Thinking about r**e babies

 Trigger warning: I'm going to talk about sexual assault, abortions, and lesser-known medical experiments.

Image by Sergio Flores
Pretty sure that the subject's motives
were not intentionally ironic.

The anti-abortion movement likes to call themselves “Pro-life,” but it’s more accurate to describe them as “Pro-birth” since they can’t be bothered to care about anything beyond that. Many of them preach that all pregnancies must be carried to term, no matter what. You can try to educate them with the fact that “…if you factor in fertilized eggs that fail to implant along with pregnancies that end in miscarriage, around 70% to 75% of all conceptions will end in pregnancy loss.” (emphasis added) But they won’t listen. Miscarriages might as well be elective abortions in their minds. Fun fact: a miscarriage is sometimes referred to as a “spontaneous abortion.” That’s probably why there are anti-abortion types who want to outlaw miscarriages as well.

One of their more heartless assertions is the idea that no exception should be made for someone who becomes pregnant due to being raped, not even if that person is a child. This is often justified with platitudes akin to “something wonderful resulting from something tragic.” Wonderful for whom? It’s never made entirely clear. Hypothetical adoptive parents? The new life that’s allowed to come into the world? That’s usually as far as any explanation goes because they only care about preventing abortions. Anything beyond that—physical and emotional trauma, pregnancy complications that could result in death, medical debt, child poverty—is not their problem.

Since there’s just no reasoning with these people when it comes to the law or even trying to get them to care about what happens to so-called “fetal persons” after they’re born, I want to make a suggestion in regard to pregnancies that result from rape.

I think it’s cruel to force someone to carry to term the offspring of their rapist. Since the anti-abortion mob cares more about the birth of the potential child than the life—or basic human rights—of the person carrying it, I think it behooves them to consider alternative means of gestation.

I’m not talking about utilizing an artificial womb that’s separate from a human body. I’m thinking more about a possible convergence of prenatal medicine and restorative justice. More to the point:

Require rapists to carry their own babies!

"Junior" (1994)
Universal Pictures

Just hear me out!

If a person is not allowed to terminate a pregnancy that resulted from being sexually assaulted, then someone should figure out how to safely transplant the fetus into the body of the rapist so they can have the baby—I imagine the delivery would have to be by cesarean section, of course.

Consider the implications: the victim’s right to bodily autonomy can be somewhat restored, the fetus can still be carried to term, and the rapist gets a whole new perspective when considering the consequences of their actions.

This would present an excellent opportunity for the anti-abortion mob to clearly demonstrate that they are really most concerned about the lives of the unborn… and not just a medieval desire to exert control over other people’s bodies.

Excuse me for just a moment; I hear some complaints from the anti-abortion mob in my head—I assure you, this is completely normal; I’m not hallucinating; I’m a writer. It’s all part of the process.

Some people might think it would be wrong to impregnate a rapist with their own baby, probably because the rapist would ostensibly not be given a choice in the matter. The very idea of violating a person’s body and implanting it with a quasi-parasite seems… distasteful.

The phrase “My body, my choice” comes to mind. I’m told—probably by the same mob in my head—that it was popularized during the pandemic when people were conflating inconvenience with tyranny because they didn’t want to wear masks in public anymore. Who would have thought that it could be applied to other aspects of personal liberty and the rights of individuals not to worry that decisions about their lives and bodies are being made by other people or the government?

If only there were some sort of document or “bill” that would codify everyone’s basic inalienable rights and perhaps a way for us all to understand better that one person’s rights do not entitle them to infringe on the rights of others, we probably wouldn’t even need to have such disturbing conversations. Somebody should totally get on that.