Okay folks, I’ve gone through this before.
I’m assuming all of us posting on this thread agree that at fertilization a new and unique human being is created. From this it follows that destroying an embryo or a foetus is homicide. Note I was very careful, homicide, not murder. Homicide committed on a whim, for convenience, simply because one wants it is murder. But we are left with the question of whether any abortions are justifiable homicide, rather than murder.
I think all who reason clearly about moral matters will agree that in a circumstance where the continued growth of the child will result in the death of both mother and child (e.g. an ectopic pregnancy) an abortion is justifiable homicide, rather than murder. In other cases some medical problem could render the mother incapable of carrying the child to term or until a caesarian delivery could allow the child to survive in the care of neonatologists even though the child is growing normally in her womb.
Beyond that, as in all case of potentially justifiable homicide, there are likelihoods to consider. Most everyone on FR supports a strong castle doctrine in which an intruder in a home who does not flee when ordered off may be presumed to be a threat to life and limb and shot out of hand. There are circumstances in which continuing a pregnancy is probabilistically more of a threat to the mother’s life than an intruder is to a householder’s life. Should abortion in those circumstances be viewed by the law as justifiable homicide? (Certainly as Christians, we should hope and pray that a Christian woman might be given grace to risk what is arguably a martyric death seeking to carry the child to term, but should the law oblige her to undertake that podvig, as we Orthodox call a spiritual burden?)
Which brings me to the point at hand. Those who argue for an exception to a general prohibition against abortion in case where the pregnancy was engendered by rape or incest do so on the basis that such an abortion is in the nature of self-defense: the carrying of the child is a continuation of the violation of the woman. Again, we might find a difference between what we might hope and pray as Christians — that the woman be given the grace to bear the burden as a witness to the sanctity of life as a gift of God — and what the state ought to impose upon the woman. In a well-ordered Christian society, society would support, indeed hold up as exemplary, a woman who bears the burden of carrying a rapist’s child to term. Alas, we do not live in such a society. In the existing world, I would be content with a rape-and-incest exception to go along with a life-of-the-mother exception to a general prohibition on abortion.
And finally to Congressman Paul’s point: a rape exception should not be so elastic as to permit abortions on the basis of women having regrets for consensual sex and deciding “it was rape” after the fact, esp. long after the fact (that glass of wine I had with dinner impaired my ability to consent. . . ). As I pointed out in my other post to this thread, it is not his fault that the meaning of “rape” has been so expanded that infelicitous (”honest rape”, “rape rape”) are now needed to recapture its original sense.
A number of folks have taken my suggestion and flipped this over to the question of EXECUTING THE RAPIST, which includes establishing the evidence necessary to prove that a rape occurred.
If we ban abortion but leave an exception there, we need to establish what the details in that sticky wicket are. Simply stipulating that if this is a crime worthy of the death of someone we should certainly consider the rapist a candidate for that first, we can see where the exception really takes us.
Through experience arguing this case for over 3 decades I've noticed that MOST PEOPLE find it easy enough to say "give an exception" but they have difficulty dealing with the EVIDENTIARY TRAIL necessary to justify executing the rapist.
It's just a corollary.
Let me say this about your post. If you can dump that much stuff into the hopper, I'd think you could argue the EXECUTE THE RAPIST side equally well.
Try it, let's see what you've really got to say!