For many pro-life people the most difficult of all the hard cases presented by the abortion lobby is the question of rape. The understandable revulsion that the crime of rape stirs up has proven over the years to be the most emotionally powerful weapon the abortion lobby can draw upon to overcome public opposition. The Bourne case (see yesterdays post) began the liberalisation of the law in Britain in 1939. The 1973 case of Roe v Wade supposedly involved a woman pregnant through rape but by the time this was revealed to be false it was too late to make any difference. And even today the legacy of the 1992 X-case threatens to introduce abortion to the Irish Republic.
Yet the primary objection to abortion, that is it kills a child in the womb, remains just as valid in cases of rape as it is in all other circumstances. Nor is there evidence that abortion helps women pregnant through rape deal with the trauma.
The media in the Irish Republic have quite blatantly attempted to use the Todd Akin controversy to attack the country’s pro-life movement. In the North the abortion lobby and it friends in the media have used the same tactics to try to oppose new reporting requirements on abortions in the Province. This is an issue which needs to be addressed by the pro-life movement without equivocation. Abortion is never justified because the deliberate killing of a child can never be justified.
I intend to return to this topic again but in the meantime there is some very useful material available at LifeSite News and the Elliot Institute. If anyone is unsure of how to give a pro-life answer to the question “What about rape?" it is well worth reading.
For a useful insight on the media's treatment of Todd Akin I would also recommend Hilary Whites' excellent opinion piece for LifeSite News:
Pro-lifer Stockholm Syndrome: Rape, Todd Akin and appeasing abortionists.
No comments:
Post a Comment