ABORTION AND THE “HARD CASES”: rape, incest, and life of the mother.
What about abortion in cases of rape or incest?
Abortion Q & A -- BY JOHN CARDINAL O'CONNOR, ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK
July 1990 http://priestsforlife.org/magisterium/cardocqanda.html#qa13
Some evils are what we call intrinsic evils, that is evil in themselves, so that no circumstances can justify them. Direct abortion is such an evil. It simply can not be morally justified. This principle holds even in regard to rape or incest. An unborn baby is an innocent human being who has committed no crime, regardless of how conception came about. It is never morally right to destroy an innocent human being.
What About Rape? http://www.prolife.org.uk/about/keyabortion.htm
Abortion is often recommended in cases of rape. But abortion does not undo the rape; instead it compounds violence with violence. It is an indefensible response to a complex situation. Putting aside the injustice of an innocent child being killed for her father's crime, there is evidence that abortion only deepens the trauma of the rape victim as well as taking the innocent life of her child. A rape victim requires special emotional care regardless of whether or not she obtains an abortion. By recommending abortion as a quick and easy way to “lessen the impact”, a disservice is done to raped women.
By promoting abortion specifically in the case of rape one implicitly argues that the means of conception determines the value of a human life. This line of reasoning fails to acknowledge that, biologically speaking, there is no difference between a human being conceived by a loving couple and a human being conceived by rape. Are we to deem born children conceived by rape as having no right to life?
It is also worth noting that statistically speaking, violent rape is extraordinarily unlikely to result in pregnancy; moreover, women tend to love their babies even if they hate the father.
Priests for Life Q&A on Abortion
http://priestsforlife.org/questions.html
A key study on this topic is the book Victims and Victors: Speaking out about their Pregnancies, Abortions, and Children Resulting from Sexual Assault, By David C. Reardon. In this book, read the testimonies of 192 women who reveal that most pregnant sexual assault victims don't want abortion, and those who do abort only suffer more. This is the most comprehensive study published on this theme. www.afterabortion.org
Dr. Theresa Burke also addresses this topic in her book Forbidden Grief, www.forbiddengrief.com. One example from that book is this testimony: "The rape was bad, but I could have gotten over it. The abortion is something I will never get over. No one realizes how much that event damaged my life. I hate my rapist, but I hate the abortionist too. I can’t believe I paid to be raped again. This will affect the rest of my life."
Please also see the following testimony from Jenni Speltz, who was conceived in rape: http://www.priestsforlife.org/testimony/jennispeltz.htm.
In many cases the best choice is adoption. It is important to note that there are hundreds of thousands of couples that want to adopt but have been unable to because so many children are never allowed to be born.
What about the life of the mother? (by Fr. Frank Pavone) http://priestsforlife.org/questions.html
Answer: There are two questions at issue here. One is medical (Is there ever need for an abortion to save the mother's life?) and the other is moral (Would an abortion in that case be justified?) The answer to both questions is no. There is no medical situation whose only solution is a direct abortion, as many doctors have testified. Morally speaking, furthermore, it is never right to directly kill an innocent person, even if good results are foreseen. We do not say that a baby's life is more important than the mother's. We do say that they are equal. You may never directly kill either one of them. If, in spite of the best medical efforts, one or both of them die, nothing morally wrong has been done, because an effort has been made to save life, but has failed. That is far different from killing.
While I do not disagree with the discussion of the wrongness of abortion in the case of rape or incest, I wonder about some situations in which the mother will almost certainly die if she continues the pregnancy.
What is the Catholic belief on what to do in case of ectopic pregnancies? Unfortunately we have no way to transplant the fetus from the extra-uterine site to the uterus, and if the baby is allowed to continue growing in the tube it will certainly lead to the death of both mother and child. The choice is to either sacrifice one to save the other, or to allow both to die.
I do not mean to offend, but as I am not Catholic I don't know what the belief is. I have heard pro-life people go both ways on the issue of ectopic pregnancies.