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Could you love a child conceived out of rape?

This is a question I’ve been shy to ask for a while now because the topic is so uncomfortable, but I was recently asked by someone could I love my child from a situation as traumatic as that. This was a question that had me thinking for a few hours, actually. The situation would be horrible and traumatic, but at the same time, she/he would still be my child and apart of me so I guess I’d try to raise it with as much of care that I could and bring him/her up to be the woman/man they needed to be. Then at the same time I would think having a child around conceived out such a traumatic situation would probably be difficult cause the child would be a reminder of the whole ordeal that I’d have to relive over and over again so I could probably understand why some women victims of such thing could reject their child. What do any of you think. I hope I haven’t made anyone feel uncomfortable in any way. Leave your thoughts and answers below.

EmeraldJewel 7 June 22
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48 comments

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15

I'd abort it. It's not a baby, it's not even a foetus. It's biological garbage left by other biological garbage.

12

I have believed for a long time that the decision to abort, in any instance, should be that of the woman. And that no-one has a right to judge her for it.

@Omen6Actual the time to consider if you want a child is during sex. Wear a condom

@MsDemeanour Or a diaphrm, or pill, or patch...

9

The bigger question for me would be: would a husband love the child his wife had to birth due to a rape from another man, if abortion were not an option?

Great question.... I understand it somewhat and I love my son more then i

What a difficult situation to be in,to watch your wife's swelling belly and know you were not involved in the child's conception,it would put horrible strains on the relationship(I'd think).

7

My mom had me adopted. Totally understand her choice.

Wait, are you saying that you were a child conceived by rape and your mother put you up for adoption? If so what an interesting angle to this particular topic.

@Kimbergypsy22 I am indeed. She is or was a staunch Catholic and I owe my existence to her faith. Much of my life drips with irony and close calls.

7

Yes. I couldn't blame the actions of another on an innocent child.

6

I feel for mothers who see the face of their attacker, when they look at their child conceived from rape.

6

No woman should ever be made to carry such a thing to term....and no woman should ever be guilted for not carrying it to term and "loving" it.

This posts reeks of shaming women for choosing to abort lumps of cells that result from a traumatic event.

5

I would have an abortion, even if I had to do it myself. With that said and to answer if I would have to birth such a child, of course I would love it -as any other child. If there was a risk that the father would show up, I would give it up for adoption before I would let the rapist get his hands on that child - though it would break my heart.

5

Yes. The child is innocent!

5

Children don't ask to be born, they are innocent. I think if I carried the pregnancy I would have loved the child. There are too many unknowns to ever know for sure. I never faced that situation and never will, so I don't know. I do know that for the woman in that situation I'd support what ever her decision was/is. It is a heart breaking situation.

Yes, that is taking it out on the child.

5

I'd abort the moment I found out I was preggers.

4

A major issue: many state demand the father have "rights" to be involved with the child. This is religious mental sickness.

Better for the child to be aborted that be subjected to this insanity...

4

Is is possible to love a child conceived of rape, yes. Could I, I don't know. There are so many factors involved that you could write a book and still there would be more. Personality, maturity (emotional and physical), family support, and lifestyle would play major roles.

Rape, no matter the circumstance is a violent act and will change the emotional and psychological health of the survivor.

I would like to think that I would love and care for any child of mine no matter the circumstance of their conception. Without the knowledge of the effect of a rape on my psyche and how I would be able to handle it, it leaves me with I don't know.

Betty Level 8 June 23, 2018

Bravely put and taking to put it out there.... Betty your a woman of great integrity

@Millerski25

Thank you for the compliment. Greatly appreciated. 🙂

4

I can see where the reminder could easily be an issue. At the same time, that child would easily become a distraction and then I would look at them and look at the innocence in their eyes and wouldn't be able to not love them.

Mr too

4

I have never been in that kind of situation.
This innocent baby is not it's fault, it did not ask to be here. I know someone that was in that situation.
I was with her throughout her pregnancy. She had chosen to give her little girl up for adoption.
Once she held her she was in love. She kept her, she could not bring herself to hate her baby.
Kimberly is 21 and in college.

4

No, I wouldn't love a child conceived through a rape and would terminate the pregnancy immediately.

4

Not quite the same as I am a guy.
My foster son is one such child,
and his mother does/did love him- most of the time. Well some of the time.
I think when they are at odds other feelings come through and a lot of resentment.
He lived with me a long time and was estranged from his mother and siblings,
he is 22 now and they are in semi regular contact.
Were I a woman faced with this problem, I would not keep it. Plain and simple.
But a child once born is a child and not responsible.

3

It is a mental deformity (religion) that would visit the sins of the father upon the child.

Although: I would advocate for abortion to avoid all such future complexity and ostracization.

JacarC Level 8 June 23, 2018
3

Yes, but I could understand the difficulty for the mother. Sad to say the child would def be a reminder of the incident.

3

It happens, but it in no way validates the attack. The attacker should be punished, AND pay childcare, etc, but have no visitation rights.

It isn't the child's fault, of course. The child should be loved, even if adopted out (doesn't let off the attacker for support) and given as normal and good a life as possible.

The question doesn’t seem to include the attacker and you just can’t be Mr. Fix it .... the deep emional scares and lack any assemblance of security and the psychic chaos may seem never ending (court testifying bs the attacker may give some empowerment) but the challenge of a pregnancy is emotionally incomprehensible to me

3

Abortion is the most ethical option.

2

Me personally, I would not be able to. But, if another woman loves the shit outta her baby, no matter the circumstances of insemination, then I am with her 100%. I fully support wherever love is found.

2

No.
It's not the child's fault, but I believe in the power of heritage.

I believe a person requires a certain set of qualities be a rapist, most of which comes from nature rather than nurture.
I believe the current statistics we have - one in every four women having experienced sexual assault - because throughout history women keep their rape babies and thereby validates this behavior as an efficient pattern for reproduction. A pattern which their descendants probably inherit.
(It's either that or males are simply inherently evil and abuse women for no discernible reason.)

I'm not saying it's fair. It's just how I feel.

Behavior at this level is learned, not inherited. Rape is not about reproduction, it's about displaying power (which makes it another primate dominance ritual). When children, male and female, learn to value all equally, and learn that sex is not something to use to gain power over others, that's when rape will no longer exist. I also somewhat question the statistic you mention. It's commonly used, but what counts as "sexual assault"? I've seen "unwanted looks" defined as sexual assault in one study.

I'm forced to disagree with you. Upbringing is the key. A child internalizes the environment around him or herself, so that some learned behaviors may seem to be inherent, but they're not.

@Paul4747 I think you may be right, only in the part about upbringing. However families tend to have sexual aggression in generations because of a severely paternalistic culture and or society. Often this is religiously based. There is marital rape, or partner rape specifically to lead to conception. (If you are interested, I can provide further information on this) It's been done for thousands of years in order to subjugate the woman, forcing her into his servitude to protect the child. In other cases, impregnating women via rape has been used during wars to break down the enemy bloodlines etc.

@BrigittaCuadros Indeed, and the English language in particular is confusing because of phrases like "bred in the bone" and "ingrained habits" which sound like genetics when in fact they mean the exact opposite. I don't know any other language well enough to know whether there's one with a colloquialism specifically meaning "a behavioral pattern repeated over generations so that it mimics a genetic trait".

Would you be so kind as to elaborate on what exactly makes you say that?
Since I asked I'll go first and hope you respond.

@Paul4747 "Behavior at this level is learned, not inherited. Rape is not about reproduction, it's about displaying power (which makes it another primate dominance ritual)."

  1. It sounds like you're saying ritualistic primate dominance behavior is learned and will cease to exists if we stop teaching it.
    Meaning every rape in history across the cultures of the entire planet is part of an unbroken chain of rape going back to the emigration from Africa. If this was true; why did it start? If rape is a learned behavior, who was the first teacher and how did s/he come up with the idea?

  2. A successful breeding pattern doesn't require intent to pass on genetic material.

Hypothetically: The head of the Manson family sodomized his followers in front of each other, as a strategic means of manipulation.

As far as I know, there is no rape gene that by itself enables a person to hold down another and not only ignore the screaming and pleading, but feel aroused by it. At least the males do, baring the possibility that they eat blue pills in preparation. It would be difficult - impossible really - for men to commit rape without arousal.
If any of the followers got pregnant, Manson passed on the characteristics of a man capable of committing this crime to future generations.
Since Manson himself does not appear to have been a rapist by proclivity it's not certain his children will be rapists; but the means to do it can express itself in other horrible ways.

  1. Take these mallards.

I don't think the drakes had ducklings in mind as they were bitting/pushing/bashing at the head of the hen. It could be an expression of affection and sincere wishes for fatherhood in mallard courting.
In any case; a few months after this violent gang-rape there will be a clutch of ducklings whom are likely to carry on the characteristics of their parents.

Also, If aggressive dominant behavior will not appear in a peaceful environment, there would be no problems raising wild beasts as pets. And yet the experts are in agreement that no one should raise, for example, a wolf cub as a pet.
Dogs on the other hand are fine. As a result of centuries of systematically putting down every single dog that exhibits aggressive behavior; breeding only the ones possessing characteristics deemed to be worthwhile.
As it is with every domesticated animal we keep.
Pigs used to be quite deadly. Our selective breeding-programs put an end to that.
Cats are a bit of an exception. Many of them will still happily murder anything tiny that moves, since humans have had no reason to wean felines off of hunting small wildlife and vermin.

@Paul4747 "I also somewhat question the statistic you mention. It's commonly used, but what counts as "sexual assault"? I've seen "unwanted looks" defined as sexual assault in one study."

  • On that, I made a mistake. NSVRC say 1 in 5. [nsvrc.org]

1 in 4 was from an older statistic taken at colleges.
[behavioralscientist.org]

Please understand the statistics I mentioned were not meant to be mathematically definitive, only to indicate the extent of the problem.
Unless there is a massive conspiracy at work here, it's a lot of victims.
I don't know that many people but at least two of them have been raped, or they are lying to me, in private, for reasons unknown. Always a possibility.

@Paul4747 "I'm forced to disagree with you. Upbringing is the key. A child internalizes the environment around him or herself, so that some learned behaviors may seem to be inherent, but they're not."

  • Upbringing is key, is an argument I often heard from religious people I grew up with.
    One of their favorite "learned behaviors" was homosexuality. in their minds, it doesn't occur in nature and therefor will disappear once we get the gays away from children and into treatment centers
    Easy.

They had a similar assertions about popular rumors regarding the troubled childhoods of our notorious serial killers.
Like cold mothers, or the absent farther figure. ("Boy needs his father", somewhat insulting to widows who raise good sons.)
I found it to be a heck of a coincidence that the father supposedly left. Sure, I assume ordinary people abandon their kids all the time. It's still noteworthy that the father acted as if he had the same symptoms as his son.
Same with the mothers in question.
When I tried to explain that, it went over their heads that the parents of psychopaths/sociopaths had treated their children as if they too had no conscience, presumably because the symptoms manifested so differently.

It's odd when people can understand that children of parents with disorders like schizophrenia have a higher risk of developing the same disorder than regular people, reject the very same concept in anti-social traits.
Perhaps it's because schizophrenia is easier to diagnose, whereas you'd need a brain-scan to show the abnormal areas in the brain of a psychopath to definitively distinguish it from a bad childhood or a regular selfish asshole.

Not every carrier of anti-social traits becomes a killer. From what I read it's a minority.
I think we can assume they are all make terrible parents. When they have children whom are unfortunate enough to inherit the same condition, you have a household where no one have any concept of what love or empathy is; nothing good comes from that and headlines are sure to follow.
Aptitude - for the lack of a better term - for anti-social behavior makes things worse and can manifest even in good homes.

There are many ways a child can respond to an abusive home. Those with aptitude will go out and find a girl they can do what daddy does to mommy, with. An ordinary child might go down the same path if they are brutalized far enough; however, there are many cases in which children realize on a deep level that what they see is evil.
Sometimes they go further than simply rejecting the toxic environment.

[dailymail.co.uk]

We can see divisions in other aspects of upbringing.
The vast majority of non-believer I have spoken with grew up in a religious environment, Despite that they are free now, unlike their siblings who choose to stay. The siblings are not stupid, but something is different.
Religiosity is another behavior without any single gene, yet, anyway. Here too the theory is it's based on a combination of primitive, once-useful traits. Even if the established religions disappeared, if parents stopped teaching it, the characteristics it grew from would remain and superstitions would return shortly.

Whatever started the rape chain is still with us.

@BrigittaCuadros "However families tend to have sexual aggression in generations because of a severely paternalistic culture and or society."

  • I think one of the early draws of religion was it's designed to rob women of choice, so men whom no sane woman would choose for a mate could avoid that part of natural (female) selection, and breed.
    I also do not believe it is a coincidence this practice has generated generations of followers, since their offspring would have to remain within the religion for the same reason.
    People knew how breeding worked on horses and dogs back then.

@BrigittaCuadros "If you are interested, I can provide further information on this"

  • I would love to see what you have.

@MLinoge I probably don't have as much great reading that you have, but I am always interested in such issues that plague humanity. I have the general atheist, behavioral and sociology lay reading material, from which I draw some of my conclusions - not to mention 73 years of life and family court experience. I would love to talk to you further. Do you live in Florida?

@BrigittaCuadros Like you I have more interest than reading. What I know comes mostly from talking with people on the web, and following up on their recommended titles.
I'm on the autism spectrum so a lot of human behavior has been utterly incomprehensible for most of my life. Cruelty and violence in particular, which has befallen a lot of my acquaintances.
It is unlikely I will ever really understand the why of it all, but I enjoy the pursuit of knowledge and truth and exchanging ideas. If you have a topic you'd like to discuss I'd be happy to have a conversation.

2

I knew a couple whose oldest child didn't look ANYTHING like the father. As the kid got older the parents were honest with her, the mother was drugged then date-raped and refused to have an abortion. She's pro-choice, but couldn't make that decision for her own child, even in those circumstances.

Kudos to both parents! I think I could love a child of rape although I'd support a partner who chose adoption or abortion after being raped too.

2

All I can say is you could not have picked a more question bravo for you bravery. I’ve always believed in a woman’s reproductive rights w/o question but if a woman do chooses to have that who ami to utter a word but that isn’t a fault and would deserve all chances to grow

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