{ What about a woman who is pregnant due to rape or incest?}
Answer #2: Rape is never the fault of the child; the guilty party, not an innocent party, should be punished.
Alcorn warns us that we should be careful in a case like this as to who gets the blame. We should watch out for missing why this is such a “hard” case to answer in the first place. It is not hard to try and figure out if the innocent child deserves death for the actions of his/her father. What is hard is that the mother was put into a hard situation that she was not willing and ready for. He reminds us that this is a hard situation that the woman’s community must support her through. But while thinking about it, “the fact remains that none of this is the fault of the child.”
______________________________________________________________________
“Why should Person A be killed because Person B raped Person A’s mother?”
_____________________________________________
Alcorn asks, “Why should person A be killed because Person B raped Person A’s mother? If your father committed a crime, should you go to jail for it? If you found out today that your biological father had raped your mother, would you feel you no longer had a right to live?” Those are good questions he poses. Then, for the Christians he gives some supportive scripture:
The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father. Ezekiel 18:20
Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers, each is to die for their own sin. Deuteronomy 24:16
He comments further that civilized people don’t kill children for the wrong actions of their parents-only when it comes aborting the child of a rapist (do we make this mistake). He’s right; this issue is so hard and disgusting that we wrongly transfer our disgust to the innocent child or the mother instead of stricter punishment for the rapist. Alcorn ends by saying, “lets not punish the wrong person by inflicting upon the innocent child our rage against the rapist.”
____________________________________________
“Lets not punish the wrong person by inflicting upon the innocent child our rage against the rapist.”
____________________________________________
Argument(s) taken from ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments.
By Randy Alcorn.
By Randy Alcorn.To see why I am doing this go here.
I had a friend who told me she was pregnant, and then told me she was considering an abortion because she couldn't raise Another child....she had three. I suggested adoption as an alternative and her response was that she couldn't bear the idea of carrying a baby for nine months, and then giving it up for adoption! Why should the innocent child be punished for the conviensce of the Mother? Rape or incense should be held in the same vein....Have the child, and then put it up for adoption if you can bear to raise it, once it's a reality, instead of a concept?!!!?
ReplyDeleteRape and incest are truly horrific, horrific things - often it is very difficult for a mother to love a child conceived that way, at the beginning. But her justified anger at the horrible attrocity which happened to her should not cause her to commit another attrocity which will only damage her own soul even further. Added to the often life long pain of being violated at the deepest level, will be the life long guilt of knowing that one killed one's own child.
ReplyDeleteI think that it takes an incredible amount of maturity and selfishlessness for a woman in our society to bear a child who has been conceived in rape or incest to term. But it does happen - one of my aunts, who is now in heaven, had an abortion because of rape when she was a teenager - her own father, my grandfather, drove her to the abortion clinic and insisted she get an abortion. The guilt haunted her her entire life, and I remember visiting her, by chance, on the anniversary of her child's death - I accidently caught her sobbing on her closet floor. She was raped again when she was 30, and this time she chose to give her child life and give him up for adoption as she was a single woman. At first, she had an incredibly hard time bonding and loving the child inside her womb who had been put their outside her will, but she prayed for God to help her love him. By the end of her pregnancy, she loved that child and had a hard time giving him up for adoption. Luckily, it was an open adoption with a very kind Christian family, so she got to have a relationship with him.
I'm sorry I am writing a novel, lol, but my point is that Randy Alcorn is of course ethically correct, but this issue is very delicate. I think the place to start with a woman struggling with this issue is to lead her to Christ, because it would take His strength and love to bring a child conceived by violent force to term.