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Bridget's avatar

I think an expectation that there should be exceptions reflects an unconscious Puritanical belief that childbearing is a divine punishment for something that a woman has done (I recall as a child reading one of the later Little House books in which, I think, Laura said that those who dance must pay the piper.) Making an exception for victims of some kinds of abuse (rape, incest) acknowledges that they did not choose to do what they would otherwise deserve to be punished for; making an exception for situations in which childbearing is more dangerous than usual acknowledges that the punishment is (with some probability p) larger than normal: women deserve to have a lousy time as payback for what they did, but they do not deserve the death penalty. And yet the hard cold facts of the matter are that children are, without exception, an undeserved gift from God. They are not owed to us either in a positive or negative sense.

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Sue Korlan's avatar

It sounds to me like Ohio got it right.

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