• Abortion laws and the exclusion for rape

    From Rick@21:1/5 to All on Wed Dec 1 06:21:45 2021
    Laws that prohibit abortion often contain an exclusion for rape or incest.
    But rape is a crime that has to be adjudicated through the court system, and that can take several months or even years. So how does the rape exclusion work in actual practice?

    Say a woman is raped and reports this to the police and she eventually
    becomes pregnant. Let's say someone is actually arrested for the crime and
    put on trial, which is expected to take longer than the period of her pregnancy. She lives in a restrictive abortion state where abortions are prohibited at whatever point she is in her pregnancy except for rape or
    incest. So she goes to the doctor and asks for an abortion on the grounds
    she was raped. Is she allowed to get a legal abortion just because she
    says she was raped, even though no one has been convicted yet of the crime?
    And if the person is eventually found not guilty, what happens then? Has
    her previously legal abortion now become illegal because no one was
    convicted of the crime?

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