Pretty standard pro-life advertisement, right? But:



Read the eensy-weensy fine print down there in the lower right-hand corner of the picture.

Did you know such things existed? I certainly didn't.

I read of an organization of persons born of rape, and of one such young man who became a medical student.

Makes you think.

Paul

Until recently it seemed your mind was just fine, Barak.

"Feminists For Life"

Does kinda make the mind go "tilt" doesn't it.

Yup. At least they have a website and a Wikipedia entry...

"At least"

I don't wanna know what "at most" may be...



Yeah, I still can't think that one through to any conclusion. I get stuck every time and either start laughing or shaking my head... usually both.
It's a head scratcher.

The only argument for abortion is where the subject has the choice. A pregnant woman should be able to register her desire for one. Then, when the baby is, say, 10 years old, he can make the decision to be killed or not. ONLY the child should be able to make that decision because he's the ONLY one terminally affected by it. If anyone else makes it, it's murder.

I agree, except that I think 10 is a little early.

If the kid makes the decision to be killed, though, there's going to be a big question about restitution for all the time, effort, and expense invested in the kid to that point.

My wife's baby sister was raped. The product of that rape is in his final year of med school.

It's up to the person who was raped, not to me or you.

Like I said before...You're sister inlaw is an incredible and unique woman, please give her another hug for me and tell her so.

Although I think all reasons for abortion are wrong I would have to agree with you on this one, Rape is such a violent and nasty thing!

I would not think ill of someone who had an abortion for such a reason.

� and so much for the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness �

It makes me laugh how many here are so big on the bill of rights, yet many will want to tell someone besides themselves how to live their life. That is a serious problem in America....we have lost contact with the bill of rights and started deciding what is right, well opinions change over time and now we are be oming the nanny state.

She would wonder what you were thinking. She did not make the decision to save a life, in her mind the having the child was the only option.

BTW, her second child, a daughter, entered the NW School of Naturopathic Medicine this Fall.

I originally started this thread not to argue about abortion in cases of rape and incest but to share with the world what I'd discovered about the existence of the Feminists For Life; but I'm also surprised at the inconsistency of some here.

Are you pro-abortion? Okay, it makes perfect sense that you'd be particularly pro-abortion in the cases of rape and incest.

But if you're anti-abortion, then why are you anti-abortion, and how can that reasoning, whatever it is, possibly not apply in cases of rape and incest?

For purposes of full disclosure, I'm personally anti-abortion right down the line, but I have never seen a proposed law prohibiting abortion that I didn't think was either a horrible miscarriage of justice in itself or would lead to appalling unintended consequences.

I'd much rather see abortion dealt with through social stigma than through government action.

Sue, Barak. Why not? Google "atheists for life." The pro-life movement is not just a religious issue. It's a moral issue so it's everyone's business, just like murder, rape, etc. etc.

Sure, I understand. (You meant "Sure, Barak" above, right?) It's just that my understanding of the feminist viewpoint would be incompatible with an anti-abortion position. "Feminists For Life" feels to me like "Cowboy Action Shooters Against Guns" or "Environmentalists For Strip-Mining."

Yep, those conceived by rape are no less a person than others. God didn't make a mistake in their conception, even if he permitted the evil act that caused it. God can bring blessings from the evil acts of mortals.

Yes, thank you. I meant "sure."

If you were a woman and raped, what would you do? IF you did not have a choice, what direction would you go? Who are you as a person and are you responsible/emotionally strong enough to not only HANDLE being raped, beaten, violated and god knows what else but now you find out your giving birth. How's that going to affect you in the 8th grade? Can you finish high school? Bummer about your college plans. Hope there is someone who can carry you and your newborn through those BUMPY spots.

Hmmmm. Went from planning a semester abroad to being raped, beaten, pregnant, childbirth, motherhood and enough emotional torment to last 20 lifetimes plus 10 more. I am glad I am not a woman and have no interest in making a choice for her. But I believe it should be their choice. If they are not responsible enough to raise a child out of choice then all bets are off on the welfare of the child thrust upon them....

JMO

W

First of all, take all the motherhood and child-raising elements out of your argument, because there are plenty of folks out there who are eager to adopt babies conceived from rape or incest. No new mother, at least in the United States, is under any obligation to raise a baby she doesn't want.

Second, your emotional torment to last 30 lifetimes is a bit overblown, I think. Arguments depending on a surfeit of drama for their force tend to be bad arguments.

Third, whatever amount of emotional torment is involved in being raped and impregnated must be exceeded by the amount of emotional torment involved in being raped and impregnated and then choosing to murder your own baby. That's not a small thing: I know personally women who have had abortions and then been horrified at themselves in later life.

Okay...now what was your argument again?

Good points, Barak. Hell, I still occasionally feel pangs of regret from accidentally starving a pet tortoise to death when I was eight. I can only imagine how I'd feel if I were responsible for the death of my own offspring.

PS To this day, if I see a tortoise in danger or distress, I stop everything and give it a hand. Countless times I've pulled over on the side of a highway to run out, grab a tortoise, and run him to whatever side he was trying to get to, deep into the rough. Still don't feel like I've made amends.

Me too. Just Google "I regret my abortion" to find a huge number of stories.

That may be true but she absolutly made the choice not to end a life which is why (I think)she came to the conclusion that having the child was the only option.

I could be wrong not having gone through the experience. one of the reasons I'm so adamant about Abortion is I had a girlfriend that went and had one without disscusing it with me now I have a dead child to think about, I think about that child often and it's something I will have to live with because this girl didn't have enough courage to think of anyone else.

Barak, that's a conundrum I've worried over since college. Leaving religion aside, preservation of (innocent) life is paramount. Nobody wants to be killed, it's one assault we cannot overcome. So as an individual and as a society preserving life must be a paramount virtue. And bang you're right back to the question of when life begins. Some opine this, some opine that but nobody knows. If preservation of innocent life is truly a paramount virtue we can only say with certainty that it's at conception or sometime after, however conception occurs. Saying life begins sometime after conception is guessing. How comfortable can one be with that? Some propose that life ends when age-related dementia reaches some arbitrary point.


Me too, but I can say that about any homicide. I see a somewhat greater role for government (society) than you do. If preservation of human life is a paramount virtue, I believe it is incumbent on society to protect and assist those who cannot do so on their own.

(Yeah, super short version with a lot of holes. Books have been written...)

You guys that think raped women should be forced to carry the baby.....would you offer up your wife to save another woman the torment? I thought not.

Yup.

As a Christian, I don't believe preservation of human life is the paramount virtue, of course (and I suspect that if I pushed you hard enough with the right examples you'd decide that it wasn't either, at least not in some cases), but I believe it's pretty darn important.

And, of course, I believe that the phrase "incumbent upon society" dissolves into inconsistency, contradiction, and meaninglessness if you examine it closely enough.

But beyond that, the feature that makes prohibiting abortion qualitatively different from prohibiting other murders is that it's a whole lot easier to prove that a non-abortion murder has taken place than it is to prove that an abortion has taken place. There are measures that can be taken to make it reasonably certain that a prosecutor can prove that a baby has been conceived and aborted (as opposed to miscarried), but all the ones I've heard require massive and appalling usurpations of liberty for huge numbers of women who would never dream of having an abortion.

On the other hand, "Ooh, look, a dead body with forty-three stab wounds! There must have been a murder!" Much easier.

Why do you believe this, HC?

This is one of those topics where I get interested in people's religious backings and how they view abortion. I see some are so anti that they would scorn a woman who was raped for the though of abortion.....let me tell you, living with a woman who was raped, it is a life of hell for them.

I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that some can attempt to make decisions based on someone else's life. Where does the ole' thou shall not judge come in?

Nobody in their right mind would offer up their wife or daught to be raped, yet many will actively tell another how to live after the event.....seems rather judgemental to my eye.

One should experience the joy in the eyes of a 10 year old that was knocked up by her grandfather or a 13 year old that is carrying her dad's kid.

Amen.

In the case of out family it was 100% her decision. She did not even consider an abortion. But I would feel the same about the either way.

But I will tell you abortion has consequences on more than just the baby and the mother. My own mother got pregnant when she was young and had one. In my later life I feel the loss of that older sibling along with the seven that were still born between me and my sister. It is like I knew then and they are now dead. Hard to explain but to me it is real.

I was really asking for arguments. You know, with premises/reasons and conclusions. Not just more unsupported assertions.

I still don't quite get this all. Its ok for the body to refuse to become pregnant or abort itself. But when you had no desire to become pregnant and through no act of your own volition, you are supposed to change your mind and have a child and support that child?

I"m not sure how we'd handle an issue like that here, but I certainly feel that the woman who has to bore the brunt of the issue for 9 months or so should have a say, as should the family that has to do the supporting.

Some issues are so tricky that it should be up to the "owners" to make the decision, not from the gallery of others who do NOT have to bear the burdens.

How many of you (if you could) would make your own daughter go through with a pregnancy caused by a rape?

For me - no way.

It would be between my daughter - and her physician - with no other opinion needed.

Yep

Did I say that was wrong?

Many may rationalize the "justification" for it all that they care to, but every abortion is the intentional destruction of an innocent human life.

This is the FACT that's too often, too easily ignored � usually for the sake of a pre-existing personally preferred conclusion � without any consideration at all except careful, tunnel-vision concentration on ways to support that desired conclusion.

There are, of course, many glib answers �

� but no easy answer that I know of.

And many of us would kill a rapist in a blink, but two blinks later.....we could have killed our grandsons father.

Rape sucks. If you don't believe me, offer up your loved one.....then tell me about it.

I did, what is your point!!!!

And I watched the beautiful 14 year old daughter of a good friend struggle with being raped until she took her life.

Nobody here said rape was good or than any woman should have to deal with the aftermath. I firmly believe rape should be a death penalty crime. You screw with a woman's life that much you deserve to die.

We simple folks cannot explain it, but God has a PLAN.

There are no accidents, there are no coincidences. And so very many times, what we think of as bad results in something that is very, very good.

Abortion is murder, no matter how anyone tries to explain it away.

Oh, by the way, There is a section in the Didache, which was the first Catechism of the Catholic Church, on abortion. The Didache pre-dates every one of the Gospels and it was basic instruction for Catechumens in the one-year training before entering the Church

Didache 2.1 clearly states, "You will not murder a child, born or unborn."

Vatican II reinstated this ancient practice of one-year Catechumen training and called it RCIA. I am a product of that wonderful training, PLUS I taught it for two years.

Seems like the folks of The Way got it right 2,000 years ago.

God Bless,

Steve

Allow those to deal with their lives as they see fit.

The child who's aborted is the least culpable person who's involved in the whole affair.

But also by far the least capable of self-defense � which makes its involvement (by what logic?) a capital offense with no right of due process, advocacy, counsel, or appeal?

I'm fully aware of the unimaginable anguish of unjustifiable pregnancies, and I'm not in the least insensitive to them � I'm just baffled by the notion that the least culpable individual who's involved is supposed to pay the penalty for it. (And remember that that anguish, no matter how much the execution of the most convenient participant may ameliorate it, isn't going away.)

All should be christian, but who would HE force to be so?

I was trying to speak philosophically and leave religion out of it, and preservation of (innocent) human life is A paramount virtue. Sweeping generality of course. Suppose I can't help but be influenced by my religious belief that as an absolute truth the taking of an innocent human life is never justified even if the consequences are disturbing. ("Innocent" in that context is yet another interesting question.)

"incumbent upon society" is indeed an awkward phrase. I think I mean to say that virtues (truths) should apply universally, not only concerning one's self. (This can devolve into a discussion of absolutism versus relativism.) One's influence in the development of society (government) is an extension of one's ability to promulgate that virtue. And if it is held as a truth one would be negligent not to do so, and not faithful to his beliefs.

Note this is confined to truths in the philosophical sense, not judgement calls which make up the great bulk of governmental action.

Agreed. We don't do near enough to discourage rape or to punish those who perpetrate it. They should die.

That is EXACTLY what we did. She was raped, she conceived, SHE made the decision. He, the product of this rape will be a Doctor at the end of this school year. Again, what is your point.

Goon rapes and impregnates girl. Who's guilty? Who pays?

Father impregnates daughter. Who's guilty? Who pays?

Persuasive boy friend impregnates adventurous young girl friend, then disappears. Who's guilty? Who pays?

Why the innocent?

Why not the guilty?

So you believe it just that a child should pay for his father's crimes?

Doesn't bode well for my kids...

You have faulty logic. No one has said that it should be a pleasure for a raped woman to carry their baby. That isn't the point and you know it.

Your question proves nothing.

If you had taken Bio 101, you'd know that life begins at conception. If the egg and sperm were from human beings, then the life is a human being too.

Well said, Ken.

Gee she has a life because someone didn't murder her!

Yep, if rape were a simple matter for all to understand the meaning of, that should be the case as it used to be when everyone knew what a rape is. Today, however, they call it rape if the next morning a girl decides she made a mistake the previous evening.

Until I can get pregnant from rape or incest, I'll keep my [bleep] mouth shut and leave it to those who can be affected.

Not quite right! Bio 101 teaches the fact that life began generations ago (when is another debate topic altogether, for another discussion).

The sperm, part of the father, is alive.

The ovum (egg), part of the mother, is alive.

The zygote, the ovum fertilized by the sperm, is alive. And it's a brand-new individual, not a part of either the father or the mother. It's in the mother, but it's not part of her � just as a shirt button swallowed by the father would be in him but not part of him.

This is true whether the individual is a mouse, an elk, or a human � a simple fact of biology.

IIRC from too many decades ago, looking at zygotes through microscopes, the zygote contains nothing that can be identified as either sperm or ovum. It's completely and obviously a brand-new and distinctly different organism. But it doesn't generate life � it has gotten its life from the two other organisms that formed it.

Why?

To be more accurate, I should have said the new life begins at conception.

Yep!

Yup. Google "law of biogenesis". Like begets like.

This will get you. What happens to a eighteen year old girl living on her own and working for a living if she is raped and becomes pregnant. In Oregon if she has no insurance, as in a young lady just a couple of months into a job, she cannot get help from the state unless she will give the name of the father. Never mind if she is about the fifth one raped by a man of the same description and the police are looking for him, no name, no help... unless she wants an abortion. The family all helped and we paid.

My last look at this pathetic thread.

Im not going to read thru all these posts but just want to share my own. I have a nephew that was born from a rape victim whom is my sister in-law. I thank GOD she didnt choose abortion.

Instead, you would execute the child for the crime of it's father. That's barbaric.

Aw c'mon guys, that's commonplace shorthand for when does a person with cognizable human rights, what rights, and to what extent, come into being. Not simply the biological event.

As soon at he or she is a distinct, living, human being, which occurs at conception.

Circular "reasoning" � "reasoning" using a prechosen conclusion as a "premise." Result � gibberish.

Hm? It has been debated for millenia as to when the soul enters the body. Not quite so long in jurisprudence as to when personal rights attach but at least back to the Roman empire. I would argue only that we should treat both instances as at conception because we don't know. We can only say with certainty that in either case the question doesn't arise before conception. Believing wrongly has difficult consequences. How specific cases should be addressed after that point is another matter.

I hope you never have to deal with the aftermath of rape.....and were anyone to tell my loved ones how they had to decide their lifes fate, god help them.

Wow is all I can say. It's barbaric to allow a woman to choose how her life will be after rape, but not to force her to live the memory for all time......yikes.

This is what makes America, America.

IOW, when Man, in all his self-assumed judgement and for whatever may be his own purposes, deigns to recognize the rights that God has already given that person.

Oh does that statement open fresh cans of worms! I was hoping to steer philosophical but in vain. Which is neither good nor bad, just the inevitable course of events it seems.

What's barbaric is you trying to force your will on the victim of a crime that you yourself will never be the victim of.


It's not your body and you weren't the victim so how can you have the audacity to make the victim suffer a 2nd injustice by forcing her to carry the byproduct of the crime committed against them to term? And lets be real clear here, the woman will be suffering another trauma if the very thought of what is inside her forces her to relive the original crime against her over and over again.



I'd love to hear some of you self righteous do-gooders if your daughter or loved one was pulled off a street by 5 blacks, beat to a pulp and violated in a most cruel manner. Tell them,...but, but,..it's an innocent child inside of you.

Imposed morality, of any flavor...on any platform, is wrong and should be put down...IMO

I know this thread is several pages long by now, but keep in mind that the original ad, at the top of the thread, came from Feminists for Life. Feminists. You know, females.

Whatever the merits of the viewpoint, it's evidently not one held only by men.

Jesus christ was a product of RAPE..

That's like saying that for a guy to flap his arms and fly to the moon is wrong and should be put down.

It's an academic point.

Morality cannot be imposed from outside. Someone acting in a particular way because he fears retribution if he acts otherwise is motivated by law, not morality.

A man who acts morally does so because he chooses voluntarily to choose his own behavior in such a way that it approaches a moral standard that he has willingly adopted for himself.

A rapist (in the classical sense, now, not one of the more modern watered-down versions) who impregnates his victim requires her, among other things, to make a decision between at least two unpleasant alternatives--making room in her life on very short notice to carry a pregnancy to term, or murdering her own child.

It's a heinous violation of her rights to force her into such a choice, which is one of the reasons that we think of it as such a terrible crime.

But looking for a cheap, quick way out of it--well, okay, it's murder, but in this case I guess we can give you a pass--isn't a solution to the problem at hand, and defrauding the victim into thinking it is one is a further violation of her rights.

Regardless of what the government says, if she has an abortion she will become a child-murderer, and years later when she's lying in bed staring at the ceiling wondering if it was a boy or a girl she killed and whether she would be a grandmother by now if she hadn't, the government will not be there with a solution.

It's one of those bad things that you can't make better. But you can definitely make it worse, that's for damn sure. You can make anything worse by denying reality.

Yah, because she was only a Jew, right, and not a real person, and therefore without moral agency and incapable of consenting?

I've heard it before. It doesn't impress me.

The group was founded to counter the Leftist/Democrat propaganda/narrative that put that idea in your head.

Great post, Ken.

the way I read it she diden't give her consent, where in the bible did she give her consent?

The Holy Ghost is a rapist??

Well said.

Luke I, 38, i.e., First Chapter of Luke, verse thirty-eight.

Exactly.

You are funny.HAHAHA

What are you misconstruing so as to find that funny?

Sorry if this is filled with redundancies, probably already all covered. I had to pull this thread back up and see where it went. 3 pages left to read.



Shouldn't a mother's love for her child, her own flesh and blood, outweigh her loath for the child's sire? Cannot she set aside past torment?

By this reckoning.....
well...

How many young unwed mothers hate their x-boyfriend/baby-daddy?
How many x-wives hate their x?
Do they take it out on their child?

Yes. Some do, I'm sure, to a degree.
But how many to the point of killing the child? or even just wishing it dead?

I'd rather it be wished I were dead than be.

"Who are you as a person and are you responsible/emotionally strong enough to not only HANDLE being raped, beaten, violated and god knows what else but now you find out your giving birth."
I can't answer with 100% certainty, of course, because I"m not a woman, but they're two completely separate experiences... 3/4 of a year apart.

I understand sex is the cause of pregnancy.
I understand rape can give rise to hatred.
but DAYUM.

Was either the child's fault?
Has he any guilt in the situation?
Does guilt increase as he goes through life?

I understand, the child was not conceived out of love.
Neither was the child of a promiscuous young woman.
In many cases, neither was the child of a married couple now divorced, but rather lust.

The child didn't ask for any of it.
Knew nothing about it.
Didn't understand it.
Wasn't even present.

In every case, it has nothing to do with the child and the child has nothing to do with it.

No fault. Guiltless.
Unassociated and unaware.
Picture........ perfect.......... innocence.

Dayum.
Just........... dayum.

Seems to me mature people can draw lines of separation.
Even immature ones know right from wrong. Guilt from innocence.

Life from death.

One of the hallmarks of immaturity is selfishness.
Could any human act be more selfish?

Don't want to be inconvenienced?
Expect difficulty facing potential future reminders?

Just can't live with yourself with an old memory in there?

Adoption.
Orphanage.
Hell, even hopeless street urchin doomed to a meager existence is better than dead.

I know which I'd prefer.
And I know which I'd rather not be haunted with all the rest of my days.
And where oh where IS that instinctive mother's love?

I think it was St. Augustine who said:

"The world is a safe judge".

Along that line of thinking,most folks just "know" that - biology,philosophy, and religions be damned - there IS a difference between a first term abortion and one performed [or allowed ] later.

The idea that the abortion question MUST be resolved along a clear black/white line is a huge departure from our way of looking at other events culminating in the death of a person.We have laws ranging from "justifiable homicide" to "capital murder",with many other definitions in between.

We don't say that ALL homicide is wrong,but some is more wrong than others.

We [ St. Augustine's "world" ] say some is justified,and some is not.

Making exceptions for rape,incest,and the mother's PHYSICAL health makes sense to most folks....... me included.

BTW...I DID read all the posts in this thread before posting,so I know I'm at odds with some guys whose opinions I don't differ with lightly.

Very well stated Curdog.

Who among us here can tell me, clearly, simply, and plainly enough for my feeble mind to understand �

If "these truths" aren't indeed "self-evident" � "that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" � then who endows 'em, and when?

The "Who" part is easy,It's The Creator.

The "when" part is equally easy...... if a clear line Must be drawn,the answer is "at conception".

I'm arguing that it is inconsistent to demand a "clear line" with regard to abortion when we allow for shades of gray with regard to other homicides.

It's not the mother's life in question. The whole premise of pro-life belief is that the fetus is a separate human life, with a right to continue to live that supercedes the right of a mother to kill it. The mother should have no more right to kill a 2 month developed fetus than she should have a right to kill a 2 year old child. The two actions are morally identical.
It's fine to address the issue as a rights issue. But realize that half of America believes that two people are involved (the mother and the child), not just one (the mother). If we all thought that a fetus was a lump of tissue, there wouldn't be an abortion debate.

Believe what you want, the FACT is that the body involved is not mine, yours or the governments, and none of us should have the right to impress our beliefs on them....it is America. I am not for abortion personally, but if we continue to nickel and dime American rights away.....we are on a path for disaster.

Exactly.

"body?"

bodies

By that defective reasoning, a woman should be at liberty to kill her husband, or anyone else. "Who are you, after all, to try to control her body? If she chooses to use her body to murder the milkman, that's her free will, and who are you to interfere?" We're saying that this is an entirely one sided perspective to the issue. There's another human being involved in all those decisions. When you make your "arguments," what we're hearing is something precisely parallel to the above.

Suddenly I see where you are coming from. Perhaps it would be best if all men and women during ovulation, be disallowed from any activity which may place themselves in harms way, for afterglow they are carrying a potential human inside them.

Keep on trying to rule others lives and complaining that the government is taking away your own liberties, it defines hypocrisy.

Been mulling this over a bit more �

Can't think of any Scripture that'd shed light on the matter, but the ramblings 'n' rattlings in my ol' gourd suggest that God endowed us with those rights when He created human life.

Long before my time.

So I guess that I'm just guessing.

What about the liberties and rights of the child?

That's what the whole debate boils-down to, isn't it?

I can't believe I agree with TRH. But I do. In spades.

There might yet be hope for you.