The first major policy Bush enacted upon entering office was to cut aide from abortion operations overseas. Bush, and a lot of moderate conservatives, advocate limiting abortions to cases of rape, incest and to save the mother’s life. It’s a good idea in theory, but it just won’t work. Abortion with exceptions for rape and incest makes no sense. Those people who advocate this view will tell you that abortion is murder and murder is wrong. But then why is it all right to murder the baby of a rapist? In cases of incest, often the resulting child is deformed or disabled — does that mean he or she shouldn’t be allowed to live? Maybe abortion with these exceptions is a variation on capital punishment, only it’s the death penalty for innocent children of rapists. If abortion is murder, then abortion in cases of rape and incest are still murder. With these exceptions, conservatives are really saying not that abortion is murder, but that it’s punishment for women who are at least somewhat at fault for their pregnancies. Even if abortion only for incest and rape victims made sense ethically, it still wouldn’t work practically. Does a girl have to “prove” she was raped? The rule could be she needs to show physical evidence, but it seems cruel to make a girl have a baby because she went home and showered after being raped. Also, the exams administered when a woman reports a rape are extremely evasive, and although that’s also true for surgical abortions, abortions don’t have to be given to a woman within a few days after she was raped. Some people would perhaps like to sit around and cry for a week after an attack. Should they be punished for that? Additionally, in some cases of rape and incest, victims are threatened by the attacker into not telling. Rape can also be in the eye of the beholder, especially when it comes to date rape. There are a lot of cases of non-violent rapes where juries or judges could vary on whether they interpret the encounter as consensual or not. How should the abortion exception be applied in these cases?Incest is an even trickier subject. Since it involves a family member, girls are often wary of reporting the crime. In this case, girls might feel caught between having a child and sending Daddy to jail. The girls can feel as though they brought the attack on and not report the incident because they blame themselves.While it would be nice if all people reported sex crimes, it’s not going to happen. For whatever their reasons, victims don’t always go to the police. And they shouldn’t have to have their lives ruined by enduring a teen pregnancy or raising a child on top of the crimes they were already put through.If all girls have to do is tell a doctor they were raped, with no evidence, the rape rate in this country will go through the roof. It seems horrible that someone would lie about being raped, but girls who seek abortions are often desperate. Telling a doctor you were raped is a small price to pay for not having to drop out of college, high school or junior high to avoid the stigma associated with unwed mothers.The arguments for making abortion illegal except to save the mother’s life are also flawed. If abortion is murder, abortion to save the mother makes sense: It’s self-defense. But where does the line get drawn between when abortion is necessary? What if there’s only a 50 percent chance the woman will die? Or a 10 percent chance? How about a 1 percent chance? What if the mother will likely survive, but it will inhibit her from having any other children or impair her health in some other way?The exception for the life of the mother is usually expanded to include the mother’s health, which is often expanded to include mental health, which some liberal doctors interpret as crying. In this case, affluent girls would probably have knowledge of these doctors, since they and their friends have access to their choice of physicians, while poorer girls will have to settle for back-alley abortions. The exception for mother’s life or health also doesn’t take into account girls who will be kicked out of their homes or beaten if it’s discovered they’re pregnant. And if this is added to the exceptions, it just makes it easier to lie to get an abortion. Republicans are trying to have a heart by allowing these exceptions to prohibiting abortion. But limiting abortion to these exceptions would punish girls for not reporting rapes and encourage non-victims to lie. Desperate girls will get abortions no matter what legislation is enacted.Jocelyn Marcus is a junior in English from Ames. She is wire editor of the Daily.