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by 19guid
3437 days ago
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The argument is fairly straightforward if you accept -- as pro-lifers do -- that abortion constitutes the killing of an unborn child. Parents have a prima facie duty of care towards their children by virtue of the biological connection between parent and child, and this duty of care exists regardless of the circumstances of the child's conception. This position in no way denies that rape is gravely immoral. It simply recognizes that the child is not responsible for the crimes of his father. The injustice of rape does not justify the additional injustice of abandoning or killing one's own child. I think most people have no difficulty accepting this argument at least with respect to born children. Nobody would argue that infanticide, for example, is an appropriate response to rape. But there's no reason why the same logic doesn't apply before birth as well. |
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Yet the implicit argument here is that the injustice of rape DOES justify the additional injustice of forced pregnancy upon the victim. Pregnancy involves a profound set of changes to the body, not all of them temporary. I find it incredibly unjust that people are willing to argue that the rights of a handful of cells that will eventually become a human outweigh the rights of an inarguably human woman whose body was forcibly violated, by way of causing a second, 9-months-long forced violation of her right to control her own body. A concrete reminder of the rape that she cannot ignore because it's literally inside her and growing every day. It's despicable.
This is not to mention the lesser injustice of failing to provide her with any assistance during the pregnancy--she will need to consume more calories, will eventually find it difficult or impossible to perform her work duties until the child is born, etc. Where is that assistance provided for in all this legislation?
And for that matter, where are the appeals to the duty of caring for one's children when an adult with young kids is carted off to prison? Clearly there are circumstances in which that duty is superceded by some set of societal concerns. Why is conception by rape not one of them while some crime committed by a parent is?