> I won’t hold a woman accountable for having a child put in her against her will.
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You don’t believe in God, right?
Not your god. My religion (Judaism) teaches that abortion is acceptable in cases of rape. I'm entitled to it. Quoting Rabbi Simmons:
"In Jewish law, a baby attains becomes a full-fledged human being when the head emerges from the womb. Before then, the fetus is considered a partial life.
So is it permitted to destroy this partial life?
Generally, no. This is illustrated by a case in the Talmud whereby a building collapsed on Shabbat. The rescue crew does not know if anyone is trapped under the rubble or not. And even if someone is trapped, they may already be dead. Despite these doubts, we push aside the restrictions of Shabbat in order to dig out the rubble - on the chance that it may result in the prolonging of human life. Why? Because every part of human life - even a doubtful, partial human life - has infinite value.
This applies to a fetus as well.
However, there can be certain factors which may create an exception. For example, when partial life threatens a full life. The Talmud discusses a case where doctors say that if the mother continues with the pregnancy, she will die. In such a case, we kill the fetus in order to save the mother. Why? Because when the partial life of the fetus is weighed against the full life of the mother, we give precedence to saving the full life.
Our question now is where to draw the line? What constitutes a "threat to the mother?"
As a general guideline, if the fetus poses a real danger to the mother - i.e. the pregnancy will aggravate a heart condition or will cause the mother to go blind - then there is room for discussion.
What about danger to emotional health? There are certain circumstances where this, too, may be grounds for abortion. For example, if the mother became pregnant through rape, and the thought of bearing this child will cause her a nervous breakdown or severe emotional trauma."
"Western society has slipped far from this Torah value. Of the approximately 2 million abortions performed annually in the United States, about 75 percent are attributed to matters of convenience (i.e. having a baby would interfere with the mother's school or work), or to financial considerations (i.e. a baby is not affordable at this time).
In Judaism, these constitute unacceptable reasons for killing the "partial life" fetus. When one's parents become old and require costly medication, should we then kill them also for financial considerations?!
Or how about when a fetus is diagnosed as having birth defects? Some argue that abortion of a handicapped fetus spares the child a "poor quality of life." Yet who said that having one arm constitutes a poor quality of life?! Should the mother of Stephen Hawking (the world's leading astrophysicist who is near-fully paralyzed) have made a decision that his was a life not worth living? Every time someone loses a limb in an accident, should we kill them?!
Or how about mental retardation? If a set of highly intelligent parents are appalled to discover that their fetus has an IQ of "only" 100, is abortion justified?
Judaism says that this type of selection process is evil. It hearkens to the Nazi program called "T-4," which systematically set out to kill all physically and mentally disabled persons."