What would it be like to live with a wife or daughter pregnant by rape?

[Iris]

I woke this morning to NPR's report on Harriet Miers and her willingness to support a constitutional amendment banning abortion except if the life of the mother is at risk.

It got me to thinking about what this country might look like in that situation. Send your daughter off to college, someone slips her a date rape drug, and she comes home pregnant. You pay her expenses and watch her go through the ordeal of carrying her attacker(s)'s (known or unknown) child. Or, say a woman who is married is raped. Her husband is just expected to live with her while she carries her attacker's child?

I wonder if living in such an era would put more emphasis on the crime of rape? It has been said on this board and other places that rape is a highly underreported crime. It has also been suggested by some politicians that women cannot get pregnant by rape. So, rather than bring attention to crimes against women, could we simply go back to blaming victims even more than we do now?

The right to choose and the crime of rape are not just "women's issues." How far do the right-to-life folks have to go to make this any clearer?

I know a constitutional amendment banning all abortions is unlikely, but I also think that the pro-life camps will never be satisfied until that is the law of this land.

I wonder when people - women and men - will start paying attention?