Santorum: A rape baby is a gift from god!

[useless]

Again, nobody said that.

I am against the Iraq war.

anyway about how Pro-lifers apparently are more likely to support murdering others than pro-choicers let me tell you that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong were all Pro-"choice" to my knowledge.

Actually someone did say something similar!

 

[Traitorfish]

Rights are not man made. Humans having inalienable rights is the basis for all liberty. If rights are man made, then Nazism, slavery and all evils are justifiable.

Why do you assume that "rights" are the only basis for an ethical system? Catholic ethical philosophy, to name only the most obvious example, has traditionally been constructed in terms of virtue ethics derived from Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, and the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and other early Christians. The idea of intrinsic "human rights" is an Early Modern innovation that the Church and its associated thinkers have traditionally shown limited interest in, and, as far as I understand, have made reference to them largely as a way of offering a codified, accessible set of prescriptions derived from the aforementioned philosophical systems.

 

[classical_hero]

Does anyone know what percentage of rapes results in pregnancies?

 

[Traitorfish]

Does anyone know what percentage of rapes results in pregnancies?

I don't know if it's possible to get hard numbers, because it's so hard to pin down actual incidences of rape. The best you could do with certainty is establish how many incidents of rape which lead to a conviction resulted in pregnancy, but given that rape has a below average rate of reporting, of charges being filed, and convictions being given as compared to other forms of assault, that seems pretty clearly insufficient. What you're mostly dealing with is estimates, based on a number of inferences and assumptions, with considerable margins of error.

So to answer your actual question, rather than qualifying myself at length, RAINN has these statistics for the US:

Pregnancies Resulting from Rape

In 2004-2005, 64,080 women were raped. According to medical reports, the incidence of pregnancy for one-time unprotected sexual intercourse is 5%. By applying the pregnancy rate to 64,080 women, RAINN estimates that there were 3,204 pregnancies as a result of rape during that period.

This calculation does not account for the following factors which could lower the actual number of pregnancies:

• Rape, as defined by the NCVS, is forced sexual intercourse. Forced sexual intercourse means vaginal, oral, or anal penetration by offender(s). This category includes incidents where the penetration is from a foreign object such as a bottle. Certain types of rape under this definition cannot cause pregnancy.
• Some victims of rape may be utilizing birth control methods, such as the pill, which will prevent pregnancy.
• Some rapists may wear condoms in an effort to avoid DNA detection.
• Vicims of rape may not be able to become pregnant for medical or age-related reasons.

This calculation does not account for the following factors which could raise the actual number of pregnancies:

• Medical estimates of a 5% pregnancy rate are for one-time, unprotected sexual intercourse. Some victimizations may include multiple incidents of intercourse.
• Because of methodology, NCVS does not measure the victimization of Americans age 12 or younger. Rapes of these young people could results in pregnancies not accounted for in RAINN's estimates.

Which isn't ideal, I know, but it's sort of the best we have to work with.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

I note by the way that Santorum is currently paying 100 to 1 here with bookmakers to be the next president ....the same price as Hillary Clinton

 

[NickyJ]

Actually someone did say something similar!

All he was doing was responding to the claim that pro-lifers are "most likely to themselves advocate the murder of people in general."

You really aught to look at context more often.

 

[GamezRule]

Hitler was pro-life though, whenever Germans were involved. Since under his system, only Germans really mattered, I think he goes in the pro-life category.

 

[Crezth]

All he was doing was responding to the claim that pro-lifers are "most likely to themselves advocate the murder of people in general."

You really aught to look at context more often.

He was responding to the claim by asserting the inverse.

 

[Traitorfish]

Hitler was pro-life though, whenever Germans were involved. Since under his system, only Germans really mattered, I think he goes in the pro-life category.

Yep. When you're addressing the accusation that many pro-lifers lack a consistent life ethic, bringing up the most extreme example of this isn't really a defence. It'd be like if somebody said to me "communists are all authoritarian", and I replied "No they weren't, Stalin was very libertarian so far as Stalin was concerned."

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

Hitler was pro-life though, whenever Germans were involved. Since under his system, only Germans really mattered, I think he goes in the pro-life category.

By that logic, everyone is pro-life. If you support legalized abortion, you're still pro-life because unborn children don't matter. If you support the death penalty, you're pro-life because criminals don't matter. If you support genocide, you're pro-life because "inferior" groups of people don't matter. if you support eugenics, you're pro-life because "defective" people don't matter.

 

[GamezRule]

By that logic, everyone is pro-life. If you support legalized abortion, you're still pro-life because unborn children don't matter. If you support the death penalty, you're pro-life because criminals don't matter. If you support genocide, you're pro-life because "inferior" groups of people don't matter. if you support eugenics, you're pro-life because "defective" people don't matter.

My question was purely based off of racial and ethnic differences. If you consider some groups of humans to be "sub-human," then you could easily support killing them off and still be pro-life towards people that "mattered." A very basic and clear example is Nazi Germany.

That said, since when did the term "pro-life" mean not killing anything? By your logic, if you support executing serial child rapists, you're pro-choice. That makes no sense.

 

[HannibalBarka]

http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/24/rick-santorum-daughter-abortion-rape?cat=world&type=article

So to sumarise this, if either of Santorum's daughters were raped, he would pretty much deny them the right to an abortion, the right to choose what happens to their own body, the right to decide whether they want a child or not.

This is a pretty disgusting belief, I'm not actually sure if he even believes that there is ANY case in which a woman can have an abortion.

I guess the topic of the thread will revolve around the issue of denying women abortions, and how moral it is to say to a rape victim (hypothetical or otherwise), that they shouldn't have an aboriton merely just to sate your conscience.

My own views on this is that it is just another example of the misoygny in the Republican party and in the abortion debate; that a woman MUST NOT have an abortion, and she should be forced to have the child, regardless if she wants it or not, regardless if she objects, she must have it to appease other people.

Let's not tolerate Sharia inspired laws in the US ! Jesus, we're not in Egypt !!!

 

[Leoreth]

So to answer your actual question, rather than qualifying myself at length, RAINN has these statistics for the US:

One also shouldn't discount the number of rapes that go unreported.

 

[Traitorfish]

By that logic, everyone is pro-life. If you support legalized abortion, you're still pro-life because unborn children don't matter. If you support the death penalty, you're pro-life because criminals don't matter. If you support genocide, you're pro-life because "inferior" groups of people don't matter. if you support eugenics, you're pro-life because "defective" people don't matter.

What is the proportion of pro-lifers that are also vegetarian? Seems to me that they necessarily apply the very logic which you lambaste as self-defeating in their day to day lives.

Which is why "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are, in themselves, basically meaningless. Everyone supports life, and everyone supports choice. We just disagree about what those things mean. The labels "pro-life" and "pro-choice" attain meaning only insofar as they denote specific political orientations in a given social context, and because Hitler's opposition to abortion for "Aryans" derived from the more general opposition to abortions in German social conservatism (particularly its Catholic variants, which is an Austrian he was heavily exposed to), he can be considered "pro-life". (Correspondingly, Stalin was anti-abortion but not "pro-life", because his banning of abortion was intended to boost the birth rate, get women back in the kitchen, and court the Orthodox Church, not to protect foetuses.)

 

[CELTICEMPIRE]

All he was doing was responding to the claim that pro-lifers are "most likely to themselves advocate the murder of people in general."

You really aught to look at context more often.

Thank you, NickyJ is exactly right, but I thought it was pretty clear that I was not saying that abortion is wrong because Hitler supported it.

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: This thread doesn't need to go any further. I had hoped it would keep a more productive and civil tone, but alas, it was not to be.

The main problem in this sort of debate seems to be the tendency on both sides of the argument to negatively characterise the opposition (whether this is entirely intentional or inadvertent). Some comments were within touching distance of accusations of child murder and woman hating.

If you're on the general 'pro-life' side, then your argument might be that the implication of the opposite point of view is the killing of lots of babies. However, this does not mean that your opposition supports child murder. Their motive is simply to support women's rights. If you believe that to be misguided, you should attack their arguments, not their integrity.

Likewise, if you're on the general 'pro-choice' side, then your argument might be that the implication of the opposite point of view is the constriction of women's rights. However, this does not mean that your opposition is misogynistic. Their motive is simply to prevent what they see as murder. If you believe that to be misguided, you should attack their arguments, not their integrity.

Thanks to those of you that played nice and showed some respect for those you were arguing against. Everyone else, please be warned that until you can divorce your argument of the issue from attacks on the group you disagree with (or specific individuals within), you should steer clear of abortion debates in OT. An argument in which one side is arguing for what they see as the protection of women's rights, with the other arguing for what they see as the protection of innocent life, should really not need to get as heated as it has.