Many time when discussing the abortion issue with people they raise the
issue of "What about incest or rape?"
Each year, there are between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 abortions in the U.S.
alone. Those are estimated numbers since, believe it or not, accurate statistics
are not kept on this medical procedure for political reasons (some statistics
may be seen at http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/aboramt.html).
How many of those abortions are for rape or incest? Again, impossible to say
with certainty, but typical numbers (http://www.pe.net/~matrix/options/abrtindx.htm)
are as follows:
Percentage of abortions performed due to life or health threat to the mother: 1%
Percentage of abortions performed due to rape or incest: 2%
Percentage of abortions performed due to health of the baby: 4%
Percentage of abortions performed for social reasons: 93%
So, realize that we're talking about a very, very small percentage of abortions.
Even if we allow them for these extenuating reasons, most pro-life advocates would
probably not get very upset about it.
I personally would support a routine morning-after pill for raped women. That
would solve the problem for cases of rape.
- Steve.
-- Steven H. Schimmrich Physical Sciences Department schimmri@kutztown.edu (office) Kutztown University schimmrich@earthlink.net (home) 217 Grim Science Building 610-683-4437, 610-683-1352 (fax) Kutztown, Pennsylvania 19530 http://home.earthlink.net/~schimmrich/