It’s seems terribly timely that I informed readers of The Forecaster, Sun Journal and my little blog about the five-year anniversary of my drug-facilitated rape nearly the same day as the Republicans introduced federal legislation that would have prohibited me from obtaining an abortion had the man who raped me also gotten me pregnant.

Emphasis on terribly.

I was on birth control when I was raped. I didn’t get pregnant.

However, if I had, I would have had an abortion.

Now, you may be saying, “You can’t know that for sure,” or “You may have changed your mind,” but I assure you, I know myself well enough to say with 100 percent certainty that I would have terminated that pregnancy as soon as physically possible.

I don’t want children. Ever.

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I certainly don’t want children with a man I’d never met who dumped a toxic drug into my drink, took me to his creepy basement apartment, and raped and sodomized me for hours.

And after surviving something like that, I should have the right to make that decision.

I should have the right, regardless.

However, in this instance, I had already had my control over my body violently taken away. But it was not violently enough for this bill.

You see, the new bill only makes exceptions for those who are forcibly raped (like at gun-point), if the victim is a minor, or if it’s a case of incest.

He didn’t use a gun on me. He didn’t threaten me. He took away my ability to consent entirely, which, is not technically forcible rape (although Maine doesn’t really even have a definition for forcible rape, so that’s another whole issue). I wasn’t a minor: I was 24. I’d never seen him in my life: It wasn’t incest.

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And so, had I gotten pregnant, this new law would have made it virtually impossible for me to get an abortion (by putting limits on the availability of clinics  and on whether my health insurance covered any of the procedure — I didn’t have health insurance at the time of the rape, so I would have been a good candidate for government-provided healthcare, had it been available).

Suffering from a rape-victim’s version of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, who knows what something like this would have done to me. I can only speculate. I do know that it took me years to get over what happened to me. I can’t imagine I would have made a good parent during those years.

And let’s follow this through to the logical objection: Adoption. Had he impregnated me with his vile seed, I could have carried the child to term and then given it a family who would love it.

But I would know that somewhere, out there, was a child whose genetics predisposed him or her to unthinkable violence and the sickest of mental illnesses — that which allows a person to disregard another’s humanity. I would be afraid of that child.

Honestly, I don’t care which side of the abortion issue you’re on. There are no sides here. Telling a rape victim she must carry her rapist’s child to term is wrong. Period.


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