The Pro-life Stance and Rape Victims

Over the last few months, there have been a number of instances of very conservative politicians giving voice to comments regarding abortion and rape victims, and these instances have been seized on by my fellow liberals as proof that Republicans are callous and don't care about rape victims.

But is that really an accurate assessment? I don't think it is. Follow along with me as I delve into the mind of a pro-life Republican.

Rethinking Choice: Human Personhood and the Abortion Debate

Update: It has come to my attention that the timeline I'm describing has an error by a week or two. I don't have time to fix it, but the underlying idea is sound.

One of the most politically important questions of our day is defining the bounds of a human life, and who has control over it. This is in large part because it is so divisive, a treacherous landscape governed mainly by religious and political motivations, rather than by empirical truths, and serves as a distraction from the truly critical issues facing our country. It is therefore imperative that we formulate and proactively support a definition of human life that accounts for both fetal development and the fact that the mother and fetus are a single, integrated system.