Then get rid of legally mandated child support. Her decision, HER BODY, her consequences. But his dime. At most, child support should only be imposed on relationship partners, who entered into or continued a commited relationship with the child's mother. Either that, or if the woman can make the unilateral decision to carry the child to term, the man should be able to make a unilateral decision as to his own involvement or responsibility for the child. As it is, women already duck or pass along too much of the responsibility. Imposing legal consequences on this narrow of an issue is absurd.

And what is murder? Reasons don't matter. Justification does not matter. Just as there is no excuse for raping a woman, no matter how "provocative" her behavior or how often she had given prior consent. Ultimately, she can say no at any point, even in media res, and defiance of that is rape (within reason, of course - I'm not suggesting sending people to jail for not pulling out fast enough, of course). Likewise, with infanticide. Treat the pregnancy as another injurious consequence that takes nine months to heal, if that makes it easier to reconcile, but if you're going to oppose abortion at any point, the only reasonable grounds for doing so is that it is a human life. If it is human, than the misbehavior of its parents is insufficient grounds for termination or even denial of life-sustaining efforts. If it is not a human life, then opposing abortion is like opposing tattoo removal - you made a decision, you live with the consequences!

And those people are wrong. That attitude can only be reconciled by a denial of the humanity of the fetus.

It's a consequence of the sex. If a rapist cuts off a finger, you don't get one back and you don't get to mutilate him in revenge. The unpleasant possibility of the consequences being extended for the woman do not justify infanticide, anymore than heart disease justifies organ harvesting.

And there is also the legal issue Atkins alluded to with his blather - the abuse of the rape exception. It could even lead to false accusations, costly investigations and wrongful prosecutions that violate civil rights, when women try to evade the consequences of a failed relationship or one night stand by claiming rape. More likely, everyone will turn a blind eye and pretend it's an unsolvable case and let her get her abortion, in which case all your justifications about choice and consequences are tossed out the window and she gets the abortion you (theoretically) agree she should not have. What's worse, the sort of person who would use such a lie is even less deserving of a waiver from responsibility and consequences.

If you are sincere about the issues of consequence and choice, then logically, there should be some sort of legal standard to meet for the waiver, hence the issue of "legitimate rape." Presumably the Congressthing was using that term in opposition to retroactive revocation of consent or substance-abuse-impaired judgment, his moronic assertion that conception implies consent notwithstanding. If there is going to be a requirement that a crime was committed, then the crime has to be investigated, prosecuted and so forth. What if the biological father of the child is found innocent by a jury? Legally speaking, no rape occurred, so how can the "victim" justify her use of that exemption? Due process for the accused rapist would almost certainly take the pregnancy into those areas where a lot of people are uncomfortable with allowing abortion anyway. Hell, if it takes half the pregnancy to prove the rape and the paternity (I am presuming the ability of modern medicine to prove the paternity of a fetus - if that is not possible before it is viable, even the excuse of rape is bullshit, because how is a woman in a sexual relationship going to prove it's not her partner's child? ), why not go with a C-section to give the fetus a chance to live? I am fairly certain that premature babies have survived after only a little more than 20-25 weeks of gestation.

An honest and thoughtful consideration of the rape exemption, as opposed to an emotional or agenda-driven compromise, must deal with these issues or alternatives. You can't just handwave the issue by saying "except in the case of rape" to demonstrate you are not sexist. Anyway, I reiterate my position that the only question is the humanity of the fetus. If it is such, there is no excuse for deliberately and actively terminating it, and if it is not, there is no excuse for imposing on the private medical decisions of the woman, no matter how much she needs a lesson about consequences and responsibility for her actions.

Ask her, if you would, at what point did her son stop being a symptom of abuse and turn into a human being? While I admire and her respect her courage to do the right thing, it does not make doing the wrong thing acceptable. Her virture in this situation comes not from going the extra mile (though of course, she could have made other arrangements for his upbringing), but from not taking the easy and immoral way out when her circumstances made it possible.