[BikerNYC]

The embryo did come into existence as the result of a violent and unjust act, the mother’s rape, but her or his very existence is not an injustice in itself. To kill such an unborn child would simply add the sin and injustice of murder to the sin and injustice of rape.

No, it wouldn't.

Consider that you are knocked over the head with a mallet and rendered unconscious, a vicious act of violence. Your attackers turn out to be mad scientists intent on creating a medical miracle.

You awaken to find yourself on a gurney, tubes connected to your body. You observe the tubes continue on and enter machines and the body of another person. This person did not solicit your beating and has no connection to the individuals who beat you. You are told that unless you stay on the gurney attached to these machines for the next nine months, the other individual will die.

Do you have any obligation to stay on the gurney or can you rip the tubes out of your body and walk away with a clear conscience? Does walking away simply add to the "sin and injustice" of the initial violence that was perpetrated against you?

[St. Johann Tetzel]

Do you believe in capital punishment? For what crimes?

Murder?

How about rape?

I don't believe in capital punishment for rape, and I doubt you do either. Castration? Sure!

So why do some people advocate Capital Punishment for the other innocent victim of rape, not the woman but the baby so conceived?

[annalex]

Your obligation is to stay on the gurney since an innocent life depends on your doing so.

[hopespringseternal]

You are told that unless you stay on the gurney attached to these machines for the next nine months, the other individual will die.

This analogy fails for a lot of reasons. A pregnant woman is not nearly so constrained. In fact, I will go way out on a limb as a man and say that the emotional complications far outweigh he physical complications.

I really don't know if she could successfully detach the child from the event.

But I wouldn't be a bit surprised if a woman who knowingly had an abortion following a rape would be nearly as tortured by her decision as any other abortive mother who truly reflects on what she has done.

It would be nice to be able to believe that this sort of thing could be resolved by taking a pill, but I really can't buy that. When someone commits an evil act, the destruction is real as are the consequences. Attempts to quickly and easily undo that evil are often just as destructive as it is.

[Modernman]

Very good analogy.

[Rutles4Ever]

Your analogy in Post 20 fails to connect the issues. In your analogy, the beneficiary is being kept alive by extraordinary means, and would therefore not necessarily be entitled to live at the burden of others. In which case, non-consent is moral grounds to demand release from the imposed obligation to keep another person alive.

[Mark in the Old South]

Your complaints seem to be against nature itself. A situation imposed upon you by men is different from an imposition dictated by nature. Howl at the moon and piss in the wind if you like. I will continue to oppose the murder. Besides you assume no one would say yes to the situation you have invented. I would be pissed but I am not sure I would say "let him die" I am not sure you would either, but I just might be mistaken about that. After all you would kill a baby but can you when a man is next to you and looking at you as you make that decision?

What you do not realize is Someone is looking when you abort that child.

[hocndoc]

In the case of pregnancy, the child is the mother's as well as the father's offspring. The oocyte and the receptive womb were prepared by her body, by her very nature.

On the other hand, if she cannot live with the fact of the pregnancy, if it is equivalent to her with a constant assualt, then some would not fault her decision to remove the embryo. I don't know about this reasoning, since I see her time of sacrifice for the life of the child as self-limited, while the death of the child is permanent and irreversible.


However, there is a difference between killing in self defense or in the defense of the life of the other and most other killing. We can understand, and make law accomodating this fact.

In each case, the intent should not be to kill or destroy the child but to defend the life of the one threatened by removing or diverting the threat.