Our legislators need to be reminded abortion not some kind of magic wand

She will be referred to as a “rapist’s baby”, never her mother’s baby, as though women were only receptacles for sperm. She will be classified a “daily reminder” of her father’s actions, never as a person in her own right.

A young woman called Amanda blogs as the “Declassified Adoptee”. She was laughing at a Jon Stewart show satirising Rick Santorum, a potential Republican Party presidential candidate.

Stewart was laughing so hard, he could barely squeeze out his punchline: “Santorum wants women to have their rapists’ babies!”

Amanda, who happens to be pro-choice, stopped laughing, because she was conceived through rape. She wrote an open letter to Stewart in which she said: “One other thing that we pro-choicers forget is the fact that there are living, breathing people out there in the world who are the products of rape . . . I am a 26-year-old wife, mother, student, and case manager. My favorite colour is blue, and my favorite food is cheese . . . I am not a ‘rape baby’ or ‘her rapist’s baby’. I am not ‘his’ property in any shape or form. I am my own person . . . Your statement did nothing to promote ‘choice’. You merely implied that there’s something awful about ‘rape babies’. A lot of people, maybe even you, think it must be really awful to be me. I’d like to challenge that opinion.”

Amanda is around to speak up for other people conceived in rape, because her mother chose to see her not as the enemy, but as a fellow victim of the abuser who raped her.

Our legislators, and a few medical advocates who support legislation for X, assure us that abortion on the grounds of possible suicide will be rare. Let us ignore, for a moment, the wilful blindness that refuses to see that once you accept abortion for any reason, over time the grounds will widen and widen, just as it has in virtually every other country.

Let us assume that it will be rare. Let us assume just one other Amanda each year will never get the chance to breathe, to experience unconditional love, to develop the skill of articulately defending despised categories of human beings. How will politicians live with themselves for sanctioning that act?