes now partial-birth abortion and taxpayer-funded abortion. The Democrats are making it plain they support all of that. The American people don't support taxpayer-funded abortion. The American people don't support partial-birth abortion.Swing voters — including me — think both parties, if they say what they really believe, are too extreme on abortion. Therefore, whichever party is clearest and most emphatic about abortion is the one that will lose votes. That's why Rush is saying let the Democrats have their big celebration of abortion and why Republicans are hot to rid themselves of Akin. It's better for each party to have its message be only about its general tendency — the Democrats toward access to abortions and the Republicans toward valuing the life of the unborn child.
Rush knows this too, because he stresses that Republicans shouldn't answer probing questions about abortion and rape. They should respond by demanding that the Democrats be asked "why they have blanket support for partial-birth abortion and taxpayer-funded abortion... why they think it's permissible for the government to tell the Catholic Church and other organizations they must make abortion available against their religious beliefs?"
Abortion politics is a strange game of displaying principles without showing how those principles would apply in the hard cases. We swing voters might warm up to your big principle, but will be horrified to hear about its principled application. Partial-birth abortion is to pro-choice as rape is to pro-life. The trick is to talk about the other side's details and your own big idea.
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 202 of 202A rape victim has no more moral responsibility for the rape
Of course that's true.
or for the resulting fetus.
I think it's very dangerous to dehumanize babies. I am always suspicious when people use the word "fetus." It's clear to me they are relying upon dehumanization. If you're going to make hard arguments, use the word "baby."
I do not believe a rape victim has a kill-right against an innocent baby. For instance, she can't give birth to her baby and then kill the baby out of an act of revenge against the rapist. Right? That would be appalling to all of us. The baby is not to blame for the rape.
So now we are back to the issue that divides people. Is abortion a homicide? Is it ever a homicide?
I believe in many cases it is a homicide, in others it is not.
I think rape victims clearly have a right to emergency contraception. And that's a good thing, as it would keep them from the emotional devastation of having an abortion. That's why many rape victims elect to keep their babies. See this for discussion.
A state could allow for a rape exception in those cases that fall in the gray area, when abortion is not birth control and not infanticide, either. But there are issues with that.
For instance, should we require doctors who perform abortions in rape cases to report the attack to the police? After all, we require doctors to report gunshot wounds.
If it's actually a rape, we want the police to investigate and to arrest and prosecute the rapist.
But this might pose a problem for many women. They too might be in a gray area. For instance they were drunk, they remember saying no, but they had sex anyway. Such a woman might feel comfortable telling her doctor that she was raped. But she wouldn't feel comfortable telling the police she was raped. She doesn't want to make a criminal matter out of it.
So if it's not a criminal matter, is it actually the crime of rape?
I think we should strongly encourage contraception, including emergency contraception for rape victims.
This has the advantage of not getting into the moral/ethical/legal issues of requiring a woman to first allege a rape. All women have access to emergency contraception. It's not an abortion and I see no real legal issues involved with it.
I think a state can allow early abortions, but if it does so, it should probably allow them broadly, not narrowly. Otherwise you might force women to define some acts as crimes, in situations where they are not comfortable with that.
"Far be it for me to presume to speak for someone else, but I'm pretty sure it's the abortion itself that makes the woman no longer fully innocent."
So theoretically if she doesn't want to abort she's a purely innocent victim of rape and would -- theoretically -- through her equivalent moral authority to the embryo retain the right to abort.
However, the moment she expresses the intent or desire to abort she becomes guilty of intent to abort and consequently loses her theoretical moral authority as an innocent victim to undo as much of what the rapist did to her as possible. That right is reserved only for the "truly innocent".
"That's some catch, that Catch-22."
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