You talk about forcing your daughter to do something, as if not getting an abortion and murdering that baby is the default, inactive choice, and letting the child naturally develop and be born is a forced, active choice. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Absent any special action, that child will be born; it takes an active intervention to kill it and stop that from happening.
For the life of me, I can’t understand how you would think that approving of your daughter committing a murder would somehow help her get over the trauma of rape either. I can see how people might think, in an emotional state, that it would help, but that’s not going to be the case in reality. Making the child “disappear” won’t erase the memory or trauma of the rape, it will just burden the rape victim with a guilty conscience for the rest of her life.
Well, first, I’d say that its a pretty callused statement to say that a woman who, when raped and who says I dont want to have a baby that happened as the result of rape “well, fine, but you are a murderer”. Really? A murderer? I also dont know that you can state for certain what will happen to the girl in all cases, such as “she will have a guilty conscience for the rest of her life”. You said letting the baby develop is a default inactive choice. But you are ignoring that what got her in that position was ALSO an inactive choice. So saying sorry, but because of an inactive choice some monster made, you have to live with it because of another inactive choice that we who know better are going to make for you, just doesn’t sit right with me.
Second, its really easy to argue from the standpoint that you seem to want to argue from, the position of black and white, all about the baby. But you dont seem to want to touch the issue of what about her and the practical details of her life and her rights. Thats the part where this stance always falls down to me. What if she’s a senior in high school,and now her prom (if she got to attend at all) pictures now have to show her pregnant for all of her life. What if the baby ends up looking exactly like the rapist, so she has to look at that for the rest of her life? What if she’s on the verge of an athletic scholorship and this will effectively end that option for her. Sorry honey, but thats how its got to be? I dont think so. Not with my child.
Its easy to take the moral position that you are taking, of saying its a baby and that trumps all else, but I ask you, are you really ready to sit down and look in a rape victims face and say, Like it or not, you WILL have this baby, by law, not because you chose to engage in the reproductive act, but because our law is so rigid you have no other option? I’m saying I can’t do that. If someone chose to have sex, then yes, I could. Encourage the rape victim to have the baby and help with everything I possibly can, absolutely. Force her to have the baby as if she’s someone who’s opinion doesn’t matter at all? Certainly not.