If a girl is raped and pregnant, should she keep the baby?

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By your car-accident refutation analogy, we should also sex classes,

...have police do "routine checks" to make sure everyone is following the rules and fine those who, say, aren't on birth control and/or don't use condoms.

There would have to be special restrictions on who would be allowed to suspend b.c. and prophylactics for procreation purposes...

But in reality, we treat sex as a right, not a privilege to be earned and that can be taken away if we fail to follow the rules. We really only take away freedom from mostly violent criminals who are a known danger to women.

... we did wonder if making her stay an extra day wasn't due to the hospital getting a little more Medicaid money out of us. I prefer to think the doctor was just doing the whole "better safe..." routine).

Home births are great when everything goes smooth like clockwork.

Am I to understand your eclampsia patient had attempted a home birth???

Yeah, I'm one of THOSE guys who thinks guts are cool. What's up with wussies who pass out at the sight of blood and entrails? I dunno...

Most HCPs are that type as well. Blood and guts are fine, a long ad they're under control.

If you believe that a woman impregnated through rape should be forced to deliver the child, then you believe that a rapist ought to have more power over a woman's life than the woman herself.

Criminals often do have more power over people's lives and property than the people themselves, though. A criminal's actions place him "above the law" so to speak, and he is asserting power that isn't rightfully his. Penalties, enslavement, incarceration, and death are attempts to put the powers wrongfully asserted by the criminal back into balance with society.

The power a criminal has over a rape victim extends to forcing a choice a woman shouldn't have to make because, one way or another, the baby is coming out and the rape victim can't change that, whether abortion or at-term childbirth (or anywhere in-between, of course). Blaming the VICTIM for the death of an aborted baby is unjust. But when a person is destroyed, someone or something must account for that death, be it "Nature," "acts of God," another person, or the dead person himself. Blaming the woman for killing a child conceived out of rape is wrong. You can't blame the baby because it isn't the baby's fault it was conceived. All you have left is to blame the rapist. And if he causes death, the state should require his life also.

Depends on whether there is a genuine threat. Someone who understands the risks of having sex makes the choice to accept those consequences should they become a reality. Essentially, if you choose to have sex, you choose to roll the dice on getting pregnant. You HAVE a choice in terms of whether you get pregnant or not, so it isn't a good self-defense argument if no one is being threatened or ever under attack.

I don't LIKE that rape would make it a valid self-defense argument, but it is what it is and as a man it would be unjust for me to tell a woman she doesn't have freedom to do what she pleases when she never had a choice in getting pregnant in the first place.

Now, if becoming pregnant was not rape and thus a choice, I know for certain that things do happen in a pregnancy that really can be threatening to a mother's life. If you don't KNOW, then no one can rightly blame you because it is self-defense. But I do question whether the risk really is as severe as the pro-infanticide activists would have us believe. My wife experienced placenta previa in her second pregnancy, and there is no way to have a normal delivery when that happens. Survival of the infant and the mother is going to depend on how soon you can get to the hospital and just how close you can carry the pregnancy to term. In our case, we were able to get to the hospital in under an hour, the baby was delivered quickly, and she was over 4 pounds. There were a few problems like you'd expect with a 7 month premie, but a few weeks later she was strong, healthy, and you'd never have known things got so screwed up with the pregnancy. Now she's happy, she's learning to play piano, and she'll turn 4 in January. If my wife had elected to have an abortion, it would have deeply upset me, and I certainly wouldn't be enjoying a life enriched as it is by my daughter. But I value my wife's life above all other concerns. I would have learned to deal with it and somehow let it go. I feel blessed that I didn't have to.

Depends on whether there is a genuine threat. Someone who understands the risks of having sex makes the choice to accept those consequences should they become a reality. Essentially, if you choose to have sex, you choose to roll the dice on getting pregnant. You HAVE a choice in terms of whether you get pregnant or not, so it isn't a good self-defense argument if no one is being threatened or ever under attack.

And it could be I've just been desensitized by gory horror films and video games like Gears of War. Whatever the reason, it was an awesome thing to participate in, the birth of my littlest boy notwithstanding. What really gets me, though, is seeing someone's insides and coming face to face with just how delicate we really are.

Criminals often do have more power over people's lives and property than the people themselves, though. A criminal's actions place him "above the law" so to speak, and he is asserting power that isn't rightfully his. Penalties, enslavement, incarceration, and death are attempts to put the powers wrongfully asserted by the criminal back into balance with society.

...one way or another, the baby is coming out and the rape victim can't change that, whether abortion or at-term childbirth (or anywhere in-between, of course).

Keeping the baby is like marrying the rapist.