When a horrific rape leads to an innocent life

The Washington Examiner ^ | August 22, 2012 | Tim Carney

[Academiadotorg]

Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin thinks that, as a scientific matter, Jenni Maas shouldn't exist. Mitt Romney thinks that, as a legal matter, Jenni didn't have the same right to exist as the rest of us do. Many others seem to think her mother should be ashamed that Jenni exists at all.

Jenni was conceived when her mother was raped by a boyfriend as a teenager. She is a human reminder of an uncomfortable truth denied and minimized by people on all sides of the abortion issue: Rape can result in pregnancy, which means it can create innocent babies.

"A lot of people like to sweep it under the carpet," Jenni told me Wednesday. But, if commonly cited statistics are correct, hundreds of thousands of Americans walking around today were conceived in an act of rape. Jenni, and legions like her, raise a tough question for pro-lifers who don't want to talk about rape cases. Her smiling face and growing family -- she has three kids of her own -- is also damning to pro-choice people who argue that abortion is a necessity for a woman impregnated by rape.

[G Larry]

TURN THE TABLES on the Pro-Aborts!

The “Rape & Incest exception” argument has been a Fraud and a Red Herring for over 40 years.

DO NOT answer that question!

Instead, say:

“This argument has been a Fraud and a Red Herring for over 40 years!”
“Bring me the legislation containing this exception, and THEN we can begin to talk.”
“NOBODY, has brought forth legislation with this language, yet it is used to beat up Pro-Lifers at every turn!”

Then, Ask the questioner:
“Would YOU support such restrictions on abortion?”

You can go on to say, you would sign such legislation, because it is a starting point that would save over 1 Million lives a year.

[frogjerk]

Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin thinks that, as a scientific matter, Jenni Maas shouldn't exist

This in disingenous. Who knows what Todd Akin was thinking or trying to get out of his foot-flavored mouth but I don't think Todd Akin believes that Jenni Maas shouldn't exist nor do I think that Todd Akin believes that one cannot conceive a child thru rape. That stretching of the statement by Todd Akin is the left better to liberals and their lies.

[PGR88]

This author of this article uses the abortion-after-rape argument to condemn Akin and Romney, which is ridiculous.

If he is truly concerned about the babies produced by rape, he should be aiming his fire at the pro-abortion industry.

[philman_36]

I was going to post a lengthy reply picking this opinion piece posing as reporting apart on it's obvious bias, but I decided to keep my reply simple instead.

Rapists Exercising Parental Rights over Their Rape Conceived Children: Why the Law Has Failed To Address this Problem Shauna R. Prewitt, Georgetown University Law Center

The Chicago Bar Foundation Young Professionals Board
Shauna R. Prewitt
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP

[Psycho_Bunny]

‘Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin thinks that, as a scientific matter, Jenni Maas shouldn’t exist. Mitt Romney thinks that, as a legal matter, Jenni didn’t have the same right to exist as the rest of us do. Many others seem to think her mother should be ashamed that Jenni exists at all.”

I’m positive Tim Carney’s an asshat.

[Conservaliberty]

“When someone like me ... says, ‘I actually love this child. I actually see her as an extension of me,’ people view me suspiciously. They don’t see me as a legitimate rape victim.”

---

I had a friend in college who was raped and got pregnant. She miscarried after about three months.

She said the miscarriage was like being raped all over again. She said she wanted to have that baby, so that a loving couple could adopt it and something good would have come out of her rape. The miscarriage devastated her.

Advising women to do away with the baby from a rape is like telling them to be raped all over again.

[philman_36]

Raped, pregnant and ordeal not over
Snip...When I was in law school, my criminal law professor introduced us to the crime of rape...
While a student in my final year of college, at age 21, I was raped.
Snip...When faced with the choice between a lifetime tethered to her rapist or meaningful legal redress, the answer may be easy, but it is not painless. For the sake of her child, the woman will sacrifice her need to see her once immensely powerful perpetrator humbled by the court.
I know it because I lived it. I went to law school to learn how to stop it.

So she decided before she went to college, before her criminal law professor introduced her to the crime of rape and before she was raped during her fourth (?) year of college that she was going to go to college to learn how to stop it?

Riiiiiight!

[cartoonistx]

As one who has watched the evolving abortion debate since the 60’s, forgive these observations. The feminists who first lobbied for abortion legalization wanted nothing more than the power to become as sexually irresponsible, without consequence, as men were perceived to be.
Those who opposed them from a religious stance did so, not primarily to protect human life, but to ensure that promiscuity and adultery would always have the potential consequence of pregnancy.
Rapists in those days were executed when convicted and unintended pregnancies often weren’t discovered by friends and neighbors unless they knew why the girl went to visit her distant auntie for 6 months!
The left needed to obliterate shame as a way to destroy American faith in God. The right strove to keep what remained of morality and modesty intact. Neither side wants to remember their original arguments today!

[philman_36]

Oh. look! I found her whole paper!
http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/pdf/98-3/Prewitt.PDF
Pregnancy from rape¹ occurs with “significant frequency.”²

1. For the purposes of this Note, the term “rape” refers to circumstances in which there has been sex without consent as claimed by the assaulted woman; it does not necessarily mean that the perpetrator has been tried and convicted of rape in a court of law.
2. Melissa M. Holmes et al., Rape-Related Pregnancy: Estimates and Descriptive Characteristics from a National Sample of Women, 175 AM. J. OBSTETRICS&GYNECOLOGY 320, 320 (1996).

Well that explains a lot!

[MEGoody]

. . .raise a tough question for pro-lifers who don't want to talk about rape cases.

It's not a tough question at all. Abortion is murder. Murder is not okay just because the person you are murdering had a monster for a father.

[philman_36]

Thus, the stranger-rape prototype both initially and continuously “infect[s] legal judgments about criminality and victimization[,] . . . prevent[ing] many date and acquaintance rapes from being classified as ‘real rapes.’”⁸⁷ As a result, it has “transform[ed] rape from a pervasive phenomenon into an isolated one.”⁸⁸

The footnotes on that page are rather interesting...
86. Susan Estrich, Rape, 95 YALE L.J. 1087, 1092 (1986). Explained another way:

Yes, that Susan Estrich.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Those who opposed [abortion] from a religious stance did so, not primarily to protect human life, but to ensure that promiscuity and adultery would always have the potential consequence of pregnancy."

I know you're talking about 40 - 50 years ago, but I'm old enought to remember some of this, and I have never encountered anyone --- not even by reading historic annals of the early opponents of abortion -- who opposed abortion in order to retain the use of pregnancy as a deterrent to illicit sex.

Most of the 19th century pro-lifers were doctors and/or feminists, and almost all of the 1960-1980 pro-lifers were Catholics. Who, of the early pro-lifers, opposed abortion to curb promiscuity rather than to protect human life?? Not Susan B. Anthony, not Elizabeth Cady Stanton; not Nellie Gray, Brent& Pat Bozell (Sr.), Jack & Sheila Kippley, John & Barbara Willke, Jow & Ann Scheidler, Michael Schwartz, Jo McGowan, Joan Andrews, the Catholic Bishops, the Catholic Family Life Office.

Any generalization must comprise specific instances. Can you name one specific example or instance? Do you have any factual foundation?

I'm interested in the history.

[cartoonistx]

I didn’t mean to imply that no one on the antiabortion side was concerned about the life of the unborn but that many religious folk were much more concerned about abortion’s (and contraception’s) effect on America’s sexual morality and the effect of promiscuity upon marriage and family.Sorry, but I can’t cite any documents supporting what I experienced personally.