Abortive Ideas

October 6, 2006

Katelyn Kampf came to her parents’ home on September 15 expecting to have a civil conversation. Katelyn, 19 and on a leave of absence from college, had recently informed her parents, wealthy Portland, Maine property owners Nicholas and Lola, that she was pregnant with the child of her boyfriend of two years. They had suggested that she come home to discuss the matter.

However, what happened when Katelyn opened the door to her parents’ North Yarmouth, Maine house was far from what she had anticipated. According to police reports, the elder Kampfs bound their daughter with rope and forced her into their waiting car, in which they had duct tape and a loaded .22 caliber rifle. They then headed out of the state, bound for New York or Massachusetts. Their goal? To force their then 20-weeks-pregnant daughter to have an abortion.

During a stop at a New Hampshire shopping mall to use the bathroom, Katelyn managed to get away from her parents, calling the police from a cellphone stolen from her father. Officers eventually came to her rescue and arrested her parents, who now face up to 15 years in prison if convicted on the kidnapping charges that they face.

Katelyn and her parents had supposedly not been getting along for quite some time. Her relationship with her 22-year-old South African boyfriend, who is currently serving time in prison for theft and had been in jail in the past on charges of burglary, was apparently the main cause of tension. Nicholas and Lola Kampf had attempted to put an end to the relationship by enrolling their daughter in college in Washington, D.C.; however, unbeknownst to her parents, Katelyn had moved back to the area and back in with her boyfriend, with whom she was living on the day of her kidnapping.

It is easy to understand the frustration of parents who believe that their child is making the wrong decision. Most parents would feel immense disappointment at the fact that their daughter, who had been raised with every advantage in life, could bring into the world the child of a convict with a lengthy criminal record. Yet in the end, it was simply not their choice to make. Rather, as pro-choice activists argue, it is the pregnant woman who must make decisions relating to her own body.

Abortion is a right that must continue to be safe and legally available. However, in forcing their daughter to make a decision with which she did not agree, the elder Kampfs allied themselves with those who would restrict abortion—essentially removing Katelyn Kampf’s right to choose for herself. Despite the strength of their own convictions, their actions fundamentally violated their daughter’s freedom of choice. Their infringement should, and probably will, result in conviction.

The imposition of one’s values on another group of people is a problematic tendency—one that rarely leads to good, and one that we as citizens, and the United States as a whole, has too often displayed. Most recently, this enthusiasm for forceful rescue attempts has become evident politically in the Iraq war. The recently released National Intelligence Estimate—which states that our actions there have only served to make Iraq, the United States, and the world as a whole more dangerous—demonstrates clearly how devastating the results can be. Indeed, both situations exhibit the irony of such dogmatic despotism: in forcing our beliefs on others, we become all too similar to those we oppose.