America Media has been hosting an ongoing conversation about abortion, one of the vital and contested issues within the lifetime of the church. Coverage of the subject increased after the leaked draft of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision by the Supreme Court, which overturned Roe v. Wade. An essay by Teresa S. Collett—“Rape and incest are deeply tragic. They don’t justify killing a baby.”—garnered an unusually large variety of responses from our audience. Below are a number of the comments, edited for length and clarity.
What I see being discussed within the column is that the lifetime of the fetus is more vital than the lifetime of the 10-year-old mother [and rape victim]? To listen to this discussed in such a clinical fashion is frustrating. It must be discussed, as others have done, as a ministerial matter. The one clinical discussion must be the physical health of the 10-year-old.
Stephen Healy
This text angers me. I watched my daughter’s mental health deteriorate after sexual assault. I thank God often she didn’t get pregnant as I don’t think she and the newborn would have survived the constant reminder of the assault. And the harm to mental health doesn’t just “fade away.” Mental health issues that result from sexual assault are long-term and take lots of work on the victim’s part along side mental health care providers to learn to live with the scars of the assault. Our country doesn’t have enough mental health care providers for every body of sexual assault to get the great care and support they need.
Each woman should have a alternative in how one can address her physical and mental health needs in her situation.
Then again, there are other women who consider their lives were saved since the pregnancy that resulted gave them a reason to live. Each woman has different needs and support to journey through recovery. Each woman should have a alternative in how one can address her physical and mental health needs in her situation. This isn’t a black-and-white issue or us versus them. That is a problem of giving love and compassion and dignity to a lady when that was taken away from her during a sexual assault.
Carol Vollmer-Johnson
If anyone should get the death penalty, it’s the rapist not the innocent baby. I’m amazed on the moral inconsistency amongst those on the left. They’re against the death penalty outside of the womb, but for it in utero.
Gregorio Robinson
There’s all the time a deliberateness within the language used. Since a lot of this relies on philosophical, theological, biological and psychological presuppositions, the straightforward assertion regarding the killing of an unborn child is itself problematic. I select to not view a fetus in the primary trimester as a baby in any respect, unborn or otherwise. And so the termination of a pregnancy in the primary trimester doesn’t involve the “killing of an unborn child.” You may claim that this is unfair but perhaps no more arbitrary than deciding that ensoulment occurs 60 days after birth, as Thomas Aquinas sometimes held. To assert that ensoulment takes place at fertilization isn’t only a alternative, but one which must be recognized as having no real evidence (no less than no more evidence than Aquinas’s view).
Theresa Willox
There’s lots to ponder in Teresa Collett’s article. There are fathers of the church who held that the body is endowed with a soul at conception. The earliest church document we’ve got after the Gospels forbids each abortion and killing (abandoning or exposing to elements) a newborn, which were common practices within the Roman Empire. Has our pondering turn into so conditioned by the demand for our rights that we are able to not consider life from the perspective of the Gospel? Due to the editors and creator for this piece.
Teresa Scully
I respectfully disagree with Teresa Collett. If my daughter had been raped as a baby and impregnated, there isn’t any way I’d have denied her the chance to have an abortion. Possibly I’m a poor Catholic, but I cannot imagine any loving parent forcing a 10-year-old girl to hold a pregnancy to term. Along with the trauma of the rape, continued pregnancy at this age is a definite risk to her life and health.
Glenn Barnette
The worst thing we are able to do to a victim of rape is to bolster their victimhood.
Having been sexually victimized and dealing as a psychotherapist with others who’ve been sexually victimized, I cannot imagine counseling a sexual assault victim to hunt or to not seek having an abortion. A very powerful therapeutic goal when working with individuals within the aftermath of being sexually violated is to help them in regaining a way of control over their lives, as this sense of control was violently taken from them. The person must be advised of all their options, they usually must be offered support without regard to whatever alternative they may make.
Alton Angus
This text got here to me at a really opportune moment. As a cradle Catholic Christian, I actually have [attended the March for Life] in Washington on two occasions, most recently last 12 months, preceding and praying for the choice to overturn Roe v. Wade. Yet one way or the other I recently began to doubt whether outlawing abortion could have result, especially within the case of rape or incest. Teresa Collett demonstrates the deep understanding needed to beat the scourge that leads the culture of death. The worst thing we are able to do to a victim of rape is to bolster their victimhood. Supporting them with love and encouragement in order that they will overcome the evil inflicted upon them with good works wouldn’t only sustain the lifetime of the innocent being that’s growing within the womb, but empower them with the knowledge and truth that good will conquer evil.
Patricia Gaffney
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