BOSTON (Reuters) - Police charged a Maine couple on Monday of kidnapping their pregnant 19-year-old daughter, who was bound with rope and duct tape and bundled into her parents' car to force her to have an emergency abortion.
Nicholas Kampf, 54, and his wife, Lola, 53, were arrested on Friday in a New Hampshire parking lot after their daughter Katelyn escaped by persuading her parents to untie her so she could use a Kmart bathroom.
A court affidavit said her parents chased her out into the yard after an altercation, grabbed and tied her hands and feet together. Her father then gagged her and carried her to their Lexus and they drove toward New Hampshire.
"The case facts are somewhat bizarre," aid Mark Dion of Maine's Cumberland County Police Department, which is involved in the investigation. "It is a bit of a shock."
He said the Kampfs, who were arraigned in New Hampshire's Salem District Court on Monday on kidnapping charges and held on bail of $100,000 each, appeared to have been angry that their daughter was pregnant by a man who is now in jail.
It's all about choice, isn't it? I wonder how many more subtle cases occur throughout the country. It made me think of a column I read some time ago by Orthodox Writer Frederica Matthewes-Green
Roe has taught us many lessons which now govern our lives in ways we can barely perceive. Instead of being one small tool for women’s advancement, abortion opened a chasm, and a lot of unexpected things fell in. It turned out to be an irresistible force., because abortion makes things so much easier for everyone around the pregnant woman. Before Roe, unplanned pregnancy created many problems for many people-the woman’s lover, her parents, her siblings, her boss, her landlord, her dean. Abortion changes the picture instantly: just go get it taken care of, dear, and it will be as if it never happened. Women were expected to do the sensible thing and save everyone else a lot of fuss and bother. Overnight, unplanned pregnancy became her private problem, a burden for her to bear alone. Abortion rights rhetoric compounded this effect with terms emphasizing her isolation: My body, my rights, my life, my choice. The flip side of all that first-person assertiveness is abandonment. The network of support that once existed had been shattered.
To continue a pregnancy came to look like an insane choice, one which placed an unfair burden on others. Having a baby in less-than-perfect circumstances came to look like a crazy and even selfish whim. A woman in an unplanned pregnancy was not just permitted to have an abortion-she was *expected* to. And that has made all the difference.
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