[hocndoc]

Marvin,
This is where it gets harder to convince most people, my husband included, but...

Actually, even in rape, abortion is elective. The father may be punished by society, but the mother can't aggress against the child, by libertarian (and conservative).

Technically, biologically, the mother created the oocyte, the womb. She did not intend to be pregnant, but because of the actions of the father, a child who didn't exist at the time of the rape, comes into being. That child has a right to life that is equal to the mother's.

The only reason for abortion is to remove a threat to life to the mother.

[MHGinTN]

Pregnancy has a higher 'life risk' for a woman than non-pregnancy, on a day-to-day basis. With rape, the balance ought be possible such that if the termination option is not exercised within (perhaps) eight weeks from the time of the criminal act, then the child has the right to be born via early termination when the child is viable outside her body (and that time is getting lower and lower, even reaching now to the artifical placenta).