Word: incest
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Short of banning abortion outright, the pro-life movement is lobbying legislatures to impose reporting requirements on victims of rape and incest that would make such abortions nearly impossible to obtain. Says the National Right to Life Committee's spokeswoman, Susan Smith: "We do everything we can to eliminate abortions and to prevent funding for rape and incest, but where it is inevitable we lobby for tight reporting requirements to prevent fraud." The new tactic was explained at the National Right to Life Committee convention in Sacramento last month by Scott Fischbach, the group's field coordinator: Laws that...
Smith and Fischbach scored a temporary victory in Idaho last March with passage of a bill that would have permitted legal abortions only if a woman's life was endangered, if an incest victim was under 18, or if the rape was $ reported to the police within seven days (when a victim would not yet know whether she was pregnant). Pro-life Governor Cecil Andrus vetoed the bill, calling the seven-day provision punitive and "without compassion." He added, "On the eighth day, ((the woman)) ceases to be the victim and becomes a criminal...
Strict reporting requirements are a vestige of the way the legal system treats rape victims. It has taken years to reverse the assumption that women fabricate claims of rape and incest or that they somehow bring the crime on themselves. Until recent reforms, a victim's testimony alone was not enough to convict a rapist, although it was enough to convict any other kind of criminal. Even now, a rape victim who goes to court often finds herself on trial as much as her attacker is. As a result, rape is one of the most underreported crimes in America...
...Idaho veto and the pending one in Louisiana have not caused pro-lifers to retreat from their position on rape and incest. National Right to Life Committee spokeswoman Smith cites Pennsylvania's experience to show that women lie about rape. When the state did not require that rape or incest be reported to appropriate authorities, an average of 36 rape-related abortions a month were paid for by the state. When reporting requirements took effect in 1988, that number went down to about three a month...
Relatively few abortions are at stake here -- less than 1% of the 1.6 million abortions performed annually result from rape or incest -- yet the pro-life movement is determined to fight over each one. The movement insists that its position springs from religious beliefs that allow no compromise. Indeed, the harsh logic of the abortion argument makes the exception for rape and incest vulnerable to a charge of hypocrisy. If all fetal life is sacred, as pro-lifers insist, there should be no distinction between pregnancies that result from consensual sex and those that result from force. Otherwise, bearing...