The "rape exception" is the clause that says abortion should be prohibited or restricted — except in cases of rape or incest. It appears in laws, in party platforms, in polling questions, and in a great many private opinions.
I am what the exception refers to. My mother was raped in 1983 and chose to carry me. So I have a specific interest in how this clause gets used, and I want to explain — carefully, and without contempt for anyone who disagrees — why I think it fails on its own terms.
Two things before I start. First: I am not here to condemn women. I had an abortion at seventeen. Second: I take seriously that this exception exists because people are trying to be compassionate toward assault survivors. That instinct is right. I think the conclusion is wrong.
It is the hardest case, so it is the case everyone leads with. If you can get someone to grant the exception, you have gotten them to agree that the circumstances of a child's conception can determine whether that child may be killed. Everything else is then a negotiation about where the line sits.
That is why it is conceded so quickly and so often — including, quietly, by people who consider themselves pro-life. It is offered as a small price. It reads as decency. It costs the person offering it nothing.
It costs me something. That is not an argument, exactly. But it is worth saying out loud, because the debate is usually conducted as though nobody in this category is listening.
I understand the force of this, and I would never minimize what an assault survivor is carrying. But look closely at the phrase "her rapist's child." It assigns a child to the man who committed the crime. It makes him the defining fact of that child's existence — which is exactly the claim he has no right to.
The child is hers. Not his. I am my mother's daughter; I am not his legacy. And the thing my mother actually needed was not permission to end the pregnancy — it was support, justice, and care that our culture is still not reliably willing to give her.
The trauma is real and I will not argue with anyone about their own. What I question is whether abortion resolves it. The women I meet who conceived in assault and chose abortion do not generally describe it as the moment the trauma ended. Some describe a second grief laid on top of the first.
That is not a reason to shame anyone. It is a reason to be suspicious of a solution that is offered so confidently to women in the worst week of their lives — often by people who will not be there a year later.
Both halves of this are worth examining. On size: a national study estimated about 32,101 pregnancies from rape among adult American women each year (Holmes et al., 1996), and in that study roughly 38% of those pregnancies ended in a child being born and kept or placed for adoption. Meanwhile, in a national study of abortion patients, about 1% cited rape (Finer et al., 2005). So the exception governs a small share of abortions while covering a large number of actual children.
On worth: if the number were genuinely tiny, that would be an argument for how little is gained by conceding it — not for conceding it. You do not trade away a class of people because there are not many of them.
I am not saying a woman who had an abortion after an assault is a villain. I had an abortion under far less extreme circumstances than hers. If that is you, my page for you is here, and there is nothing on it but help.
I am not saying assault survivors are obligated to raise a child. Adoption is real, and in the Holmes data about 6% chose it.
And I am not saying this is primarily a political fight. Laws matter, but no law will do the thing that actually needs doing — which is for parishes, families, ministries, and ordinary people to become the kind of community where a woman in my mother's position is not left to face it alone.
My apostolate is named for this. The conviction underneath it is simple: there is no acceptable exception to the dignity of a human life. Not for how a person was conceived, and not for their abilities, their mistakes, or their labels.
I make that case in rooms where it is welcome and in rooms where it is not, and I make it as someone who was very nearly the exception rather than as someone with a theory about it.
If you would like me to make it in your room, I would be glad to come.