Mary Ann Sorrentino, was was the director of Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island for ten years, admits that “the hard cases” of abortion- rape, incest, health risk to the mother or handicap in the child, are rare.
“I have never chosen to base my defense of abortion rights on that tragic group often referred to as “victims (or survivors) of rape and incest.” Of course I believe they should have access to abortions, but the number of patients coming forward for these reasons has always been such a small percentage of the total number of terminations performed, that its statistical and logistical significance is not so much influential, as tragic and dramatic.
Women whose health and lives are threatened by a pregnancy are also a small number, fortunately. …. It is important to reinforce the notion that a woman’s right to have or not have a child is important, personal, and valid, however the pregnancy came to be.…
The sperm donor is in most cases a boyfriend, fiancé, or husband. Less often, there are cases where a married woman has conceived outside her marriage, or where single women have been taken advantage of by rapists or pimps. Older men out for a good time may impregnate minors, and teen pregnancies sometimes result from incest and rape. But none of these groups, taken individually, are of statistical significance.
The facts always have been and still are, that most often, women seeking abortions come from a less dramatic and more average group and is often described by well-meaning advocates trying to make a case for legalized pregnancy terminations….
In some ways, the pro-choice movement has caved into the pressure from its opponents by basing its defense of all women’s reproductive rights on the backs of those few in the most dramatic circumstance.”
Mary Ann Sorrentino. The A Word: Abortion: Real Women, Tough Choices, Personal Freedom (Great Barrington, MA: Gadd & Company Publishers, 2006) 4 – 6
The man involved is not a father. he is a “sperm donor.”
