Abortion and Rape
Abortion and Rape
by
Andrew P. Napolitano
Recently
by Andrew P. Napolitano: November’s
Choices
The criticisms
of the recent absurd comments by Missouri Republican Congressman
Todd Akin, who at this writing is his party’s nominee to take on
incumbent Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in November
in a contest he had been expected to win, have focused on his clearly
erroneous understanding of the human female anatomy. In a now infamous
statement, in which he used the bizarre and unheard-of phrase “legitimate
rape,” the congressman gave the impression that some rapes of women
are not mentally or seriously resisted. This is an antediluvian
and misogynistic myth for which there is no basis in fact and which
has been soundly and justly condemned.
Akin also stated
that the female anatomy can resist unwanted impregnation. This,
too, is absurd, offensive and incorrect. Medical science has established
conclusively that women cannot internally block an unwanted union
of egg and sperm, no matter the relationship between male and female.
I think even schoolchildren understand that.
What has gone
unmentioned, however, in the cacophony of condemnation by Republicans
and Democrats, is the implication in Akin’s comments that rape is
not a moral justification for abortion. In that, he is correct:
It is not.
Abortion takes
the life of innocent human beings who are the most vulnerable in
our society. Abortion is today the most frequently performed medical
procedure in the United States. American physicians perform about
two abortions every minute of every hour of every day: about 1 million
a year since 1973. In my home state of New Jersey, abortion is permitted
up to the moment of birth, and the state will even pay for it if
the mother meets certain financial criteria.
How low have
we sunk? What are the consequences of this mass slaughter? How did
we get here?
We got here
because of the most reprehensible and unconstitutional Supreme Court
opinion in the modern era. In a throwback to its infamous Dred Scott
decision – in which a pre-Civil War Supreme Court declared that
blacks are not persons and hence cannot claim the protections of
the Constitution – the court essentially said in Roe vs. Wade the
same of fetuses in the womb.
Roe vs. Wade
has spawned more slaughter than all 20th-century tyrants combined.
The consequences of this slaughter are vast lost generations of
human beings who were denied by the law the right to live. The economic
consequences from which we all suffer today – entitlements too costly
to afford and too few wage earners to pay for them – are directly
attributable to the absence of population growth.
I am not arguing
in favor of entitlements. The Constitution does not authorize the
federal government to provide them. But when FDR and LBJ concocted
their entitlement schemes in order to build permanent dependence
on the Democratic Party, they understood population growth. Their
understanding, too, was slaughtered by abortion. A society that
prefers death to life not only cannot prosper; it cannot survive.
Soon 40 percent of federal tax revenues will be dedicated to interest
on the federal debt, and most of that borrowing has been to pay
for entitlements. We are headed for a cliff.
So are the
babies in the womb. But isn’t the baby in a womb a person? Of course
the baby in a womb is a person. The baby is produced by the physical
interaction of two human parents, and every unborn baby possesses
a fully actualizable human genome: all the material necessary to
grow to adulthood and to exist independently outside the womb.
What about
rape? Rape is among the more horrific violations of human dignity
imaginable. But it is a crime committed by the male, not the female
– and certainly not by the child it might produce. When rape results
in pregnancy, the baby has the same right to life as any child born
by mutually loving parents. Only the Nazis would punish a child
for the crimes of his or her father.
Every abortion
ends the life of an innocent unborn human being. When politicians
in both parties claim to be pro-life but favor abortions because
of the criminal behavior of the father, as in rape or incest, they
are politically rejecting that hard truth. What other violations
of the natural law will they condone for political expedience?
Reprinted
with the author’s permission.
August 23, 2012
Andrew P.
Napolitano [send
him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey,
is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano
has written six books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent
is It
Is Dangerous To Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case
for Personal Freedom. To find out more about Judge Napolitano
and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists,
visit creators.com.
Copyright
© 2012 Andrew P. Napolitano