Quote from Pa(b)st Prime:
Not trying to be evasive but Ron Paul is one great politician. I can't find anything about his anti-abortion views pertaining to rape and incest. He deftly ignores most candidate surveys.
It's also important to accurately state Sarah Palins view. She has said she would oppose abortion in the case of rape âeven if it were her own daughter.â She makes no statement about YOUR daughter and she has not pursued any legislative agenda to âtoughenâ Alaska abortion statutes.
As far as my own views. I'm pro-life. I strongly disagree with Roe v Wade-I don't believe abortion is a constitutionally protected ârightâ and I do believe like most laws it should be a state issue. If New York wants it, fine. If Alabama doesn't want it, fine also.
Federal protection goes both ways. Because of Roe v Wade the Feds allow abortion in states where the majority of residents are opposed. OTH California approves of med-pot but dispensaries are frequently raided by the DEA for violation of Federal laws which are contrary to Cali law. A perfect example of why FEDERAL laws often suck. States opposing abortion are forced to facilitate it-states favoring legal pot are forced to prohibit it.
If my daughter became pregnant the decision of course would ultimately be hers. I would absolutely encourage her to have the baby and either I would take responsibility as a surrogate or we'd place the baby for adoption. I think it's doubtful that an abortion would make a victim feel better or that an abortion would erase such a horrible memory. As you know quite a few woman have birthed babies conceived during rape. Largely they describe the experience as cathartic and feel an innocent baby shouldn't be killed just because the father was a vicious criminal. While I don't favor laws forcing woman to make such a difficult yet humane choice-I applaud those who do and I like to think if tested me and my loved ones would make the difficult choice of life.
Ok, a measured response, but I will challenge you on one count. You seem to be saying that if the majority in a particular state feel that it is imomoral to abort a pregnancy induced by gang-rape, then it should be made illegal in that state to abort.
My point in this is that it shouldn't make any difference what the majority think when it comes to this issue, because of the difference between a secular society and one that isn't. You are saying that we must tell U.S. citizens who live in that state that if they want to avoid prosecution for aborting a pregnancy caused by gang-rape, they should move to another state. To me, that is an abrogation of the rights that accrue to every
individual as a result of their
citizenship. Someone living in Alabama is not a citizen of Alabama, is he? Nope. He's a citizen of the
United States of America.
Faith-informed beliefs should not be made into law, even when the majority of a state's population hold those beliefs (what's that? How do you figure out which is which? That's what the Supreme Court is for). This is the essence of secularism and the United States is a secular society, like it or not. If you had a state where the majority favoured forcing gang-raped children to carry to term pregnancies that resulted from the rapes (as bizarre and cruel as that seems to me), and you took away those whose views were faith-informed, you would no longer have a majority.
There isn't a law on the books that reflects a faith-informed majority opinion. Not one
Those who want to counsel their kids to carry to term such pregnancies can go ahead and do so. However, a faith-informed legal mandate to do so is an abrogation of a agnostic citizen's rights.
With regard to what you said about your daughter and what you would hope for her, and also what you suggested about how gang-raped women feel about their pregnancies, I will take your word for it. If my 13-year old daughter were impregnated by a rapist, I would tell her that she should abort the pregnancy the day she found out about it. It is stunning, shocking and deeply disheartening to me that anyone could feel any differently.
