"A careful examination of the Texas and Georgia statutes involved in this case undermines the states’ claims that these statutes are narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest in preserving potential human life from the moment of conception. Georgia’s abortion statute, like many others, permits an exception for pregnancies due to statutory or forcible rape. 26-1202(a)(2). If Georgia is asserting an overriding interest in the life of human beings from the moment of their conception, it is not clear why fetuses conceived through rape are any less valuable to the state than fetuses conceived through consensual sex by adults. Surely the circumstances of pregnancy do not make these fetuses less human or less valuable as human beings. Compelling interests may be sacrificed to achieve other interests equally compelling, but Georgia has offered no equally compelling reason to permit the intentional destruction of what it understands to be human lives. Rather, the exemption for rape suggests that the state’s interest in the fetus is strongly connected to beliefs about maternal responsibility-that women who are the victims of statutory or forcible rape are not responsible for engaging in sexual intercourse that led to their pregnancy, and for that reason they should have a right to abortion. In the context of its more general prohibition on abortions, Georgia’s exemption for rape seems to be premised on the notion that adult women who engage in se are responsible for the pregnancies that result even if they are due to contraceptive failure, and even if the sex was the result of coercion that falls short of the legal definition of rape in the relevant jurisdiciton. Viewing the states asserted interest from the standpoint of the pregnant woman, they take on a somewhat different cast, which, given our previous discussion of the relationship between abortion regulation and the maintenance of sex inequality, raises considerable qualms, if not outright skepticism. We do not think that Georgia has a compelling interest in forcing women who have sex to become mothers unless they have been raped. At oral argument, counsel for Georgia informed us that the exception for rape is also intended to permit abortions for pregnancies resulting from incest. Tr. Of Oral Rearg. 23. Although there is some evidence that children born of close relatives have a slightly higher chance of birth defects, most are perfectly health. If the state is truly asserting that every fetus is a human life from the moment of conception, it is not clear why fetuses produced through incestuous sexual relations are less worthy of protection than any others. To be sure, in some cases the life of pregnant minors may be endangered by bringing a fetus to term, but not all cases of incest involve minors, and Georgia already has an exemption for situations in which the mother’s life would be endangered. Once again, Georgia’s exemption undercuts its claim that the interest in fetal life is so compelling from the moment of conception that a woman must be forced to bear a child under all circumstances."