Part 2

Abortion in the Case of Rape: A Response to Todd Bindig

Lynn D. Wardle

In “Why Pregnancy Due to Rape Fails as a Justification for Abortion,” Todd S. Bindig argues, categorically, that abortion is never morally justifiable when performed because the pregnancy was caused by rape. He also asserts that, as a practical matter, abortion under those conditions only makes the matter worse.

Some of Bindig’s arguments and conclusions are unquestionably sound: Abortion in general is morally wrong. Abortion involves the killing of a human life in utero. The unborn child should not be punished because of the crime of his father. It is not moral to kill an innocent person to avoid insignificant harm to another person. Adoption of an unwanted child is the best option whenever it is possible. Abortion may exacerbate the trauma of sexual assault for the rape victim. Pregnant women are not helpless, incompetent creatures.

However, some of Bindig’s arguments and conclusions are flawed, and they present in a consistent pattern. The consistent flaws in both the arguments and evidence used in Bindig’s essay are that of overbreadth and overstatement, of stretching statements and conclusions beyond the logic and beyond the evidence.

Bindig’s Evidentiary and Logical Errors

Bindig’s tacit concession that trauma is relevant to the morality of abortion following rape is surely correct. However, his reduction of the matter ignores morally relevant distinctions. For example, Bindig takes the categorical position that abortion always makes the trauma of rape worse for all rape victims. However, some the evidence he cites directly contradicts his categorical claim. He cites a study that showed that 89 percent of rape victims who had abortions later stated that they regretted it. That means that 11 percent—one-ninth—did not regret it. They did not find or believe that having an abortion made their situation worse. That leaves open the possibility that some victims of rape who became pregnant and had abortions actually experienced profound relief from suffering and significant medical health benefits. At least some of them may have believed that it reduced the trauma, burden, harm, and distress resulting from the rape.

Bindig himself implicitly acknowledges that abortion does not exacerbate the trauma of rape for some women when he admits that not all women but only “nearly every woman who takes this action deeply regrets it.” The difference between “always” and “most” (or “nearly every”) is not morally, logically, or factually insignificant.

Factually, the trauma of rape and of any post-rape abortion varies from case to case, from victim to victim. The individual circumstances bear heavily upon the extent and nature of the pregnant rape victim’s trauma. For example, take a woman who loved a man in a long-term relationship but refused and resisted when he requested then forced upon her intercourse. She might have a different degree and kind of trauma than the woman who is kidnapped, beaten, raped, then stabbed and left for dead by a stranger-rapist. Family support and age of the victim may also factor into the degree of trauma.

Bindig also cites several studies that link abortion with increased risk of suicide for women who aborted. While at least one of the studies apparently dealt specifically with rape victims, the others appear to correlate suicide with abortion generally, not specifically the population of women who were raped. Moreover, it is not clear that all the studies compared suicide rates among such women with suicide rates among rape victims who did not have abortions.

Moreover, Bindig’s review of the studies does not discuss control for other factors such as causation and selection. For example, it is possible that the rape victims who did not abort were psychologically healthier, stronger women (less likely to commit suicide), while those who chose to abort were psychologically weaker (more likely to commit suicide). Also, the women who committed suicide may have had no or less effective support systems (such as no or less family support or fewer friends or less access to psychological counseling) than the women who did not commit suicide. They may have been carrying other burdens of rejection (divorce, breakup, or abandonment), or they may have been prior victims of child abuse or sexual exploitation. The evidence is not sufficient to support the broad generalizations made in the paper.

Bindig also argues that rape victims commonly have abortions to retaliate against the rapist. That is simply a straw man argument. It is a very dubious description of the real world (even if some violent feminist theorists urge abortion for retaliation). Logically, it is doubtful that most rapists would feel “punished” to learn of such abortions.

Bindig bases his conclusion that a rape victim is never morally justified in having an abortion on the fact that the child who would be killed by abortion is biologically her own child, and he asserts that she has moral responsibility to and for her child. This is flawed logic, because the moral basis for the responsibilities of parenthood is an exercise of individual choice—usually the choice to willingly engage in sexual behavior that can lead to pregnancy, or the choice to enter into marriage (in the case of a non-biological child born during marriage). By definition, a rape victim has not made an accountable choice that can serve as the basis for the moral responsibility of parenthood concerning the unborn child conceived as a result of the rape. Only if the pregnant rape victim willingly chooses to continue the pregnancy can it be said that she has assumed the moral responsibility of a parent to the child.

Competing Moral Values

I agree with Bindig’s premise that, generally, abortion is morally wrong. The value of protecting human life is a great moral principle, and the wrong of taking innocent human life is a great moral wrong. However, there are some other comparably important moral values, and there are other morally equivalent moral wrongs.

Sometimes situations arise in which equally important moral values come into conflict with the high moral value of protecting prenatal human life. Often it is possible to reconcile those values, to find a solution that vindicates both (or all) of the important moral values that are in conflict. However, it is not always possible to reconcile the competing value interests.

For example, when continuation of a pregnancy would result in the death of the mother, abortion is morally justified. The same general moral value (protection of human life) is on each side of the conflict, and the morality of self-defense (defense of one’s life) justifies the abortion. This defense-of-life justification for abortion is widely acknowledged and has been for centuries in both law and moral discourse.

There are some other values of comparable moral significance. For example, when the pregnancy is certain or almost certain to result in severe, irreparable, or long-lasting injury to the mother’s health, abortion may also be morally just. To leave a woman permanently blind, paralyzed, or comatose, for example, is to cause a harm that reasonably could be considered the moral equivalent of the loss of life.

In both situations, an abortion may be justified by the save-yourself-so-you-can-save-others principle. The pregnant woman may morally choose to sacrifice the life of the unborn child, despite the high value of unborn life, because the life (or life unimpaired by severe and irreparable avoidable disability) of the mother has equal or higher value. For example, the pregnant woman may have four other small children and an incapacitated parent for whom she is caring. Sacrificing her own life to bring into the world her unborn child would cause serious harms to innocent other members of her family to whom she may owe important prior duties. In such cases of equal competing moral interests, it would not be immoral for the woman to choose to preserve her life (or life-equivalent) and to sacrifice the life of her unborn child if only one of them can be preserved.

By the same token, it would not be immoral for the woman to sacrifice her own life for the sake of her unborn child if she concluded that the child’s life was/would be of greater moral value in the particular circumstances. Her sacrifice of her life to save the life of her unborn child would not be immoral but would be heroic.

Recognition of exceptions for saving another from loss of life or life-equivalent harm acknowledges the principles that competing values may in some (albeit rare) cases justify abortion. That does not mean that all competing values morally justify abortion, but it does mean that the possibility must be considered. So the question is whether the harm from continued pregnancy for a rape victim may ever be equivalent to loss of life.

The dilemma of a woman who has become pregnant because of rape presents such a dilemma of competing comparable values. She is “is cornered between two acts of aggression.” When the moral values and social interests in conflict are equal, the decision must be left to the individual moral judgment, not social rules or general philosophical propositions. A thoughtful, informed decision must be made by the pregnant rape victim, based on her consideration of the kind and extent of the harm caused by the continued pregnancy, the scope of the trauma and suffering, the necessity of the abortion, the degree of relief it might provide, the balance of harm versus good, etc. Since the general social interests and moral principles are in equipoise and the ultimate moral judgment must turn on such fine and individualized considerations, the decision is beyond the scope of general philosophical rules or broad social regulation.[1]

Not So Simple

It is human nature to want to simplify complex dilemmas, to generalize, to try to reduce complicated moral conflicts to toggle-switch, yes-no matters. But some moral dilemmas elude such reductionist simplification, and the quandary of the victim of rape who has become pregnant and who is considering abortion is one of those irreconcilable moral dilemmas. Simplistic, overbroad generalizations that fail to recognize or accommodate exceptional situations—including the extraordinary harms suffered by some victims of rape who become pregnant—may cause great injustice.

NEXT: Todd Bindig responds to Lynn Wardle.