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Posted on 08/25/2012 8:30:09 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Republican Todd Akin is standing firm. He has refused to bow to pressure to withdraw his candidacy for the U.S. Senate after he made a comment that Gary Bauer of The Campaign for Working Families called, "a gift to our political enemies."
When the Missouri Congressman was asked by a St. Louis TV station to state his views regarding possible exceptions for abortion, he responded, "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." He added: "But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. You know I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."
For all his good intentions of trying to put the focus on the right to life of the unborn, Akins' use of the phrase "legitimate rape," which he later called a "misstatement," and for which he apologized and asked for forgiveness, has resulted in fierce castigations from Democrats and the liberal media. It has also brought calls from his fellow Republicans to withdraw from the race against incumbent Claire McCaskill.
Ann Coulter wrote, "If Akin truly loves his country and genuinely wants Roe v. Wade overturned, he will step aside and allow another Republican to run in his place." Coulter and others have said Akin should have been better prepared to respond to the question.
"How about saying," she offered, "'Yes, it's still a life, but more people are killed in drive-by shootings in Chicago every year. You give us the 2 million abortions that aren't a result of rape and incest and we'll give you the few thousand that are.'"
Coulter was correct in pointing to the huge number of deaths every year at the hands of abortionists. But her response still misses the mark on two points.
As lawyer Rebecca Kiessling, who was herself conceived in rape, says, "Rape exceptions in the law actually put the government in the position of having to ascertain when the child was conceived, who the father is, whether the child was conceived during the alleged rape or during intercourse with her husband or boyfriend, and if the child was conceived during the time frame of the alleged rape, then the government would need to determine whether the sexual intercourse was consensual or not."
According to Kiessling, the "rape exception" only perpetuates injustice against rape victims whose accounts are viewed with skepticism. She says that "it further leaves the majority of impregnated rape victims wholly unprotected under the law. Rape exceptions suggest that a 'real rape victim' couldn't possibly love 'the rapist's baby' and that rape victim mothers don't exist."
This assumption was expressed by Susan Milligan in U.S. News and World Report. She called children conceived through rape, "spawn." Such comments deserve as stern a rebuke as Akin's do. No child is any less human because he or she was conceived during a rape. Such a claim denies the biblical truth that all children-including the unborn-are created in the image of God. The circumstances of their conception are irrelevant. The baby in the womb is an innocent human person whose inalienable right to life must be protected just as much the baby outside of the womb.
Coulter's response also overlooked the fact that abortion itself is a traumatizing experience. The truth is:
abortion hurts women. Giving a woman the abortion option-whether she is the victim of a rape or a married woman with unplanned pregnancy-is not the "compassionate answer." Abortion does not bring healing; it brings misery, pain, and suffering, as millions of women who have had abortions can attest.
After 39 years of legal abortions in America, the statistics on the effects of abortion on women are nothing short of tragic:
•65 percent of women who abort report symptoms Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that they attribute to their abortions.
•Women who abort have a 62 percent higher risk of death from all causes for at least eight years after their pregnancies.
•Suicide rates in women are 6–7 times higher after an abortion.
Supporters of the abortion industry want to hide the truth that abortion is harmful to women. Every woman considering having an abortion should be told the fact that 31percent of women who have abortions suffer health complications afterwards.
•Women who abort are twice as likely to have pre-term or post-term deliveries in subsequent pregnancies.
•Women who abort are more likely to experience infertility, stillbirths, and miscarriages.
•Women who abort have a significantly increased risk of breast cancer and cervical cancer. (See the Elliot Institute's Life-Threatening Risks of Abortion)
As Rebecca Kiessling observes, Rep. Akin is not the first political candidate to have run afoul of the media over the question, "What about rape and incest?" "The problem," she says, "is not with these candidates' values. The problem is how they express them."
Kiessling says candidates should respond to the question by giving the following three-part answer:
First, according to the Supreme Court, the death penalty is "cruel and unusual punishment" and rapists don't deserve the death penalty. However, if the rapist father doesn't deserve such punishment, how can we say that the innocent child conceived in rape deserves to die for the crimes of her father?
Second, Keissling points out, rape victims are four times more likely to die within the next year after the abortion, with a higher rate of suicide, murder, drug overdose, etc.. "If we truly care about rape victims," she says, "we should protect them from the rapist, and from the abortion, and not the baby. A baby is not the worst thing that could ever happen to a rape victim-an abortion is."
Finally, notes Kiessling, rape victims choose abortion at half the rate of the average unplanned pregnancy, which is over 50 percent. "Only 15-25 percent of rape victims choose abortion…. The majority of rape victims choose to raise her child - not 'the rapist's baby'-HER child." At her website, Rebecca has gathered stories of women who became pregnant by rape and either regret aborting, are raising their children, or are birth-moms. She also has stories of those who were conceived in rape and/or incest.
The answer to the question, "What about rape and incest?" is clear-and it's not abortion. Two wrongs do not make a right.
-- Dr. Karen Gushta is a writer and researcher for Truth in Action Ministries (formerly Coral Ridge Ministries). Her most recent book is How Can America Survive? The Coming Economic Earthquake. She has also written The War on Children: How Pop Culture and Public Schools Put Our Kids at Risk (2009) and co-authored Ten Truths About Socialism (2010). Dr. Gushta is a former board member of the Broward County Right to Life and is Vice-President of Broward County Eagle Forum. Her doctorate is in Philosophy of Education.
When you’re ready to stop being insane, do let me know, ‘till then please feel free to discuss this insanity academically amongst yourselves.
Your tag line is the most fitting & appropriate I’ve ever seen
And you are quite sick. Get some help & get Christ.
I just wanted you to know that all pro-lifers are not like the ones attempting to label you to fit their template.
This whole discussion reminds me of something that happened not too long ago. I recall the state of Idaho, back in 1990, had a proposed law that passed in their legislature and would have banned abortion except for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. Most people in Idaho favored that law. National Right to Life, Focus on the Family, and many other pro-life groups were in strong support of this law as it would remove 98% of abortions in that state. The pro-life groups mentioned tried to encourage as many people as they could to call into the govenor’s office and encourage him to sign it into law.
It failed because the govenor, under tremendous pressure from all sides, vetoed the bill. But, that’s not all to the story. There were other “pro-life” groups who vigorously campagined against the law because it allowed for the exceptions of rape, incest, and life of the mother. Even though 98% of all abortions would have been stopped - it didn’t matter to these people.
They felt themselves “true to the cause” of the unborn. Unswerveing in their principles and saw themselves as special arbiters of the pro-life cause.
I believe that some of the blood of all those babies who could have been saved since 1990 within the state of Idaho will be on these peoples hands. Yes, the govenor made the decision, but had the voices in support of the law been louder, perhaps there would have been a different outcome. But, they worked against the proposed law and helped to bring about who knows how many innocent unborn babies deaths - all because they couldn’t get everything they wanted. And, they felt very self-righteous about it too.
Yes, I agree that the child conceived by rape should not bear the punishment the rapist deserves. I think, should abortion laws ever return to only in the cases of rape, incest, or life of the mother, that the argument NOT to abort even in those cases could be made and that many, many women would probably choose not to abort - but, to force them to do so under such circumstances is never going to be accepted by society at large.
So, I guess I just wanted to encourage you to keep on speaking truth.
Yes, it fits me, that’s why I put it there.
However, I am not sick, I do not need help and I have Christ.
You are not going to guilt trip me into forcing the victim of a forceable rape to bear the product of that rape.
That is a terrible choice for anyone to face and I, for one, refuse to make it worse by telling such a person what she must do.
Perhaps it’s you that is actually heartless.
>Those honorable rules served our country well for nearly 200 years. Then we shot ourselves in the foot in 1972.
Time changes civilization. We no longer choose our mates using brute force or a club to drag them to our cave dwelling. Nor do we kill or leave them if they can not provide offspring.
Changing the things we can and moving on from those we can’t takes more strength than to become a hermit in the political world.
Keep calling us names. Whatever.
But the logic can’t be refuted. If you can defend abortion, then you can defend rape.
in most states the father (ie rapist) has full rights to the child so adoption is not always possibe. Until that changes many women will not want to have the baby.
Same as if she had been asked prior and as she should have been.
I am not going to force her consent on her. That is for her to do or not do. It isn’t for the law, or politicians, or you or anyone else but her to do.
********************************
Life must be so easy for you.
I am the one who was called Nazi, and your “logic” is insanity.
I have love & compassion for raped women.....and their children. I think that as a society we can do a lot better for them than convincing them that abortion is somehow a magic eraser that will take away the pain of their rape. Why don’t you do a little research & read the multitudes of testimonies of raped, pst-abortive women who comment that the abortion was the most painful part of the experience.
Murder is murder regardless of the circumstances surrounding one’s conception. You sem to disregard that fact.
I stand by my original assertion. If you’re in favor of ripping an unborn child to shreds, then you are sick.
The child who is conceived by rape or incest is an innocent life. Why do the pro abortion crowd argue that we should allow an innocent life to be taken? Odd how the same people who are anti death penalty because “taking life is wrong” are so quick to advocate the death of innocents
So if she hunts down and murders her rapist you are just fine with that. After all, that was HER decision. So female drug use and prostitution must be just fine because "that is her decision". And you want to call everyone around here "crazy"?
Mostly, yeah, works for me.
Thank you, I really appreciate your post.
It’s not like I want abortions to occur. It is killing no matter how one looks at it, it’s a tragedy.
However, there is just no way that I assume the right to tell a woman who was just raped and impreganted without her consent that she must no bear the child of that rape without her consent.
I would rather die myself than do that.
Certainly, I hope that she chooses to have the baby and either raise it or put it up for adoption. But not every woman will choose that, and I cannot say that I would choose that were I raped and impregnated.
I don’t know, I haven’t walked in those shoes, it’s hard for me to imagine that scenario.
But one thing that I know for certain is that her consent must be sought. I refuse, I absolutely refuse to be party in depriving her of that.
No I dont seem to disregard that fact. I have said that it is killing.
I am not in favor of ripping unborn children to shreds, I am in favor of seeking a rape victim’s consent that the rapist refused to seek.
The tunnel vision that is going on here is ASTOUNDING.
If she hunts down and murders her rapist, she would not be convicted of murder by me. Maybe by you, but not by me.
Some killings are justifiable.
What’s conservative about driving people away from being anti-abortion, as your heroes are doing?
Go back and read about Jesus and the woman taken in adultery.
Just as in the case of aborting a child to save the life of the mother, I consider abortion after rape to be an act of self defense. No, the child did nothing wrong to deserve the abortion, but the woman has done nothing wrong either. Some argue that the abortion is another wrong to add to the rape. Others may conclude that being forced to go through a pregnancy is another wrong forced onto the rape victim.
Giving the child up for adoption is another issue. The woman now has to go through life wondering about the welfare of the child, which can be torture. Others may say that she will never get over the abortion. Neither situation is one that anyone would freely choose. So, if the only choices left are horrible ones, in my mind the least we can do is to allow the party who has been hurt to make the choice and see if that may help them put some closure on the event.
I think some of the men posting on this thread need to ask themselves if they could raise the child fathered by the man who raped their wife.
As a husband and father myself as well as someone who understands that the baby did nothing wrong, I just don't think I would want that child anywhere around my family.
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