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 No ‘Morning-After
Pill’ for Rapists
Why abortion bans shouldn’t include
exceptions for victims of rape or incest...
[by Jan LaRue] 3/17/06
South Dakota
Gov. Mike Rounds (R) signed H.B. 1215 into law on March 6,
making South Dakota the first state to ban abortion except
for those that are necessary to save the life of a pregnant
woman. Doctors in South Dakota will face up to five years
in prison for performing an abortion except when necessary
to save the mother’s life.
Some state
lawmakers who voted against H.B. 1215 say they did so because
it doesn’t permit abortion for rape and incest victims. Other
state legislatures, including Mississippi, have introduced
a similar abortion ban and are debating whether to include
exceptions for rape and incest.
President
George W. Bush, who is pro-life, includes himself among some
who believe that there should be exceptions for rape and
incest. While not impugning the good intentions of President
Bush and others, there is reason to encourage them to think
past the visceral reaction we all feel about rape and incest,
and consider the consequences for both victims—mother and
child.
Contributor -
Jan LaRue
Jan
LaRue is not your usual Washington political commando
or Ivy League-trained insider. She is not your power-suit-wearing,
dinner-party-schmoozing, headline-grabbing Beltway
operator. / What she is, though, is a street fighter
-- a Christian one, armed with a law degree.
-
Washington Post 1/9/06
Jan
LaRue is Chief Counsel and Legal Studies Director
for Concerned
Women of America. [go to LaRue index] |
No one disputes that rape and incest are serious crimes, and
those convicted should be punished to the fullest extent of
the law. Furthermore, victims deserve the support and assistance
of the public in recovering.
The truth is that rape rarely results in pregnancy.
But even if it does, the law should not permit the most innocent
victim,
an unborn child, to suffer by forfeiting his or her life because
of the rapist’s criminal act.
- “Perhaps more of a gross exaggeration than a myth is the
mistaken and unfortunate belief that pregnancy is a frequent
complication of sexual assault. This is emphatically not
the case, and there are several medically sound reasons for
it.” [Vicki Seltzer, “Medical Management of the Rape Victim,” American
Medical Women’s Association 32 (1977): 141-144.]
- A scientific study of 1,000 rape victims
who were treated medically right after the rape reported
zero pregnancies.
[L. Kuchera, “Postcoital Contraception with Diethylstilbesterol,” Journal
of the American Medical Association, October 25, 1971.]
- Pregnancies resulting from incest are also
rare: One percent or less. [G. Maloof, “The Consequences
of Incest,” The
Psychological Aspects of Abortion, University Publications
of American, 1979, p. 74.]
Rather than aid a rape or incest victim’s recovery,
studies indicate that having an abortion is more likely to
have a detrimental
effect on her.
Victims
and Victors, published by Acorn Books
and the Elliot Institute in 2000, includes a study of 192 women
who became pregnant through sexual assault and either
had abortions or carried the pregnancy to term.
Many of them aborted only because they were pressured to do
so, and most reported that the abortion only increased their
experience of grief. In contrast, none of the women who carried
to term said they wished they had not given birth or that they
had chosen abortion instead. Many of these women said that
their children had brought peace and healing to their lives.
[David C. Reardon, Julie Makimaa and Amy Sobie, Editors, Victims
and Victors: Speaking Out About Their Pregnancies, Abortions,
and Children Resulting from Sexual Assault, Acorn Books,
Springfield, Illinois, available at: http://www.afterabortion.org/.]
The Elliot Institute announced on February 9, 2005, the results
of a study of the effects of abortion on women. The study documents
several harmful effects:
A study in New Zealand that tracked approximately
500 women from birth to 25 years of age has confirmed that
young women who have abortions subsequently experience elevated
rates of suicidal behaviors, depression, substance abuse, anxiety,
and other mental problems.
Most significantly, the researchers led by Professor
David M. Fergusson, who is the director of the longitudinal
Christchurch Health and Development Study found that
the higher rate of subsequent mental problems could not
be explained by any pre-pregnancy differences in mental
health, which had been regularly evaluated over the course
of the 25-year study.
However, when these and many other factors were taken
into account, the findings showed that women who had abortions
were still significantly more likely to experience mental
health problems. Thus, the data contradicted the hypothesis
that prior mental illness or other “pre-disposing” factors
could explain the differences.
“We know what people were like before they became pregnant,” Fergusson
told The New Zealand Herald. “We take into account
their social background, education, ethnicity, previous
mental health, exposure to sexual abuse, and a whole mass
of factors.”
The data persistently pointed toward the politically unwelcome
conclusion that abortion may itself be the cause of subsequent
mental health problems. So Fergusson presented his results
to New Zealand’s Abortion Supervisory Committee, which
is charged with ensuring that abortions in that country
are conducted in accordance with all the legal requirements.
According to The New Zealand Herald, the committee
told Fergusson that it would be “undesirable to publish
the results in their ‘unclarified’ state.” [Abortion
Causes Mental Disorders: New Zealand Study May Require
Doctors to Do Fewer Abortions, Elliot Institute, February
9, 2005, available at: http://www.afterabortion.org/.]
A study published in the Southern Medical Journal August
27, 2002, reveals that women who have abortions are at significantly
higher risk of death than women who give birth. Researchers
examined death records linked to Medi-Cal payments for births
and abortions for approximately 173,000 low-income California
women. They discovered that women who had abortions were almost
twice as likely to die in the following two years and that
the elevated mortality rate of aborting women persisted over
at least eight years.
“During the eight-year study, women who aborted had a 154-percent
higher risk of death from suicide, an 82-percent higher risk
of death from accidents, and a 44-percent higher risk of death
from natural causes. In 1997, a study of women in Finland revealed
that in the first year following an abortion, aborting women
were 252 percent more likely to die compared to women who delivered
and 75 percent more likely to die compared to women who had
not been pregnant.” [D.C. Reardon, P.G. Ney, F.J. Scheuren,
J.R. Cougle, P.K. Coleman, T. Strahan, “Deaths associated with
pregnancy outcome: a record linkage study of low income women,” Southern
Medical Journal, August 2002, 95(8):834-841, available
at: http://www.afterabortion.org/.]
A study published in the July issue of the American Journal
of Orthopsychiatry, using the same data from Medi-Cal
records, reveals that women were 63 percent more likely to
receive mental health care within 90 days of an abortion
compared to delivery. In addition, significantly higher rates
of subsequent mental health treatment persisted over the
entire four years of data examined. Abortion was most strongly
associated with subsequent treatments for neurotic depression,
bipolar disorder, adjustment reactions and schizophrenic
disorders. Dr. Priscilla Coleman, the study’s lead author,
said that the study design was an improvement over previous
studies because it relied on medical records rather than
on surveys of women contacted at an abortion clinic. [Elliot
Institute, August 20, 2002, available at: http://www.afterabortion.info/news/outpatient1.html.]
The British Medical Journal released
the results of a study in January 2002, revealing that women
who abort a first
pregnancy are at greater risk of subsequent long-term clinical
depression compared to women who carry an unintended first
pregnancy to term. [“Depression and Unintended Pregnancy in
the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth”: a cohort study, British
Medical Journal, 324: 151-152, available at:http://www.bmj.com.]
A pro-abortion research team acknowledged the existence of
post-abortion syndrome in a study among 1.4 percent of a sample
of women who had abortions two years previously. [Dr. Brenda
Major, Archives of General Psychiatry, August 2000,
available at: http://www.afterabortion.org/.]
Those who mistakenly believe that aborting
a child conceived as a result of rape or incest will aid
in the victim’s recovery
are confronted with the logical conclusion of the argument—allowing
a victim to kill her rapist will also help her recover.
Rape is not a capital offense for which the death penalty
applies. Homicide laws make no exception for a rape victim
seeking recovery who kills her rapist by giving him an arsenic
tablet the morning after.
Since the law does not permit a victim to aid
her recovery by killing her rapist, why should the law permit
her to kill
the innocent unborn child? If aborting the child will aid in
the woman’s recovery, why not permit her to kill the child
at any age?
To do so is to make the child suffer for the crime committed
by his or her father. It is why:
- We do not permit a parent of a murdered child to kill the
child of the murderer.
- We do not permit a victim of robbery to
steal from the robber’s child.
- We do not permit a victim of arson to burn
the home of the arsonist’s child.
Somehow, the morality and sense of justice that is so obvious
when considering these questions escapes many when the same
principles are applied to the pre-born child.
While some question the wisdom of their timing,
pro-lifers should appreciate that the South Dakota Legislature
and governor
understand what too many fail or refuse to grasp. A child’s
right to life does not depend on the character or conduct of
his or her parents. We do not permit a victim to kill in order
to be cured or satisfy vengeance.
Society’s disdain for discrimination based on age or physical
disability should protect the most vulnerable among us, the
unborn child. Consider the words used to refer to stages of
human development: conceptus—blastocyst—embryo—fetus—newborn—infant—toddler—child—adolescent—teenager—adult—middle
age—senior citizen.
The words on the timeline refer to age, development
and ability—stages
of human life. Somehow the terms preceding newborn can blind
us to the fact that they too refer to innocent and vulnerable
human life. For many, truth is conclusively clear by looking
inside the womb through means of four-dimensional ultrasound
technology. Several such images of the unborn at various stages
of development are available here. The
truth is in the beholding.
Opponents of H.B. 1215 are considering filing
a lawsuit to prevent the law from going into effect on July
1, on the ground
that it violates the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade (1973),
in which the Court created a constitutional right to abortion.
Also under consideration is a petition drive to put a referendum
that would seek to repeal the law on the November 2006 ballot.
Supporters would have about three months to gather 16,728 valid
signatures of registered voters in the state. If successful,
it would suspend enactment of the law until after the November
election. If the referendum fails, it would also delay the
need to file a lawsuit until the day after the election.
When 500 likely voters in South Dakota were
asked whether they supported the bill passed by the Legislature
allowing
abortions only in cases where the mother’s life was at risk,
their responses showed a 45-45 percent even split. Nine percent
were not sure. Rasmussen Reports, a national polling firm from
Ocean Grove, New York, conducted the survey on February 28.
If the South Dakota law reaches the ballot, those who expect
to vote against it because it lacks an exception for rape and
incest need to think past the initial abhorrence each crime
brings to mind, and think long and hard about compounding the
offense by killing under the pretext of curing.-one-
This article first appeared on Human
Events Online.
copyright
2006 Concerned Women of America
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