Replies

...protect innocent life from conception to natural death, regardless of whether a baby is a product of rape or incest...

So would you smile when you congratulated a raped teen on her pregnancy? Strap a 10 year old impregnated by a father or an uncle to a gurney in order to prevent her from leaving the country and getting an abortion?

Just how deep is your depravity and your willingness to ensure that a full percent of a raped woman's life is devoted to carrying and nurturing the progeny of the criminal that raped her, all so that there is another baby to sell?

Next to murder, rape is the most heinous crime imaginable, and I believe we should impose capital punishment on rapists. Rapists are the scum of the earth, and do not deserve to breathe the same air we breathe. But the baby, an innocent party in this crime, does not deserve to die. While I understand perfectly well that it would be very difficult for a woman to raise a child conceived during her rape (and believe me, as a married man, I can tell you it would not be much easier for her husband), the morally correct decision would be for the woman to carry that child until his or her birth, and then give him or her up for adoption to one of the many families that would provide a good home for the child. I know it wouldn't be easy or pleasant for the rape victim or her husband, but I don't think killing her baby will make her feel any better.

As for the hypothetical regarding the 10-year-old, unless continuation of her pregnancy actually placed her life in jeopardy (in which case I would have to support whatever measure would save her life), I would hope and pray that I would be strong enough to stand up for the right to live of the baby conceived through no fault of his or her own. And I would hope and pray that the girl understood that two wrongs don't make a right, and that killing her baby won't erase the memory of what happened to her.

It all boils down to this: Either you believe that a fetus is a human being, as science and logic tells us, or you believe that it's akin to a cancerous tumor. For those of us who believe that life begins at conception, it makes no difference whether the baby is a product of rape or incest, since that does not make the baby any less human or any less deserving of the right to live.

Rape is wrong, and so is murder, and both should be punishable by death. But let the baby live.