I have a daughter, and if she ever came to me and said ‘dad, I was raped and now I’m pregnant’, we’re going to have a discussion.
Part of this, because I’m not an idiot, is to going to be to try to determine if she really was raped or if this was really consentual, including we need to get an exam and go after the guy criminally. Then we will have a talk about what a great thing it would be if she could stand to have the baby and keep it or give it up for adoption.
However, if at the end of this discussion, she says “Dad, I just can’t do it”, then I’ll tell you what I’m NOT going to do. I’m not going to say “well, thats too bad, I dont care if you dont want this, or what your dreams were for life, and school and sports or whatever...you have to have this baby, and the only choice you get in this whole thing is whether you give it up for adoption or keep it and hope it doesn’t grow up to look like the rapist”. And woe be to the purist that tries to interfere and force her to do anything.
And because I wont do that to my daughter, I wont demand it of anyone else’s daughter either. If a woman is able to have the baby and give it up or keep it and raise it, I applaud you, and this tight fisted conservative would gladly give what I can to help you along the way. But I’ll be damned if I ever put myself in a position where I literally or via policy where I looked some young girl in the face and said ‘so sorry that you were horribly violated, but you’re having a baby whether you like it or not’.
I dont feel this in any way prevents me from being pro life...and I’ll go a step further, I dont have the least bit of fear of the prospect of standing before God and explaining my decision. But if it prevents me from being in someones category of what is “officially pro life” then well, I care about that about as much as I care about what American Idol is going to do without J-Lo.
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.
“Kill the child and let the rapist live? If you’re going to kill someone over rape, doesn’t it make more sense to kill the rapist and let the child live”?
~ Pat Buchanan
Kiessling gives a three-step process in terms of how candidates should answer the question:
1. The Supreme Court has said that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment for rapists and that rapists don’t deserve the death penalty. I don’t think the innocent child conceived in rape deserves the death penalty for the crimes of her father. It seems to me that is cruel and unusual punishment.
2. 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.. As someone who really cares about rape victims, I want to 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. We need to educate the American public on the truth in this matter and not make public policy based on myth and misinformation.
3. Rape victims choose abortion at half the rate of the average unplanned pregnancy, which is over 50%. Only 15-25% of rape victims choose abortion, depending on the study. The majority of rape victims choose to raise her child — not “the rapist’s baby” — HER child.
http://www.lifenews.com/2012/08/20/woman-conceived-in-rape-responds-to-akin-abortion-controversy/