February 15, 2024
Missouri is a state where Students for Life Action (SFLAction) is currently fighting an ongoing ballot battle – but thankfully, Republicans are fighting to defend life, too. State Senate Republicans voted down party lines recently to stop a bill allowing babies born from incest or rape to be killed.
According to ABC News: “Missouri senators on Wednesday voted against amending the state’s strict law against abortions to allow exceptions in cases of rape and incest.
The state banned almost all abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade. Abortions currently are only legal “in cases of medical emergency.”
Democratic state Sen. Tracy McCreery said Missouri’s current law goes too far and called on her colleagues to “show an ounce of compassion” for victims of rape and incest.
“What we’re saying is, ‘We don’t care,’” McCreery said of the state’s current abortion ban. “We’re going to force you to give birth, even if that pregnancy resulted from forcible rape by a family member, a date, an ex-husband or a stranger.””
At the core of the battle against “exceptions for rape and incest” isn’t a desire to inflict further harm upon women or mothers, despite what the propaganda from the abortion industrial complex might say or their enablers in the Democrat Party might say.
In fact, it’s just the opposite. The truth is that the violence of abortion won’t erase the violence of rape. Instead, new pain and problems emerge.
The Elliot Institute surveyed 192 women who conceived during a rape or incest. Of those victims, 70% carried the baby to term and either raised the child or made an adoption plan, 29% had an abortion, and 1.5% had a miscarriage.
- 78% of those who aborted had regrets and said abortion was the wrong solution.
- None of the women who gave birth said they regretted their decision.
In a separate survey from The Charlotte Lozier Institute, 67% of women described their abortions as against their values, unwanted, or coerced.
Focusing on abortion rather than on the crime of rape, ignores the horrific crime that rape is. SFLAction believes that in all cases of rape:
- Safety comes first and love and supportive services second; the authorities must protect the innocent.
- Resources, like those at Standing with You, must be provided.
- Abusers must be prosecuted; the events didn’t start with a pregnancy, but with a criminal act that must be addressed.
- The preborn baby is innocent of the crime and undeserving of the harsh sentence that so many support.
It’s a scientific reality that life begins at conception. The American College of Pediatricians has said in no uncertain terms that: “human life begins at conception—fertilization. At fertilization, the human being emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated zygotic living human organism, a member of the species Homo sapiens, needing only the proper environment in order to grow and develop.”
So how then could any life be deemed unworthy of protection, even if the circumstances of that life’s origins are problematic or tragic? It’s an unpopular position sometimes – but SFLAction doesn’t pursue or undertake our advocacy on abortion because it’s socially popular. We do it because we believe all preborn babies deserve a chance at life. And we’re grateful that State Senators in Missouri agree.