What about “Rape and Incest?” “Life of the mother?”

In the debate on regulating abortion in Canada, some people have suggested that access to abortion should not be restricted in “hard cases” – pregnancy caused by rape or incest, or when a pregnancy appears to threaten a woman’s life.

In responding to such proposals, we must consistently return to the basic principle of the pro-life movement: the direct taking of innocent human life is wrong, regardless of the circumstances.

It is important to remember the following about the rape/incest question: pregnancy as a result of rape or incest is extremely rare; a child conceived in this way is still a human being; a child conceived in this way is innocent of his or her father’s crime, and a woman who has been traumatized by rape or incest needs love and support, not the further trauma an abortion would cause.

If pro-lifer’s accept exceptions in these cases, it undermines our whole argument that the unborn are full-fledged members of the human race, and therefore deserve the full protection of human rights. After all, we would not kill a born child because her father was a rapist, so why would we kill an unborn child for the same reason?

In discussing situations in which a pregnancy appears to threaten a woman’s life, we must remind politicians and the public that, according to traditional medical ethics and sound pro-life principles, an intervention designed to prevent the death of a mother which indirectly causes the death of the child in her womb is not an abortion, and is therefore permissible. (Such intervention might be proposed in cases of ectopic pregnancy or cervical cancer, for example.) When you take this into consideration, pro-life medical experts say that, because of advances in modern medicine, there are now no situations in which abortion could be seen as necessary to preserve a mother’s life.