Many years ago, we had a discussion with a wise older man about his views on abortion. We "debated" him about some of his thoughts. Scare quotes included, because the debate consisted of us coming up with what we thought were difficult questions, and he checkmated us each time with one sentence. We remember asking about rape and incest:
If the child in the womb is actually a child, and not just any other unwanted growth, then why should it pay for the sins of its father? Why include an exception to rape and incest in any government legislation limiting abortion? To which the wise older man said: I wouldn't give a victim of a crime such a life sentence, only to add to her woes.
Flash forward to today: The Arkansas state Senate has voted on a near-total ban on abortions, and the matter now goes through the legislative process. Senate Bill 6 doesn't provide for exceptions for rape or incest. The purpose of this bill is to get to the United States Supreme Court and have it out over Roe v. Wade. And those pushing Senate Bill 6 might get their way one of these judicial terms.
But why not include exceptions when a crime is involved? Why specifically guide the debate, and amendments, to pass such a bill without them?
Those of us who have thought long and hard about this question believe that love and procreating is holy--God-given--and we aren't afraid to say that. Having a child is, or should be, a manifestation of love. Rape and incest don't enter into that picture.
In this, if only in this, reasonable people should be able to agree. In the national debate over abortion, as in any debate, you will find the extremes. One side pushes the extreme of being able to partially deliver a newborn, only to snuff out its life on the operating room table. Some of us get upset just thinking of it. Then again, there are extremes on the other side, like the politician in Nevada--former candidate Sharron Angle, who was nominated to run against Harry Reid several years back--who once advised victims in these situations to turn lemons into lemonade. That is just as distasteful.
Longtime readers will remember that this space has encouraged the Pro Life position/movement/calling. Some of us recall when Roe v. Wade first made the headlines decades ago. There were many who argued (wrongly, it turns out) that Roe would be a minor reform employed only in exceptional cases--as when the life of the mother was endangered by her pregnancy, or the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest. Or some other harrowing case in which abortion would be the merciful course. We had no idea that abortion would become a standard method of birth control.
But the "rape or incest" exception always seemed not just reasonable, but presumed.
(If we may step for a moment into the pagan political frame of mind, the Arkansas Senate might have made it more probable that the high court would throw out this law. It's difficult to imagine that the U.S. Supreme Court would ban abortions of pregnancies that were the product of criminal acts.)
But politics and process aside, there are people involved here, people who are victims themselves. We're not talking about the young lady who posts videos of her abortion on social media, which apparently happens nowadays. We're not talking about those who'd use abortion as a backstop when birth control is inconvenient.
We're talking about specific cases of people who were harmed in the worst way, and now face more life-wrenching choices. Which is why even the most pro-life of bills passed around the nation have almost always carried the rape-or-incest exception.
If this bill passes, and somehow inexplicably, unbelievably, incredibly becomes the law of the land, what of the 13-year-old middle schooler who becomes pregnant as a result of a rape? Must she be a victim twice?