Posted on 06/19/2002 12:10:49 PM PDT by gordgekko
You're dealing in shibboleths, not realities.
First, why do you lump crack babies with babies conceived through rape? The rape is indisputably a crime committed against the mother; doing crack is a woman's volitional choice.
Second, you don't need the coercive force of law. There are more adoptive parents than there are babies to adopt. If you go to ParentProfiles.com, for example, you can find parent profiles of couples who are specifically willing to adopt children conceived through rape. When Dr. and Mrs. J. C. Wilke wrote their book Why Can't We Love Them Both? in 1999, there were about two million couples waiting to adopt.
SoothingDave is right in calling your bluff. The specter you raise of a glut of unadopted children is baseless.
She took an innocent life. Should she be free to kill any other children the rapist may have? Does where they are in the growth cycle matter?
Doing the right thing is rarely easy, comfortable or even without great pain. The right thing is still the right thing.
In any case I doubt it would ever become a death penalty case as she, it would be argued, was under severe emotional stress at the time.
a.cricket
In their bookWhy Can't We Love Them Both?, Dr. and Mrs. J. C. Willke address the truth you cited:
She had a problem. Abortion permanently removes the problem. Or is there emotional aftermath?
In recent years it has become clear that these women can and do suffer from Post-Abortion Syndrome. When PAS does develop, a woman, so affected, can carry the same burdens of guilt, denial and depression that a woman who aborted a "love" baby often does. Why is this? At least two dynamics seem obvious. Remember that the rape was done to her. She was not responsible. She was the innocent victim and should bear no guilt. But, by contrast, the abortion will be done by her. She agreed to it. She was a volitional participant in a second act of violence: the killing of her own unborn child. And it is her own unborn child. This is the other inescapable fact of biology that probably is a factor in the development of PAS. The newly-conceived baby is certainly the "rapists child," but he or she is also her child, for half of the new babys genetic material came from her. She may try, but, inside of her, she cannot deny this biologic reality, however unwillingly it happened and however upsetting it may be. And so, to kill this little one by abortion is to participate in a violent, lethal act that destroys a baby who is partly her own flesh and blood. In loving charity, we should never remind her of this. But we dont have to, for she knows it instinctively and all of her maternal feelings may well rebel when faced with being a part of this killing.
"Middle ground"?! Is the infanticide a form of "medical control"?
To save 98% of children from infanticide will get 98% of the objective achieved. Quite a good result!
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