Originally posted by Jetstorm
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.
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