03/19/2026
From a volunteer: “I talked with Reiko today, who said that abortion was bad, but was needed in hard situations, like if a woman had been sexually assaulted. I agreed with him that SA is a horrific crime and trauma. I then asked him to imagine a situation where a woman who'd been assaulted and became pregnant decided to carry to term, for whatever reason–maybe because she had a really good support system. But then, a year after giving birth, she was really struggling, because every time she looked at her 1-year-old son, she was reminded of the attack. I asked him, "Would it be okay for that woman– or anyone –to kill the one year old boy because he's a reminder of the attack?" "No," he said, "instead we should do other things, like help her find counselling." I then asked him, "So if it's not OK to kill the 1 year old boy because he was conceived through assault, why would it be OK to kill the _same baby before birth_ for the same reason?"
We talked about how the child in the womb is also a human deserving human rights, and I described a 1st trimester surgical abortion to him. He told me he agreed that it was also a human life before birth deserving of protection, and we should be offering women resources and support to help them care for their babies. I asked him at the end, "Thinking about abortion in light of human rights, do you still think there's any situation where it's okay?" "The end line [to draw] is that it's a human life," he replied, and agreed abortion was never OK.”
