A reporter once asked me if Democrats for Life of America opposed abortion but allowed for the “usual exceptions” of rape, incest, and life of the mother. When I told him “no exceptions,” he asked why. I replied, “Because it is never not a child.”
Never, ever, does the subject to be aborted turn into something other than a human child. People act as if incest and rape somehow turn the “product of conception” into a less-than-human creature, and one which can be disposed of without the pangs of remorse felt when a “properly-conceived” child is aborted.
I have always wondered if people who support exceptions truly understand what abortion does. Have they really thought it through? I was delighted the other day to read that Senator Rubio said, “If you support a rape or incest exception, it’s pretty obvious you don’t really think of abortion as murder.” (Yes, I just quoted someone from the other side, but I believe we all need to be pro-life before party.)
Apparently, the exceptions people are so shallow that they don’t think past “I was told it is a bad thing,” “My church/party/friends oppose it, so I go along.” They are much like the abortion supporters who don’t ever consider the child or the person who is just looking for an excuse to find a way out of a difficult situation. Often, the “hard case” suddenly turns into an inconvenient pregnancy: “Normally, I’m against abortion, but in this case . . . .”) These rape exception people need to be asked why they oppose abortion in the first place. Some may understand that it is murder, but amazingly they think that the exceptions are justifiable murder because surely carrying a child conceived in rape or incest is worse than abortion!
Worse for whom? I always counter: “Did you ask the child if s/he thinks death is preferable? Do you think the child will bear the mark of Cain, and throughout the child’s life, everyone will know? Do you seriously think that the child will live a life of shame?
I once knew a guy who was in seminary and who was re-evaluating his position on abortion. A few years before, he had taken a friend to get an abortion, thinking that he was helping her. He had come to question that action though. Of course, he brought up the exceptions — surely that was kinder to both mother and child. I asked him to look around the restaurant and tell me who was conceived in a loving, committed relationship, who was conceived on a night in which the parents had too much to drink, and who was conceived by any situation he could discern, including rape and incest. Was there something about the ears which told him the story?
When I had said, “Look around the room,” my friend had obediently started to look at other people. He quickly looked down with chagrin, though, as he realized my point. There will be no obvious stigma. No one need ever know, not even the child, so what difference does it make? Most of these children do eventually learn about their origin from the mother or the adoptive parents, but with love and support, they can deal with the knowledge, just as Rebecca Kiessling and many others have. Tragedy occurs at some point in virtually every life, but we don’t kill everyone who is traumatized just to spare them the pain! We cope with the difficulties of life, and we admire those who overcome tragedy.
Of course, the only concern of the pro-abortion crowd is the woman. Surely we can’t ask her to carry “the child of her rapist,” whether a stranger or a relative. The people reading this probably know the rebuttals to that argument: doing something positive, not violent; not punishing the child for the crime of the father; and so forth. It is not my intent here to rehash what is so eloquently said by Rebecca and other Save The 1 writers.
Nor will I go into the discussion of cases that threaten the mother’s life for the same reason. It upsets me greatly, though, that these extremely rare cases that are irrelevant to the general discussion about abortion are used as a scare tactic by the abortion lobby. Medical providers have handled these cases quite well throughout history by treating both patients and with the ethical application of the triage priority to save the survivable. There was no automatic assumption that the mother’s life supersedes the child’s. On the contrary, if the outcome was not clear, most mothers chose their child’s life over their own. However, that was before the abortion mentality pervaded our culture. Now we find that a woman who would jump in front of a car to save her child would also have killed that same child through abortion if the pregnancy had threatened her life. The abortion mentality is inconsistent and illogical at every turn.
Abortion supporters say the child is the property of the mother and the father is not to be considered. Nonetheless, when rape/incest is involved, it is as if the child were the product of the father only, had no relationship genetically or any other way to the mother, and should therefore be disposed of like an invasive tumor. Isn’t that the same as the old “bad seed” argument that was used before modern science taught us about reproduction and DNA? Not that I’m expecting logic or educated biology from abortion advocates, but it gives me whiplash to hear these inconsistencies.
At a pro-life caucus at the Texas Democratic state convention last year, a woman in the audience told us that she had had an abortion in college. Years later, she conceived a child in rape, but she refused to have an abortion because her first experience had been so horrible she did not want to go through that again. What does that tell you? The abortion advocates say that having the child of the rapist is too difficult emotionally, but this woman is telling you from experience that abortion is the worse experience. So even though it meant being an older mother, she raised the child and was proud to tell us that the girl is now in college and both of them are doing well.
In the Democratic party, the argument is on a different plane of “exception.” There we have to ask the membership, considering your tradition of supporting the human dignity and civil rights of every person, if you pride yourself on advocating for the underprivileged, the oppressed, and the voiceless, then why do you make an exception for pre-born children?
Bio: A co-founder and former president of Democrats for Life of America, Lois Kerschen now serves as the State Chapter Coordinator for DFLA as well as state chapter leader for Texas. A former educator, today she devotes most of her time to writing and volunteering for DFLA, and she would like to share the adventurous saga of a pro-life Democrat through speaking engagements. She’s writing as a guest blogger for Save The 1.
