Should a woman be forced to keep a baby she concieved after being raped?

To answer your question directly: No! That is an emphatic “no”. You must not compel a woman to keep a child conceived from rape.

The person that posed this question has apparently chosen to keep the child. She sees the opportunity to mold a better person from this child. That is very laudable. The key thing here is that it is HER CHOICE, one that must not be denied. She could easily have chosen not to keep it, also a choice not to be denied.

Since I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday, I know the ideological and therefore political implications of the question. So-called conservatives have accused me of being a liberal. Liberals have accused me of being a conservative. I am not a middle of the road person either. My convictions are clear in matters on which I have commanding information. My personal convictions, that is to say my perceptions of the truth, guide me. Those perceptions change with subjects at hand. They also change with specific subjects as more facts on the matter become known.

Without equivocation, I believe in choice. You must not compel a woman to carry a baby if she wishes otherwise. If she agreed to it in a contract but changed her mind mid way, you may sue for breach of contract and have the issue resolved in a legally binding setting. The resolution must consider the woman’s health.

If there is no binding contract and she discovers a foetal developmental anomaly, there must not be a law preventing termination. This is where I get hate mail on the matter from “wing-nuts” of the extreme variety. It takes resources, not available to everyone, to raise a developmentally challenged child. In spite of “nutty say so”, those children are almost never adopted and as such remain stuck in families that cannot adequately care for them.

Like the person that posted this question said, if you disagree with me, shove it!

Buck up! Be reasonable. Be the Best American you can be!

I'll give you a link to the opinion which may help you. if you look at the origninal summary of the decision, they make a reference to Griswold v Connecticut. In that case, they stated that a combination of the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 9th Amendments created a certain right to privacy (although in Roe, Justice Blackmun decided that the 5th Amendmen. The reason they cite the 14th Amendment was due to the fact that before the 14th Amendment passed, the Court had consistantly stated that the freedoms and rights protected by the US Constituion only prevented the FEDERAL government from infringing on them, the states had the right to take your freedoms as they pleased, unless it was protected by the STATE'S constitution.

The 14th Amendment states: " No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The Court has interpreted this Amendment to mean that states are prohibited from infringing on all freedoms protected by the US Constitution without due process of the law. Thus, the right to privacy protected in the various Amendments in the Bill of Rights, now protects STATES from infringing on that right (Remember, abortion was already legal in NY and a few other states at this point. Roe v. Wade said that the States could not ban it). However when cases in regards to the 14th Amendment came up, there would be a heated debate over states' rights. That's what the dissent focuses on, that the 10th Amendment supercedes the 14th Amendment in this case, and thus states should be free to outlaw abortion if they choose.


Opinion of the Court: http://www.tourolaw.edu/Patch...

I, too, am a natural born woman with a "VAGINA" and I am proud to be a woman. Do you know what really makes me exceptionally proud more than anything? It is the fact that under no circumstance would I ever abort a living being, even when it's not even visible yet to the naked eye on an ultrasound. I chose to have my child through physical, emotional pain and other things too personal to mention. There is no comparison to apples and oranges. It is life from the very beginning before the cells start to split!!!! It is life from the beginning to the end and in no way, should any mother carrying this "life" justify why it should be killed; no matter what the circumstance is.

As to having pains that come from being a woman, it's been like that from creation. Some women are just stronger than others and can take the pain of child birth or menstrual cramps or anything else for that matter, even emotional pain, and at least suffer in silence about it and not act like they can't handle such things. This is especially for those who are pregnant and contemplating abortion toward the very one innocent, "form of life" unaware of the tragedy which will be bestowed upon it. This is the very "life" in which the mother should be PROTECTING and not DESTROYING and not causing PAIN to it as its life is slowly, tortuously being taken away!

If as a woman you are going to sit there and gripe about menstrual cramps to the point of almost fainting...you're lucky. If only the baby being aborted could lose consciousness, faint before it was being tugged and pulled, cut and suctioned apart or burned alive with saline solution getting into its eyes, nose, throat, skin as it is peeling away and just drowning in it. Yes, if only the baby could faint...

A man can not give birth to a child but that's not to say in other ways he's not suffering. Especially if he is the father of the child who is about to be aborted or has been aborted. There are men who are capable of loving that unborn child to the point that they feel like dying themselves when that woman makes that decision. There are men who would gladly give their lives instead, if only to protect their unborn child at any stage; a mass of cells, an embryo, a fetus, almost full term! There are also men whose child it isn't but would love that child as though it's their own. I've known those types of men too.

It's a tragedy to take a life no matter what the circumstance. I am a mother myself, and wouldn't change it for the world.

The fact the graphic- reading detailed description had zero effect on you or the guy above...whatever he is...doesn't surprise me. It merely once again proves that the "child" the unaware, innocent child, who did nothing wrong to deserve this is thought of as an OBJECT to hurt, kill and leave to die, then tossed away because it means absolutely nothing just because a woman would rather take the easy way out. Rape is beyond horrible but she could still choose life as being more valuable and so much more important, it would overshadow any amount of pain she had gone through to get to this point. Plus, she's got the option of adoption.

I worked in a situation where I saw more documentation on rapes than the public would unless they too were in the same line of work. The majority of those rapes were "date" related or where the woman or girl just completely lied about it to get back at a man. Not all rapes are caused by strangers out of nowhere. Some of these women had choices about the situation they put themselves in. People may say that rape is rape but with these different variables taking place...there is also that gray area and not all of it is black and white where a person can plainly see it.

I have personally known people who were truly raped by serial rapists and got pregnant and chose life and were grateful they did regardless of the emotional pain and physical pain put on them. I also knew someone who got raped and had an abortion and has regretted it for 15 years of her life and is sorry that she killed her son or daughter.

Whatever a woman chooses, she'll know at the end of her life if it was the right decision or not. I'd hate to do something like that and go through life wondering if I did the right thing, just to die and know that I didn't.