"what about cases such as rape, incest, etc.?"
these are questions that do not have easy answers, but they have answers none the less.
rape and incest are horrible tragedies and ones we should never take lightly. for a woman to be violated in any way is a horrible and terrible thing. so we should never respond to these questions coldly or callously, as if the integrity and person hood of a woman who was raped is less important than an unborn child.
one response ,among others, is that rape and incest are horrible evils, but the answer is not to commit a second evil by killing a human life.
along these lines, there is more helpful information found here. i hope this article and its parent site can prove helpful to you as you engage in this delicate and often passionate discussion.
...it is critical to remember that the vast majority of abortions
do not happen as a result of any of these [rape, incest, fetal
abnormalities]reasons.
In fact, according to a study in Family Planning
Perspectives (published by the Alan Guttmacher Institute,
which is the research arm of Planned Parenthood), less
than 6% of all abortions done in the United States are done for
all of these reasons combined.
If the woman does become pregnant, a rare but possible occurrence,
she may be made to feel twice as tainted when society is not prepared
to cope with the circumstances of this child's conception. Counselors
and abortion providers encourage abortion as the perfect "solution."
Irrationally, society expects her to kill her unborn child, not for
something the child has done, but for the crime of his/her father.
Once again the mother is pitted against her child.
Subjecting her to an abortion only compounds the initial violence
of the rape. Only in this second tragedy, the woman becomes the
aggressor against her own child.
Although research in this area is limited, at least two studies done
with women who've become pregnant following a rape have clearly
shown that women who aborted their children feel twice victimized
and angry about the abortion (Mahkom, "Pregnancy and Sexual
Assault," Psychological Aspects of Abortion, University Publishers
of America [1979], pp. 53-72).
Women in one study who carried their babies to term,
although frightened at first, felt they had done the more
positive thing by giving their children life; they felt they
had turned something awful into something good
(Mahkom and Dolan, "Sexual Assault and Pregnancy,
" New Perspectives on Human Abortion, University
Publishers of America [1981], pp. 182-199).
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