re: #557 SanFranciscoZionist

OK, let me expand that last, since I posted with anger and without a lot of thought.

I understand the desire to avoid abortion as much as possible, but yet to leave possibilities for situations when there may be no better solution.

What I cannot understand is the implication that rape or incest are somehow justifications for abortion when nothing else is. My perception, and I may be wrong, is that when such an ‘exception’ is made, the point is that the mother is innocent of ‘wrongdoing’, ‘wrongdoing’ here being defined as consensual intercourse.

Rape is horrible. So are a lot of other things that drive women to have abortions.

I also want to understand what people who envision rape as being a legal exception to a ban on abortion are envisioning. How does a woman prove her right to that abortion? Is physical harm necessary, as it was in the old days, when you’d better be beat up pretty good to convince a jury? What if the rapist is never found? What if he’s aquitted? Can you still abort? These are not idle questions—under what circumstances does a woman get to decide whether to abort or not?

I sometimes misquote Churchill—letting a woman decide by herself, with what help she accepts, whether or not to have an abortion is the worst possible way to decide such a thing—except for all the other ways.