"If you’re going to outlaw abortion, you have to massively improve access to education, counselling, mental and physical health services, AND start prosecuting rapists instead of protecting them."
A terrible and tragic story, but which neither justifies abortion nor abuse upon abuse. And abortion could have left her scarred for life also. The crime of the rapist abuser here warrants the death penalty, while the victim should have received the caring counsel that pro-life centers overall provide, and the resources they can help one obtain, yet were lacking in your mom's time and should also be required now.
I completely agree.
Unfortunately, in some cases the fetus simply isn’t viable (or had already expired) and the law MUST account for that possibility - it is a legitimate basis of “reasonable doubt” as to the criminality of an action. Any criminal law that completely ignores all basis of reasonable doubt or mitigation is inherently unjust and has no place in a civilised society.
Any anti-abortion law MUST allow for the possibility that there are cases where the life of the mother was viable and the life of the infant had already ended, and the procedures necessary to save the mother are not substantially different to those that can kill the unborn.
Or, to put it rather more bluntly... You can try to prosecute a person for murder even if the facts of the case suggest that they were attacking a corpse in a coffin. Just don’t expect any sane jury to convict, if the facts of the case are allowed to be aired in the courtroom.
I don’t know how these laws work in the USA, but based on the mentality of the male elders in the community my mom grew up in and what it was like in the 70s at the time, I wouldn’t be surprised if none of the patriarchs had the first idea what an ectopic pregnancy actually is, or when a D&C or hysteroscopy would be used, or when labor might be induced, or a C-section for that matter - and if they did know, they didn’t care.
Women with stillborn babies (i.e. died in the womb at or after 24 weeks) were expected to stay the course until labor set in. This can dramatically increase clotting and other risks to the life of the mother. In Israel now, hospitals treat a stillbirth as a near emergency, and will not allow the mother to bear a dead fetus for more than three days. In my birth family’s community, they’d have dragged it out for weeks and if a man’s wife died or gave birth to a dead baby, all the sympathies would be with the father.
That’s the kind of community my mom grew up in. She was scarred for life by forced pregnancy at a very young age AND by ostracisation AND by effective imprisonment AND by forced adoption... AND SHE WAS ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES.
So I see that as not really a defensible moral or cultural position. For the clinician it’s a similar ethical dilemma presented with a Jehovah’s Witness refusing simple life-saving treatment for a child because of their personal religious beliefs, or misguided sense of pride.
A far wider topic needs discussion. At what point does the decision of the parent(s) override the duty of care to the child - OR vice versa in the case of an unborn child; how far can a controlling man force his wife or daughter to put her life at risk for the sake of his own pride.