Write4U:
No that is not correct. I properly identified the rape as the illegal act, but I did project the consequences of this illegal act onto the resulting pregnancy...
Nobody describes pregnancy as legitimate or illegitimate, not in the legal sense that you want to use that term. Pregnancies are not authorised by law - at least in the US. Women don't have to apply for pregnancy permits or for legal recognition that their pregnancy is authorised.
Why should the mother be held responsible for something which was imposed on her by illegal means. Getting pregnant from rape is not an act of will and therefore cannot be illegal in and of itself. The rape is an illegal act and the victim cannot be made responsible for the results.
Who has advocated holding mothers responsible for being raped? What are you talking about?
It is not a crime anywhere that I know of to get pregnant by being raped. It is a crime to rape somebody. It's not a crime to be a rape victim. Really, this is getting bizarre.
Your last sentence here suggests that what you really want to say is that women who have been raped cannot be legally responsible for children who are conceived as a result of the rape. But they can be and are held responsible. If a woman bears a child following a rape, she doesn't cease to have maternal obligations to that child on the grounds that she was raped. If you want to fixate on the law as it stands, that's where it stands. Mothers are responsible for their children, legally - even if those children were conceived as a result of a rape.
The pregnancy was not an act of Free Will by the rape victim, she is not responsible for the pregnancy and should not have to carry the burden of bringing the pregnancy to term and being responsible for the child fo the next 18 years.
Now
that is a different matter. Certainly I agree with you that a rape victim should not be legally compelled to bring a pregnancy to term. I also note that the explicit, intended, effect of a number of recently-introduced laws in various US states is to so compel women. In Alabama, for example, legislators explicitly voted down a proposed amendment to their new law that would have allowed a rape victim to obtain a legal abortion.
Another proposed amendment to some of these laws was that if the state requires rape victims to birth these unwanted babies, then the state should pay for the care and upkeep of these children after birth, at least for several years. That amendment was also explicitly voted down by the legislators, which exposes the lie of their supposed care for the welfare and rights of children. Babies are precious and sacred, but not if the state has to fund their care, apparently.