A common argument that feminists use when it comes to abortions is that for women who are victims of rape, victims of incest, or whose lives may be in danger if the pregnancy is not terminated, abortion should be a guaranteed option available to them. This does bring up an interesting point, as all three cases are ones in which the women either has already gone through significant hardship already, or will go through such hardships if the pregnancy is carried out. We’ll discuss the details of each case and how they should be approached from an abortion perspective.
In the case of rape, the woman did not choose to have sex with the man, meaning the pregnancy that came about wasn’t any fault of her own. It does stand to reason that under the argument that women should control their own bodies to prevent pregnancies to begin with, that if they get pregnant through no fault of their own that abortion should be a valid option. However, the important distinction here is that whatever happened to these women is in the past. If you are pregnant, for whatever reason, there is still some moral responsibility to keep the baby alive rather than just get rid of it. Even if you don’t want to live with that product of rape, there is always adoption on the table as well. In this particular case, I think a fair compromise would be to give rape victims the option of abortion, but only if there is proof that rape actually occurred, and even then, rape victims should consider taking the honestly heroic high-road of going through with the pregnancy regardless, even if they don’t want the baby.
The case of incest is often similar if the incest is non-consensual (i.e. rape). However, a different aspect to consider is that the baby may end up being born with birth defects or other problems due to being a product of incest. At this point the question becomes does a baby who was born through incest have the same inherent value and right to live as any other baby born without any issues? The answer to that is yes, in which case even babies born of incest should ideally be allowed to live (although as mentioned above, if the baby is born through an act of rape, then the mother has a reasonable case to abort the baby, assuming she ignores her moral values).
When it comes to women whose lives may be in danger if the pregnancy is not terminated, there is no debate here that ending one life in order to save another is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, especially when considering that the mother is already fully-developed compared to a baby who is not guaranteed to live through those first few years.
However, it is important to recognize that all three of these cases make up less than 1% of all abortion cases overall. So while many of the arguments for each are perfectly valid, or at least understandable, it is foolish to think that these arguments should drive the overall conversation when it comes to abortion as a whole. If there are to be special exceptions for rape, incest, or cases where the life of the mother is in danger, then so be it (at least for the time being). But the real fight is and will continue to be (so long as the status quo remains unchanged) the banning of the majority of abortions – i.e. the ones that make up the other 99% of cases.