The Rarity of Pregnancies Resulting from Rape and Incest.

       "How I am grieved by the indignities I have suffered, and revolted by rank smells
         How I despise the nomad land and hate the nomad sky!
         When I became pregnant with a Buranian child, I wanted to kill myself.
         Yet once I bore it, I found the love of mother and child.
         His looks are strange and his speech is different, yet my hate turns into love.
         Deep inside, I feel the tug of my heartstrings.
         Morning and evening he is with me.
         How can I not pity that which my womb has borne and my hand nurtured?"
              — Lament of a Chinese noblewoman who was
                   kidnapped and raped by barbarians in 195 A.D.[62]

       "[My mother] finally approved of her unwanted one, whom she had borned so long ago in such great pain and sorrow and humiliation ..."
       "Some people disclaim their natural heritage. I always name my origin. It didn't hold me back and neither has my color. I was born in poverty. My father raped my mother when she was 12. Now they've named a park for me in Chester, Pennsylvania."
              — Renowned Gospel singer Ethel Waters.[63]

       Introduction. From an ethical and logical standpoint, the number of pregnancies from rape and incest in most countries is simply irrelevant to the moral case against these exceptions. A baby conceived through violence is as blameless and innocent as one conceived in marriage, and is therefore deserving of the same protection. Either all preborn babies are worth saving, or none of them are.
       As the pro-abortion front group 'Religious' Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) says, "Opponents of abortion rights walk a fine line within their own movement when they condone any abortion. Based on their own definition, they are guilty of being accessories to "murder" in certain circumstances by accepting rape and incest exceptions."[64]

       However, it is very useful to be able to show just how rare rape- and incest-caused pregnancies really are, because pro-abortionists have persuaded the public that the number is huge. A 1990 national Wirthlin poll found that the average respondent's guess at the number of abortions committed for rape and incest was 21 percent of the total number of abortions in the United States.[65]
       As correctly pointed out by one of the most rabidly pro-abortion groups in the world, pro-lifers must never apologize for fighting rape- and incest-justified abortions. If we even begin to think that preborn lives are disposable for any reason other than to save another human life, we set the life of the preborn below that of other human beings — and this is what started our nation and our world on the road to abortion on demand in the first place!
       There is no question that rape is traumatic. But why pile trauma upon trauma by insisting on abortion to 'remedy' rape? As reformed abortionist Bernard Nathanson, has so eloquently stated,

Rape is a heinous, ineradicably humiliating act of violence imposed upon an defenseless woman. The key word is 'ineradicable,' for the destruction of the innocent human being created as a result of that act can never eradicate the unspeakable emotional and psychological residue of that rape. To the contrary, it can only compound the residue with another deadly act of violence. ... If a part of a human community were not at stake, no woman should be required to undergo the degradation of bearing a child in these [rape and incest] circumstances, but even degradation, shame, and emotional disruption are not the moral equivalent of life. Only life is. ... [66]

       As with any other problem pregnancy, the woman's problem is not that she's pregnant. The main problem is how others treat her. Rape and incest victims have always unjustly been victims of the "Scarlet Letter Syndrome," but 'treating' this problem of societal perspective with abortion is like saying that the woman is a hopeless case or 'damaged goods.'
       Basile Uddo, Professor of Law, Loyola School of Law, says it best;

Abortion is to rape and incest what morphine is to pain — a superficially appealing, temporarily relieving, woefully inadequate response to something serious. The immediate benefits only mask the deeper wounds, which can fester to the point of great injury. A physician would never 'treat' his patient only with morphine unless his was a hopeless case. To 'treat' rape and incest pregnancies with abortion is a way of saying these women are hopeless cases — violated, tainted, damaged goods, for whom abortion is a way to scrub away the 'scarlet letter.'[67]

       Former rape counselor Sandra Mahkorn, M.D., says that

The central issue then, should not be whether we can abort all pregnant sexual assault victims, but rather an exploration of the things we can change in ourselves, and through community education, to support such women, through their pregnancies. The 'abortion is the best solution' approach can only serve to encourage the belief that sexual assault is something for which the victim must bear shame — a sin to be carefully concealed.[68]

       What is more caring — to sneer at a rape victim's problem and just tell her to 'get rid of it,' or to respect the life within her and give her whatever real help she needs?
       In summary, the tragedy is the rape — not the child that is conceived. Contrary to what pro-abortionists apparently believe, two injustices do not equal a right or a healed life. The greatest pain of the first injustice lasts nine months, but the pain of the abortion 'remedy' lasts a lifetime.
       Some may answer that the woman has a right to be free from assault. This is true, of course, but in the case of abortion for rape, the assault has already happened. Just as the woman has a right to be free from assault, so does her preborn baby. Allowing her abortion for rape under this argument is like saying that anyone who is assaulted can find healing and peace by going out into the street and punching the first person he or she sees.

       Abortion = Infanticide for Many Women. According to experts at the University of British Columbia's Department of Psychiatry, "Whatever may be the case at the conscious level, at a much deeper level, abortion is regarded by many women as infanticide."[69]
       Obtaining an abortion may not be much of a problem for a hard-core, heartless pro-abortion gender feminist, but what about a woman who truly believes that abortion is the killing of a human being?
       According to various polls, more than sixty percent of all women in the United States believe that preborn children are human beings.[70]

       The Eugenics Argument. Some self-proclaimed pro-abortion genetics 'sexperts' insist that rape-caused pregnancy must end in abortion because the child (if male) will turn out to be a rapist, as well.
       This is utter hogwash. Nobody has ever even attempted to perform a study that examines the allegation that the tendency to commit rape or any other crime is hereditary. Psychiatrists and psychologists agree that the making of a criminal is primarily due to environmental effects.
       Many pro-abortionists are so racist they see dark skin as a sort of a birth defect. For example, lobbyists for the Medical Association of Georgia urged Governor Lester Maddox to pass an initial rape and incest exception for abortion, asking him how he would feel "... if a White girl got raped by a Negro and then became pregnant."[71]
       In any case, how many persons think that there should be capital punishment for rapists? Obviously, not too many. If this majority of people do not favor capital punishment for the obviously guilty rapist, why then should they favor it for the innocent child, who has committed no crime whatsoever?

       Try This ... Pro-life debaters might like to try this theoretical question on their "pro-choice" friends: Take a newborn baby conceived by rape or incest and lay him next to a newborn conceived in a loving marriage. Then ask a pro-abortionist if they could tell you which one was the result of a rape by comparing their appearance and behavior.
       Then try this second question: Would a pro-abortionist think less of an adult neighbor who was conceived by rape than he would of another neighbor who was conceived within marriage? The answer (if the pro-abort still retains a shred of human kindness) should be "no." Regardless of the answer, ask if the pro-abortionist would kill his neighbor merely because he or she was conceived as a result of rape? After all, that is what a woman is doing in cases of abortion for rape and incest.
       Pro-abortionists say that they want abortion for rape and incest instances based purely on the circumstances of the baby's conception. This is the same as saying that children conceived out of wedlock are somehow less worthy than those conceived within marriage.
       These children used to be called "bastards," and they carried a heavy load of shame and discrimination throughout their lives.
       Now our solution is much simpler.
       We just kill them.
       This kind of appeal is particularly powerful when addressing high schoolers, since a large number of them are now 'illegitimate,' and most are painfully aware of the fact.

       Rape and Incest: Wedge for Abortion on Demand. Speaking for leading pro-abortion Congressman Les AuCoin [D.-Oregon], legislative aide Ron Fitzsimmons revealed the true anti-life strategy behind trying to get abortion funding for rape. In a January 1990 briefing to pro-abortion activists, he said that the objective of the 1990 session was to write a very loosely-worded "rape and incest" exception to the Hyde Amendment. This exception was intended to be open to abuse, so pro-life congressmen would have no choice but to vote against it and the President would have no choice but to veto it.
       The pro-abortionists would then trumpet the "insensitivity" of the President and the pro-life congressmen in an attempt to discredit them and defeat them in the November elections. As Fitzsimmons said during the briefing session; "It's hard to ignore the rape and incest victims. But I can speak for my boss, he felt that in the long term what we want is full Medicaid funding. And the only way we're going to get that is to get the votes in, for people who will vote that way."[72]

       Manipulating the 'System.' Women who are willing to kill their own preborn children for mere convenience obviously see lying as a relatively small crime. Rebecca Chalker and Carol Downer admit in their A Woman's Book of Choices that "Before abortion was legal, women sometimes got abortions by claiming that they had been raped."[73]
       Pro-abortion women have continued to lie on a huge scale, as proven by the Hyde Amendment's varying effects upon the level of Federal funding of abortions since 1977.
       The Hyde Amendment cut off Federal funding for convenience abortions, and paid for 17,983 abortions to save the life of the mother and for rape and incest in Fiscal Year 1981.
       In Fiscal Years 1983 and 1984, only abortions to save the life of the mother were allowed under the Amendment, and the average number of abortions paid for during these two years plunged to 411.
       This means that about (17,983 - 411) = 17,582 abortions were performed for claimed "rape and incest" under the Hyde Amendment in 1981.
       This brings up a very interesting point. To begin with, about 20 percent of all women in the United States qualify for Federal abortion funding under this Amendment due to their low incomes. As mentioned above, the average number of rapes in the United States each year over the period 1980-1997 inclusive was about 179,980.
       If this number is divided by five in order to find out approximately how many low-income women were raped during these years, we arrive at 36,000.
       In other words, these low-income women are claiming that (17,582/36,000) = 49 percent of all of their rapes resulted in pregnancies!
       To take this analysis one step further, Figure 3-5 shows that about 0.8 percent of all women who are raped actually become pregnant as a result of the act. This means that the number of women who claimed that they were raped to get a free Federal abortion was (49 percent/0.8 percent) = 61 times the number that were actually raped.
       In other words, more than 98 percent of them lied to get a free taxpayer-paid abortion!

       Lyin' All Over the World. The phenomenon of women lying to obtain abortions is certainly not unique to the United States. Just as a bogus gang-rape was used as the basis of the Supreme Court decision to usher in abortion on demand in the United States, a girl who claimed that she was a victim of a gang-rape drove the first wedge into Britain's protective abortion laws in 1938.
       According to sworn testimony, professional pro-abortionists alleged that a 14-year old girl was lured into a stable to see a horse with a wooden leg (I swear I am not making this up) and was supposedly gang-raped by four guardsmen. She became pregnant, and went to a crusading abortionist (Alec Bourne), who gave her a free abortion. He then turned himself in. In the resulting case of law, Rex v. Bourne, Judge Alex McNaghten decided that delivery of the baby would impair the girl's mental health, and acquitted the abortionist.
       Naturally, the guardsmen were never called into court to answer to the charge of rape — and for good reason. The incident never happened.
       At the other end of the world, a New Zealand commission that liberalized that country's abortion laws recommended against a rape and incest exception since the likelihood of false reports and the difficulty of checking them would render the exception utterly meaningless.[74]

       The Impacts of Lying. When an abortion law is liberalized to allow exceptions for rape and incest, the number of women claiming rape just so they can get a free abortion invariably multiplies by a factor of two, five or even ten. Just as inevitably, all available rape-crisis resources are overwhelmed by the sudden explosion of referrals. Women who were really raped will be victimized a second time because of these liars, and agencies and the public will eventually begin to regard even genuine claims of rape as "crying wolf."
       Additionally, these callous and uncaring women will stretch law-enforcement agencies to the limit. The results may be twofold: When the lying woman is quizzed regarding her "rape," she may feel pressured to come up with a name — any name, and innocent men will be prosecuted and even jailed (although this result may be welcome to the gender feminists who claim that "all men are, by their very natures, rapists").[75]
       Secondly, the chances of real rapists being caught will drop drastically due to overloading of investigative agencies, and these predators will be perfectly free to rape and rape again.
       In just one of thousands of cases of false rape accusations, an 11-year old girl accused her mother's boyfriend, Ivie Cornell Norris, of raping her repeatedly. Cornell was convicted and sent to prison. After he had languished there for more than a year, the girl admitted that she had lied. Her story was based on an episode of the television program "21 Jump Street," which had depicted a rape.[76]
       Norris' life was destroyed; he lost his job, his freedom, his reputation, his girlfriend, and all of his savings over this spurious charge. This is typical of the impacts on a man who is imprisoned on a false rape charge. Gender feminists know full well that Norris' story might be repeated thousands of times annually if women try to get abortions under rape and incest exceptions. But, since they couldn't care less about the impacts of their decisions on men, they cannot be expected to promulgate any kind of safeguard against this terrible abuse.
       The Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1988 required women who claimed to be victims of rape or incest to report their crimes before getting a free abortion from the state. The reporting of rapes jumped significantly the very first month the law was in effect, and police reported that some women admitted that they were reporting rapes just to get a free abortion.[77]
       When large numbers of pro-abortion women start lying to get their free abortions, the situation makes it next to impossible for law enforcement agencies to find and prosecute real rapists. As Ferris B. Lucas, Executive Director of the National Sheriff's Association, said in 1983;

We do, however, wish to comment on the provisions that would allow federal funds to be paid for abortions performed for treatment of rape or incest victims only. The wording would lead a person desirous of an abortion to make false reports to law enforcement agencies which would have to be checked and investigated to some length. These crimes are not easy ones to prove or disprove and resultantly require many man-hours of investigation. American law enforcement agencies are presently overburdened and do not have this vast amount of time available.[78]

       This explosion of uncaring liars first occurred in Colorado, when the Model Penal Code abortion law revisions were passed in 1967. This law allowed abortions only to save the life of the mother for rape and incest, and for the mother's health. Of the 1,850 legal abortions performed in Colorado the first year under this law, 18 percent (or 333) of the mothers claimed to be rape victims.[79]
       According to the statistical analysis performed earlier in this Chapter, it is probable that at least 330 of the 333 were lying. This percentage is buttressed by the fact that, in all of these cases, not a single rapist was arrested or even identified, a statistical impossibility in light of the fact that more than half of all rapes are committed by men that the victim knows.

Go to Next Topic: The Frequency of Rape-Caused Pregnancies

Return to Exceptions for Abortion Table of Contents

Footnotes for “The Rarity of Pregnancies Resulting from Rape and Incest”

[62] "The Unwanted Child — 195 A.D., China." National Right to Life News, May 1978, page 6.

[63] Ethel Waters, quoted in testimony on July 25, 1983 by Congressman Thomas J. Bliley, Jr., (R-Va.), and reprinted in the Congressional Record. Part of an excellent pamphlet printed by the American Life Lobby entitled "Rape and Incest Exception Not Needed and Unwarranted." Available for $1 from ALL, Post Office Box 490, Stafford, Virginia 22555. Telephone: (703) 659-4171. Also see Ethel Waters. His Eye Is On the Sparrow, pages 277 and 278.

[64] 'Religious' Coalition for Abortion Rights (now RCRC). Booklet entitled "Words of Choice." 1991, Washington, D.C. Page 24.

[65] Results of a 1990 Wirthlin poll described in "The Week." National Review, December 3, 1990, page 12.

[66] Bernard Nathanson, M.D., statement to the Virginia State legislature, February 11, 1982.

[67] Basile Uddo, Professor of Law, Loyola School of Law, "Pregnancy Due to Rape and Incest." Restoring the Right to Life: The Human Life Amendment [Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1984], page 188.

[68] Sandra Mahkorn, M.D., former rape counselor, "Pregnancy and Sexual Assault." The Psychological Aspects of Abortion [Washington, D.C.: University Publications of America, 1979], pages 65 and 66.

[69] As described in Ian Hunt, M.D., University of British Columbia's Department of Psychiatry. American Psychiatric Association's Psychiatric News, March 3, 1978.

[70] As an example, the Gallup Poll conducted in Princeton, New Jersey from May 8 to 11, 1981, asked the question "Some people feel that human life begins at the moment of conception. Others feel that human life does not begin until the baby is actually born. Do you, yourself, feel that human life begins at conception, at the time of birth, or at some point in between? If you feel that human life begins sometime between conception and birth, when do you feel that it begins?" 59 percent of women responding answered "at conception," and eight percent more replied "three months or less."

[71] As described in Sagar C. Jain and Laurel F. Gooch. Georgia Abortion Act of 1968: A Study in the Legislative Process [University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1972] pages 56 and 57.

[72] As described in Richard Doerflinger. "Hyde Amendment to Be Examined By Congress Again." The [Portland, Oregon] Catholic Sentinel, November 9, 1990, page 7.

[73] Rebecca Chalker and Carol Downer. A Woman's Book of Choices: Abortion, Menstrual Extraction, RU-486 [Four Walls Eight Windows Press, Post Office 548, Village Station, New York, New York 10014, 1992], 271 pages, page 39.

[74] Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Contraception, Sterilization and Abortion. New Zealand, 1977.

[75] For example, Marilyn French, in the gender feminist anthology Sisterhood is Powerful, says that "All men are rapists. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes" [Sisterhood is Powerful (Robin Morgan, editor) [New York: Vintage Books, 1970]].

[76] "TV Program is Source of Made-Up Story." American Family Association Journal, April 1990, page 4.

[77] Andrew Sheehan. "New Abortion Law Brings More Reports of Rape." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 25, 1988, page 5.

[78] Ferris B. Lucas, Executive Director, National Sheriff's Association, July 18, 1977. Quoted by Congressman Thomas J. Bliley (R-Va.) in July 25, 1983 testimony printed in the Congressional Record.

[79] V. Seltzer. "Medical Management of the Rape Victim." Journal of the American Medical Women's Association, 32, 1977, page 141. Described in Eugene F. Diamond, M.D. "Rape and Abortion." Linacre Quarterly, August 1980.