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http://local.lancasteronline.com/4/24425Those who would back the doctor in this instance believe some things are more important than rape; if a rape results in a fertilized cell, that takes precedence — and you’ll just have to deal with it for the next nine months.
Oh, there’ll be services available to help you through it. Kind folks will do what they can to make you more comfortable, emotionally and physically. But bottom line, that guy who slugged you, knocked you out, maybe worse? You’re having his kid.
And here, I think, is where the pro-life movement hits the wall.
Most people are likely to support common-sense restrictions on abortion — the bill passed by the U.S. Senate last week that would make it a crime to take a pregnant minor across state lines for an abortion being a case in point.
But the movement is not satisfied with common-sense restrictions, seeing them as mere steps on the path to complete criminalization of the procedure even when the “child” is but a blastocyst not yet attached to the uterine wall. And if you believe that, then a doctor who tells a woman who has been attacked that she’s either just going to have to deal with it or hit the road to find her emergency contraception is making the right call.
Whereas to the rest of us, it’s just cold and crass.
That’s not to say that doctors should be forced to dispense medication that violates their religious beliefs. But the medical facility should have someone else available to do so.
For it’s one thing for a doctor to refuse to take a life.
It’s quite another to tell a woman who has been raped to take a hike.
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