As Live Action News has reported, GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has taken some heat for defending the life of the preborn baby of an 11-year old Paraguayan rape victim.
Many Americans, even if they support the right to life in a majority of cases, still advocate for exceptions in cases such as rape. But as Huckabee acknowledged, there still is a life growing and developing inside that mother’s womb. Suggesting that we should “not compound a tragedy by taking yet another life,” Huckabee also noted how this young mother could face guilt and regret later in her life if she had had an abortion.
While Huckabee’s statements were attacked as right-wing, crazy conservative talking points, real women have shared their stories of how they have regretted their abortions after they conceived from rape, while others have shared how they came to love and appreciate the children they gave birth to even after such an experience.
A survey from the Elliot Institute also shows that women who abort after rape regret such a decision, and often feel pressured from family members. An abortion also adds to the trauma of a rape, and is one more thing the woman has to overcome.
If this 11 year old had been allowed an abortion in her pro-life country of Paraguay, who is to say it really would have been her choice? Many activist organizations were fighting for her to be allowed to have an abortion. Were they fighting for this young girl, or just for abortion?
An abortion often enables the perpetrator to escape, as the crime is more hidden with the evidence – the child – eradicated. It’s the rapist who needs to be punished – not the child conceived, who is also a victim.
While childbirth is risky in very young mothers, so is abortion. And yet the child, Mainumby, survived, delivering her child via C-section. Had Mainumby had an abortion so late in her pregnancy, she would have been at great risk for not only psychological side-effects, but physical ones. Surely this is not what activists had in mind, but when pro-aborts deny these possibilities, they are certainly not providing any help to the rape victim or her baby. In reporting on the issue, LifeNews.com points out:
According to ABC News, the director of Reina Sofia said that 14 girls between the ages of nine and 15 gave birth at the hospital last year and they all came out fine. Of course, the director of the pro-abortion group Amnesty International, Ericka Guevara, argued that even though the birth went well the girl is still “lucky to be alive.”
She explained, “Only time will tell the true extent of the physical and psychological consequences of her tragic ordeal. The fact that Mainumby did not die does not excuse the human rights violations she suffered at the hands of the Paraguayan authorities, who decided to gamble with her health, life and integrity despite overwhelming evidence that this pregnancy was extremely risky.”
If Amnesty International and other such groups want to help mothers pregnant from rape, they ought to be targeting those who are really to blame, not the babies. An abortion is not the quick and easy fix these advocates claim it is.
