In cases of rape, abortion is ethical

The argument

A female pregnant through rape never took any consensual action that would result in pregnancy. The embryo is there against her will. Since she never agreed to carry the embryo, she is under no moral requirement to carry it to term. The claim is narrow by design: it does not depend on any view about when life begins or about the moral status of the embryo, only on what a person can be obliged to provide when they never agreed to provide it. The reasoning turns on what pregnancy involves. When a female is pregnant, her body is essentially providing life support to the embryo, which could not survive without her body's resources. If the female consented to become pregnant, then she agreed to give those resources to the embryo and is required to do so. However, in cases of rape, she never consented to provide her body for the use of the embryo. Therefore, while it may be commendable for her to do so, she is under no requirement to let the embryo use her body. An analogy is offered to show that this is an ordinary moral principle rather than a special exception carved out for pregnancy. We might consider it good to donate an organ, and we praise those who do — but failure to do so is generally not considered wrong, because people have a right to decide how their body is used, and that right is not cancelled by the fact that somebody else needs what the body could supply. The same might be said in the case of pregnancies through rape: an act can be admirable when it is chosen and still not be obligatory when it is not. On these grounds, abortion in cases of rape is ethical.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Rape is a crime committed by a person who should be punished for it. However, killing the child, who is innocent does not solve the problem, and instead punishes the wrong person.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The analogy is contested at the point that matters. Objectors hold that declining to donate an organ withholds aid from a stranger, whereas ending a pregnancy is an act with a foreseeable fatal outcome for a particular entity, and that the two are not equivalent even though both concern control over one's body. The premise also presupposes that the embryo has no claim capable of weighing against the woman's, which is the question the wider debate turns on rather than something the consent principle settles. [Rejecting P2] The fact is not disputed; the inference from it is. On the objecting view, the absence of consent establishes that the woman bears no culpability and that the wrong was the rapist's, without establishing what may be done to a third party who is equally not responsible — the counter-argument's point that the penalty falls on the party who committed no crime.