Rape, Incest & Life of the Mother.

Can someone whose candidate or who personally opposes abortion except in (sing it!) "Rape, incest or life of the mother" please expand upon or explain some POTENTIAL issues if such a policy was enacted by our Supreme Legislature.

On the rape exception. I've asked this before, but is this an accusation of rape, charges filed of rape, or a conviction of rape? What is the "rape standard"? And if this policy is enacted, and women find that this is an "out", and they charge rape and it is later determined by the judicial system that she lied about being raped, would the law then say she could be charged with murder since she used an exception to the abortion ban illegally?

On the incest exception, is that a value judgment society is placing on potentially two related individuals enjoying the sexual pleasures that adults are Constitutionally provided? I thought we had moved as far away as possible from the sickening spectacle of "normalcy" being one male, one unrelated female, joined in marriage and having 2 kids, 2 cars and a white picket fence? Is this a subtle return to the "bad ol' days" as we make MORAL judgments on what is "normal"?

On the "life of the mother" exception, what will be necessary to determine the life of the mother is jeopardized. And, since in this day absolutely anyone has "standing" basically in any judicial proceding (exceptions are basically meaningless), does it not present the opportunity for some anti-abortion group to bring suit against the Doctor forcing him to prove his diagnosis? Failure to do so would presumably result in perhaps murder charges against the Doctor if the trier of fact determined that one of the exceptions was not in fact met?

 

Then vote for Mr Jindal. If he has his way, he will make the decision for everyone. If some brutal rapist breaks into your house, rapes your 13 year old daughter and she becomes pregnant, Jindal will force her to carry his child if he has his way.

If some sicko uncle is raping a young niece and she becomes pregnant by him, Jindal will make the decision for the family and force her to have the child.

If a woman faces the choice between both her and the child dying, and having an abortion and the woman living, Jindal will make the decision for her, and force her to die.

People who oppose abortion in all circumstances, like Jindal, are easy to understand. Their positions are simple and straight forward, and can be understood in all circumstances.

This is true about the positions of all fanatics as they are always easy to understand. Abortion is a simple issue only to right wing nuts and fanatics. To everyone else who keeps an open mind it is a very complicated issue.

Positions like this one that Jindal is taking expose a candidate for what they really are. It means that Jindal is very doctrinaire, with little open-mindedness. He sees things in white and black, and for every problem already has a simple solution.

People like that are arrogant and think they have the answer to every problem beforehand.

People like that are not good for America.

 

Thank you for your feelings on Jindal's position.

Remind me to ask about it and I'll have something to match your answer with!
I was asking about Blanco's and others who are "anti-abortion...except in....". Which sounds very nice, shows you aren't cruel, but at the same time don't like abortion. But, has some serious problems in actual practice.
I'm pro-abortion on strictly economic grounds, but have more respect for someone who is strictly anti-abortion that someone who can't make up their mind so puts in place restrictions that sound good in soundbites (which appeal to the less intelligent such as yourself) instead of actually taking a position on the issue, up or down.
What you and Ms. Blanco apparently approve of is outlawing abortion except for rape (or incest or life of the mother). Whereby some gal gets impregnated by a guy, wants an abortion, can't get one unless she cries rape, the "boyfriend" faces rape charges and/or the girlfriend has to lie about being raped to get an abortion.
Or in a situation where a Doctor is forced to lie about the life of the mother being endangered to meet one of you and Ms. Blanco's other exceptions if the woman wants to choose to have one, whereby the Doctor is put in a position of facing legal questioning of his diagnosis since practically any group would have standing to question his diagnosis. Such diagnosis now being paramount to whether the woman could have an abortion since you and Ms. Blanco have determined that is a deciding factor.
It's quite sad that Ms. Blanco and her other ilk confuse what should be a simple issue, you either believe or don't believe in this procedure. If you believe in it, why should a woman have to make a rape accusation or a Doctor have to make a life-in-danger diagnosis.

 

I have never thought about the legal difficulties of a "rape/incest exemption" and I don't know if there is any legal precedent to draw on here, since, in the short history of legalized abortion in our nation, abortion has almost always been either been totally illegal for everyone, or totally legal for everyone. But I am quite sure that doctors have always had the discretion of determining when a pregnant woman's life is in danger and, when asked or legally required to do everything in their power to save both lives that are at stake, they know what to do and how to do it, and if they can't save both lives, then will try to save the mother's life, unless she is willing to sacrifice her life for the life of the child. But I don't think too many doctors will go for something like that. I don't know what medical ethics exist to govern conduct in such a situation.

I'll pitch my personal beliefs on the matter, at the risk of being branded a "religious fanatic."

I am not comfortable with abortion, period. To me, this entire debate revolves around one issue, whether or not the unborn child, developing in the womb, is considered a fully alive human being, with all the rights and priveliges that human beings are entitled to. A secondary question is, if an unborn human being is indeed a human being, and is entitled to the right to life, at what point in his/her gestation does s/he become "fully human" or human, and assume his/her "human rights?" At conception? First trimester? Second trimester? Birth? Where does life begin? Where does "personhood" begin? That was the question asked by the Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade. They wanted laws to be set forth defining, once and for all, when life begins, and when a human being first assumes their human rights by being human. The reason the Court probably ruled the way they ruled in Roe vs. Wade is because, up until the late 19th/early 20th Century, when surgical abortion was perfected as a medical procedure and it was no longer the "hook at the end of a stick," law in most Christian nations stated that personhood/humanity began at birth. In the days when research into prenatal biology was spotty at best and humans really didn't have the power to impact what happened prior to birth (short of the hook-and-stick or throwing yourself down the stairs, which didn't always work), this was logical. Babies were babies when they came out of the womb and cried. Very few could really surmise what they looked like inside the mother and, on rare occassions when they found out, what came out certainly didn't look very human.

Unfortunately, groups like Planned Parenthood, and of course, Nazi Germany, moved forward with abortion in the mid-20th Century, and humanity was perfecting newer, more brutal, and more efficient ways to kill unborn children, much faster than the laws could keep up, much faster than the ob/gyns and prenatal specialists could find the answers they were looking for as to whether or not an un-born human is in fact "alive." Abortion was being legalized in the West by the late '60s and early 70s, way before tools like the ultrasound became widespread and showed how remarkable a baby's development in the womb really is. So today, we have our situation where a debate rages as to whether or not an unborn human is really alive, with ever newer technologies, like the new 4D color ultrasound, showing the ever-present humanity of the unborn child, that abortion advocates are attempting to either ignore, dismiss out of hand, or suppress.

My take: a human being is alive, from the moment of conception, till the moment of death, when the heart stops beating and the the last breath is taken. Life for a human begins at the moment of conception, when the sperm fertilizes the egg. From that point on, it is a living being, with a unique genetic code, a person entitled to his/her full human rights, and no one, not even the mother, should have the power of life or death over that person, any more than a mother should have the power of life or death over her child once it is born.

On rape and incest: A child should never be held accountable for the sins of his/her father or mother. As tragic as rape/incest is, that tragedy is only compounded when an innocent life is taken away in atonement, or to somehow lessen the mother's pain (which doesn't always happen). Catch the offenders and punish them to the fullest extent of the law, but don't kill the child because of it. Instead, devote the full resources of the state to supporting the mother and, should she not wish to keep the child, put him/her up for adoption.

On preserving the life of the mother: Doctors should always have full discretion to use the best, safest, least traumatic course of action to save both lives. If both lives cannot be saved, the mother's life takes precendence. This is a difficult call, like I said I am not certain what medical ethics has to say on this.

On women's rights concerning the matter: No one believes more in individual, God-given Constitutional rights than I. Women, like all American citizens, are fully entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They are entitled to their full Constitutional rights. Yet, nowhere do I see dilineated in the United States Constitution the right of a mother to take the life of her own child, should that child prove to be an inconvenience (on the flip side, I also do not see anywhere that Congress is given the right to pass legislation addressing this matter. So how did this become the domain of the federal government anyway?)

The belief that women's rights and equality can be fully guaranteed only by stripping unborn children of their right to even live is ludicrous. Women who desire not to have children have options to prevent themselves from becoming pregnant. They may use birth control. They may refuse to have sex without condoms. They may use other barriers. They may have their tubes tied. They may abstain from having full out sexual intercourse. They have all kinds of choices to make before they even get pregnant to ensure that they don't. And if, by some miracle, nothing works, or if, by tragedy, they are raped without any form of protection in them or on their attacker, what then? They go through the inconvenience of carrying the child to term, and if they do not desire to have the child, it can be put up for adoption and placed with a family that wants a child but cannot have one of their own. For rape/incest victims, the state should support them through their troubles. For women who have "accidents," they may be put in touch with an adoption agency or their states social service agency to make arrangements for her and the child.

To minimize the "accidents," protection should be widely distributed and easily available and affordable, birth control should be covered under insurance and prescription drug plans if it is not already, and young girls ought to be instructed about the consequences of sex and pregnancy and their options for preventing pregnancy in schools as part of "abstinence first (notice I didn't say abstinence-only) education." There would be less "accidents" and less abortions if women knew there options and if these options were easily accessible.

Now I know Roman Catholics, orthodox Jews, and some other faiths object to birth control, but that is a matter of those groups and their believers. The job of federal and state governments should not be to endorse one particular religious group's vision of what life is and how it should be protected, but to instead, protect the right of all Americans to life. It is not my personal belief that birth control is "interfering with God's way" and the government can't get into the business of interpreting God's way (I do believe we are a Judeo-Christian nation that should acknowledge God, but that is another debate for another time). The government should, however, protect human life, by making it illegal to kill human beings at any stage of their humanity.

What really needs to happen is that there needs to be a grand conference of political leaders, religious leaders of all faiths, women's rights groups, human rights groups, children's advocacy groups, doctors and medical professionals, bio-ethicists, theologians, and scholars, who all need to sit down, and once and for all, define human life, when it begins, when it ends, and what laws ought to be in place to protect human life. That's what we really need to get at, to decide whether or not the being growing inside the womb is really human. Once they have arrived at their conclusions, they need to put them in writing and send them to Congress and every state legislature, so that we may define personhood and the beginning of human life in legal terms and settle this, once and for all.

That's what I think. But I'm just one person.

 

Well your position is 180 from mine on the procedure.

But, at least yours is intellectually honest, unlike Ms. Blanco and her ilk.
Of particular humor are those who blast the strict illegality position while holding a completely unworkable and phony position of their own (and their candidates).

 

CB66 ain't had a whole lot to say in response to that...

Interesting that someone who is actually pro-abortion (though for a different rationale) called him out for basing the same position on utter stupidity, and then he responds with...

Nothing?

Truth hurts, I guess....

 

Read my sig on this one.

 

Re: Well your position is 180 from mine on the procedure.

The people being dishonest are Jindal and those kind of right wing wackos.

As for Blanco's position, it seems clear as a bell to me.

It is not surprising it is not to you Mr Wonderful.

 

I would address you, but you'll just start crying again. LOL

 

Blanco's "position" flows easily into the empty minded