Posted on 10/18/2005 9:49:08 AM PDT by holeinchilada
I figure I'm about 25 degrees to the right of political center in America. Nonetheless, there's one rightwing issue which I wish I'd never heard of, which is the idea of "Right to Life". That, as far as I can tell, is the one basic issue which has kept the criminal democrat party alive over the last 35 years, and it's the one major issue which democrats come anywhere close to being on the right side of.
Not that most abortions should be happening. They shouldn't be. If the people who care about this issue were to put half the time, money, and energy into convincing people not to have abortions which they put into trying to pass draconian laws, the democrat party would die and 90% of the abortion business would probably evaporate.
90 Percent of abortions are basically unnecessary; nonetheless, the ones which are necessary tend to be REAL necessary.
The problem is that the whole idea of there being any such thing as a right to life involves a fundamental logical contradiction and the question of rape brings the contradiction into sharp focus.
What you're really talking about is the question of there being such a thing as a right to life which is sufficient to compell hardship and suffering on another person. In the case of rape, there's no justifying it.
Nonetheless, the law makes no distinction between born persons on the basis of how they were conceived and logically it's hard to picture there being such a distinction amongst the unform. In other words, if ANY unforn could be construed as having a right to life sufficient to compell the mother to carry it to term despite any claims she might have to the use of her own body, then you'd figure the unforn child of the rapist would have the same right.
That's the basic problem.
An article linked from Drudge recently noted that there were something like 94,635 rapes in America in 2004. In other words, the situation which highlights the problem isn't just hypothetical.
Moreover, there have been recent studies which indicate that rape itself is basically a biologically ingrained genetic survival mechanism, and not just some sort of a psychotic crime:
Answers in Genesis Interview with Craig Palmer
Rape is not, typically, the crime of male domination it has been portrayed as by sociologists and feminists in recent years, says a University of New Mexico biology professor.Instead, UNM's Randy Thornhill and Colorado anthropologist Craig T. Palmer have developed a new theory that rape is a complex sexual crime with strong roots in human evolution.
Moreover, contend Thornhill and Palmer, rape "prevention efforts will founder until they are based on the understanding that rape evolved as a form of male reproductive behavior."
That study and others like it raise the startling possibility that by bearing a child for the benefit of a rapist, a woman encourages rapists generally and helps cause other girls and women to get raped.
The only logical conclusion I can come to from all this is that the drive for draconian abortion laws needs to be abandoned, and the effort put into peacefully convincing people not to have abortions. It's one of those areas in life in which the unintended consequences outweight anything positive you might hope to accomplish.
First of all, I'd have to categorize rape as a form of sexual abuse. But look at the spate of female statutory rapists in recent years. And, yes, it is possible for a woman to have her way with a man--against his wishes--while he is unconscious. That's rape, and I would have to agree with the premise of the article being discussed that it's a reproductive strategy--not a healthy one, but a successful one.
Sorry. What I meant to say is when the female rapist impregnates herself, she also imposes a child support liability upon her unwilling victim. I'm taking artistic license by making this analogous to the victim being impregnated. What does this say about my future as an artist?
It takes more than a remote control and a flipping-channels-level of information to understand sexual violence. The internet has a wealth of information, however, especially compared to what you received in a portion of a TV show.
Perhaps you should do some research if you believe that it is important to make this point.
Thanks for posting. I was speechless.
The doctrine of double effect does not apply in this case, as I understand it. According to most accepted interpretations, double effect permits taking an action which generates negative SIDE EFFECTS, not the taking of a directly harmful action which subsequently achieve a benevolent result. In other words, its ok to perform a surgical procedure to save the life of the mother, knowing that the child will die in the process, but it's NOT permissible to kill the baby outright in order to save the mother's life.
Besides, I think you are assuming that the mother's death would AUTOMATICALLY mean the death of the child as well, which is not always the case.
you sully the names of others on that list by including this loser and his screed
Doesn't it seem quite logical, though? Seems perfectly so to me. Men who just can't control their sexual appetite even a tiny bit to keep it to women they actually ASK.
Look it up yourself. My bet is you've done no more research than I, so your point is moot.
I'm a neutral in this regard. I've included lots of threads I find personally reprehensible. Besides, it'll roll off the list in a week, and no one will remember it (except for me) a year from now.
"You're teetering on the edge of idiocy as well."
Why? Isn't it quite logical? There's a difference between "battery" and "rape" - 1 is violent (in the pure English sense), the other is sexual. Some1 at some point in history knew there was a difference to come up w/different terms. Why don't all men who beat the !%@#! out of some woman or murder her have sex w/her?
"So you're a woman (that's what your profile says) and you don't think there's something inherently violent about a man forcing himself upon and inside of a woman? Yes, sex is a motivator, but men want sex all the time, but few resort to using superior physical strength or other threats of violence or actual violence to get it."
Yes I'm a woman, and I think there is a VIOLATION OF MY NATURAL RIGHTS if a man forces himself IN ANY WAY upon me - sticking his thing in me, hitting me, stabbing me to kill. Yet they are all distinguished crimes - rape, battery, murder.
Why does it have to be "violent" in the sense of English, meaning more like "battery"? The most violent the required definition of rape (using the male member) might be is holding a woman captive in place to penetrate her.
You're stretching the "violent" definition beyond common sense. If you go by the "inherently violent" idea as posited w/the mere "holding", then my mother is guilty of "violence" when she had to "hold" boys and girls who were out of control in her special-ed schools.
Just because only a tiny portion of men cannot control themselves enough to simply ASK some woman if she'll bed him, doesn't mean that the genetic overriding desire doesn't exist in those few. You're using the strawman argument there.
Perhaps you simply don't believe anything is genetic.
Who is honestly going to choose to die to give birth to a baby who will never know her mother? Unwed mothers surely are not. I could see a married woman (with a living husband) possibly doing it, but even then it is sketchy. When a person has to make that decision, self-preservation kicks in and makes the decision for us (in most cases). God would not have given us this instinct if this were somehow immoral.
You describe the proper procedure in the case of emergent danger to the mother: "to perform a surgical procedure to save the life of the mother, knowing that the child will die in the process." Under Texas law, at least, this would be defined as an abortion, a non-elective abortion.
And you are right that in the later stage of pregnancy, the child would not necessarily die if delivered.
In fact, statistically, after 15 weeks, it's safer to carry the child than to undergo intentional interventional abortion.
It's important that we make it clear that we would not demand sacrifice of her life that the mother doesn't feel prepared to make.
I guess that for people who know you, it's probably not "breaking news" that you're this stupid, As for the rest of us, well, I don't think very many really care.
I've volunteered and worked with the domestic and sexual violence community (as well as the pro-life community, why do they so rarely overlap?) for nearly 25 years.
You made a poorly referenced statement with flipping channels as your sole source of data.
As I said, if you believe you're right and that the point is important, integrity would cause you to want to learn more and give more substantial references.
I will get you started
http://www.usdoj.gov/ovw/
http://www.vawprevention.org/research/sa.shtml
http://www.nsvrc.org/index.html
Think about the number of rapists who are "popular," married or otherwise have outlets. Think about the child and infant rapists, the ones who rape elderly women.
As for me, I'm getting dressed for the annual Texas Alliance for Life Banquet. I'll check back very late tonight or in the morning.
Under the premise that rape is an effective, albeit repugnant and immoral, reproductive strategy, one could argue, morally, that any pregnancy resulting from rape must be terminated--whether the impregnated one be an innocent victim or the perpetrator. Isn't that kind of the same debate?
Thanks for posting. I was speechless.
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I second that.
Your stats are off. You start with 90% being not needed and proceed downhill from there. Try 99.99999999999999% and work it logically.
Abortion is merely the contraceptive for most people now a days and it is wrong and a violation of the basic constitutiaonal rights of the child being murdered.
The issue of rape or incest only operate to obfuscate the issue. The CDC produces stats on the % of rapes that end up in pregnancy and they are very few. Last time i checked it was somewhere around 3-4 per 100,000. Incest is also one of those things that are used to obfuscate.
Are we to kill a baby because some had relationships with family members? That would mean killing a lot of children in certain states in the USA. Joking aside. If it is incest they have no right to kill. If it is a father, brother, uncle raping a non-consenting girl then it isn't incest it is rape. So prosecute and kill the rapist, save the baby, give the girl psychological and spiritual help.
"BTW if you ever met a person who was conceived through rape, as I have, you would realize that they are regular people just like us."
Amen!
I have as well. These people are innocent. The girl I know happened to be given up for adoption and actually has made contact and continues to communicate with her birth mother.
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