An excellent editorial, here.
When abortion is viewed in general as a compassionate course of action, it will naturally be viewed all the more compassionately when a girl or woman is pregnant because someone raped her.
The prevailing “necessary evil” view on abortion is part of the “abortion as compassion” view. Denying an abortion, particularly in cases of rape, is viewed by many as excessive and cruel.
In our current culture, it’s not easy to say abortion is never compassionate. We might point to the many known cases where abortion concealed rape and/or incest and allowed the criminal to keep assaulting a young woman. We might point to the victim in the womb being one and the same in substance and soul as any other pregnancy, normally conceived. All of it rings hollow, and I’m aware of that.
With Quebec’s history with the Roman Catholic Church, the problem is compounded. It’s also worse in Quebec because there, more so than any other province, abortion is used as birth control. Multiple examples of one woman having multiple abortions are known to me personally.
If you had many abortions for pretty much no reason–how crazy is it to deny a woman who might possibly have a very good reason?
Where rape is the topic in conjunction with abortion the discussion is as hard as it gets. There’s disagreement on the PWPL team, too. But we have agreed to work on the 99% of abortions done for casual reasons before turning our attention to the very difficult cases.
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Brigitte adds: Right on. If we could make a dent in the number of casual abortions in this country, that would make me very happy indeed. That said, I’m no longer sure quite where I stand on the subject of rape/incest. I find it difficult, if not impossible, to tell a woman who got pregnant after non-consensual sex (especially if the event was particularly traumatic) that she should bear the child that came from the assault. I’m not sure I could do it. Yes, I know – the child is innocent and human and making him or her yet another victim of the criminal’s actions would not do anything to right the wrong. But at the same time, gosh, carrying a baby for nine months then going through childbirth for someone whose existence is a constant reminder of a horrible crime of which you were the primary victim, that must be extraordinarily difficult. I suppose that puts me somewhere on the fence.
by 
I’m glad you posted this. I don’t have a good understanding of the Quebec situation, as a newly immigrated American, but I know the French situation and it seems similar. In ‘The Second Sex’, Beauvoir claims that many of the women she knows to have had abortions were married and had multiple procedures (there were no concrete statistics as abortion was illegal then, so this was based upon her own knowledge). This supports the idea of abortion being used as birth control in France as early as 1949. Having said that, I don’t think the sentiments towards Ouellet would differ greatly in other provinces. I know many so-called ‘pro-choice’ Catholics (if there is such a thing) in Nova Scotia.
It just goes to show you that there’s not a job in the world you don’t put in jeopardy by voicing a pro-life stance.
I wonder if an abortion, in the end, is any easier on the woman than carrying the baby to term? I have never been raped, but I have friends who have. It’s not something that can be “undone”. Abortion is not some sort of magic eraser that makes them able to forget what was done to them. They NEVER forget. Also, the fact of the rape doesn’t make the other physical and emotional repercussions of the abortion disappear. Certainly carrying the baby and delivering it, whether you gave it up for adoption or not, would be unbelievably difficult … but in the end, there might be some healing in it. I don’t believe that killing the other innocent victim of the crime would provide any healing at all.
re: the rape/abortion discussion..
Listening to the audio talk by Rebecca Kiessling may help. I heard her talk at Carleton and it was powerful.
http://www.rebeccakiessling.com/RebeccaKiesslingsSpeech.html
Hmm, tried to leave a comment and got the notice that it appears spammy. ???
When people bring up the question of rape and abortion, they are not usually concerned with the woman in queston, but are trying to make pro-lifers appear extreme. Try asking them if they would be willing to restrict abortion in other cases, and they usually sidestep the issue, proving the point that their interest is not as altruistic as first appears.
Why is it that a woman has the only say in an abortion? even the father has no say. It is as if the child is only hers. Yet, in the case of rape, the child becomes the evil product of a criminal, and it is not recognized as hers at all. Some faulty logic here.
We, as a society, really need to get over the idea that offering an abortion to a woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant is compassionate. It’s about as compassionate as offering a person who confesses to be depressed noose-tying classes, or a catalogue of different poisons.
That said, Brigitte, I do understand where you’re coming from. I also understand where the good Cardinal is coming from. I think that it is important to recognize here that the Cardinal was just teaching church doctrine, he was not saying what any future law should be. It’s church doctrine that deliberate abortion is always morally wrong, and, although the woman who has been raped has had a horrible wrong perpetuated on her, two wrongs don’t make a right.
However, I think we also need to get over the idea that if a woman is unable to get an abortion, then she is somehow FORCED into carrying the pregnancy. There is no force there. If anything, the force goes the other way. If a woman wants an abortion, then she is demanding that the health care system provide her with a procedure that no doctor wants to do, and very few are willing to do. It is the woman who wants an abortion who forces a doctor to perform a gruesome procedure.
The “except in the case of inc*st and / or r*pe” stance is very common. Michael Coren for example, argues that it should be the default position of pro-lifers if we want to be taken seriously. I believe that he is wrong and that the position is damaging to the pro-life position and will in this post attempt to explain why.
In my (pro-life) opinion ‘casual abortions’ and abortions in the case of r*pe and/or inc*st are very much interrelated. In both the position is that in order to avoid painful circumstances it is ok to murder an innocent person. The difference is simply the level of painful circumstances which make it ok in the eyes of the proponent.
Here are two quick examples of why it damages the pro-life position.
(1) Having a baby without r*pe could be more psychologically traumatic than having a baby from r*pe for others, therefore if it is ok to have an abortion to avoid painful circumstances surely we can’t legislate against the former which may be, in some instances, more traumatic than r*pe or inc*st for others?
(2) A far more important example is this; let’s use an analogy. Let’s say I have two children, during an argument between them one runs out on the street and is hit and killed by a car. Let’s say because of this I am traumatized by my living child’s existence in a manner analogous to the mother who gives birth to a child from r*pe. The “except in the case of r*pe and/or inc*st” proponent would never suggest killing the living child to alleviate my suffering would they? Of course not. But, in so doing, they would be admitting that my living child is “a real person” and the unborn baby is not. This could be the only possible reason why they would suggest that aborting in the case of r*pe is ok but murdering a living child in the example above is not. As such, they would be committing to the basic logic of the pro-choice position.
And so I think that the “except in the case of inc*st and / or r*pe” position is ultimately damaging to the pro-life cause as it is predicated upon beliefs which are implicitly supportive of the pro-abortion position.
ps – apologies for the *s – it accused me of spamming otherwise 🙂
Excellent comment, David.
Jocelyne makes a very good point. Abortion is not a magic eraser that undoes a r@pe. Nothing undoes a r@pe. Too many pro-abortionists talk as if when a r@pe-induced pregnancy goes away, then the pain of the r@pe goes away too. Nothing could be further from the truth. Getting pregnant because of r@pe is NOT worse than being r@ped. The r@pe itself is horrible and unimaginable. It will never be forgotten, with or without a pregnancy to deal with. End of story.
A dear friend became pregnant in her early teens because of r@pe. She had the child and gave it up for adoption. Now, years later, she is very glad she did not have an abortion, even though EVERYONE tried to convince her to. She will NEVER forget the horror of the r@pe. But she admits it was not the baby’s fault. And she says if she’d killed the child, she would have felt guilty for the rest of her life for having done something so horrible.
We have mountains of evidence telling us that “non-traumatized” women often suffer psychologically, in the future, as a result of their choice to abort. Can you imagine how much worse this abortion-related psychological damage must be if a woman is ALSO dealing with the psychological aspects of r@pe? Not only do two wrongs not make a right, but in this case, the two wrongs may feed each other and give a result that may be worse than if either had been experienced alone. My heart truly goes out to women in this situation. But my friend’s experience tells me that a more psychologically healthy outcome can occur when a women does not have to deal with abortion fall-out too.
Abortion is not some magic eraser. Giving birth to a r@pe-conceived child does not make the r@pe any worse. But having an abortion might.
I DO have a friend who has a child as the result of being raped. Her beautiful daughter (who is almost 12 years old) is her entire world and best friend. While I’ve never asked and I can’t read her mind, I get the distinct impression that she is not a constant reminder of what happened 12 years ago. She’s more concerned with the future, like getting her kid into an ivy league school, rather than the past.
I particularly like Julie’s May 19 comment re: faulty logic. Also, in Deborah’s comment – abortion would have taken away the only possibility for love and joy as an outcome of the r@pe.