Anti-choice, anti-life people don’t care about other people. They only care about their principles and their entitlement. To reestablish traditions that only existed among the well-to-do and in fairy tales, to reassert patriarchy and man’s superiority over woman, and to establish God’s kingdom where women and children will obey them without question. To make you, to force you if necessary, to keep your panties on, your legs closed, and your blouse buttoned until marriage (unless he needs you). To make you, to force you if necessary, to be available to him anytime, to comfort him with your body and sweetness, and to manage your own fertility, whether you can afford it or not, whether your body can accept it or not. To make you put away the notions of self-fulfillment, curiosity about the world around you, desire to be financially independent, and not need a man for your protection against other men like him, to bear the children “God” gives you without requiring more than a paycheck from your husband, to accept his authority over you, to submit to his domination, and to know your rightful place and purpose in God’s chosen land with his chosen people.
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Why do committees and legislatures dominated by men think pregnancies resulting from rape and incest are non-issues? Why are pregnancies that result from such violence and force just as sacred as those on more consensual terms? Because who gets to have sex with little girls, teen girls, young girls, and adult women? They do. Who gets to have sex with their daughters, step-daughters, sisters, nieces, granddaughters, and close cousins? They do. And no one, certainly no leftist or feminist is going to deny these men the right to meet their sexual needs and wants, no matter whom they force into it. There is no other reason for men to refuse a raped girl or woman the right not to bear a child of her rapist, whether it is her father, grandfather, brother, or uncle. Maybe preserving and passing down his DNA is too important to eliminate its consequence. It is like legislating against automatic weapons – once you say abortion because of rape is ok, you’re headed down a slippery slope. The next thing women will want is abortion when they just don’t want to become a mother. Can’t have that. You women and girls, you reap what you sow. Or what he sows.
A girl is on average 8 years old when her father forces her into sex.
You girls are sexually available to a man who does not have to ask for your consent because you belong to him anyway, and he can do what he wants with you (and maybe his wife/your mother will look the other way to protect herself). You are his for the taking because he will threaten you if you tell or go to another authority figure for help. Anyway, men don’t have any responsibilities if they don’t want them. They are not accountable if they don’t want to be. And they sure don’t relish the idea of any legal problems arising from taking their pleasures or their authority or their power out on girls and having the result dragging them through the mud. So, make it illegal to end a pregnancy caused by a grown man forcing himself on a girl or woman so he is never humiliated, never chastised, never shamed, and certainly never arrested.
Violence is excused if the result is a potential human being that his plaything has dared conceive. What matters is only that you, you sweet young thing, are punished for being a temptation, a helpless sweet thing, a glaring beam in his eye of his incontinence, his lust, his assault.
Do you know how many state legislatures are refusing or working to refuse to allow girls and women to get abortions because of this unthinkable harm done to them? How many state governments want to perpetuate the harm for the rest of her life? Carrying a fetus in your own small, immature body, or your fully-grown and adult-functioning body put there by a ruthless, selfish, violent act had the potential to be a weight that never lifts, no matter how much you may grow to love the child that you are forced to birth and mother, if you have no other choice. Anyway, “two wrongs don’t make a right” is the response. Yeah, if it isn’t you who has been wronged. Here’s the list: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
One state allows abortion in the case of rape but not incest: Mississippi. What is up with Mississippi? Rape but not incest? Do the men in their Mississippi families have a special right to use any female in their household? Just not females outside of their households?
Incest is wildly unreported. [It is more likely referred to as child sexual abuse which is illegal in all 50 states, and about half of all reported cases are incest. The word “incest” is just too creepy to use, I guess.] Adults do not want to watch their lives crumble by facing this crime. We know rape is seldom reported. We still criminalize the woman who tempted the man, thwarted the man, or got her due because she is, after all, a woman. No matter how it turns out, she is at fault.
The defense position by religious conservatives is that the fetus did nothing wrong; it is innocent. Again, the most important “person” in this argument is the fetus, not the girl or woman who suffered the violence. As Mrs. Mastriano says, it’s a good thing women have the second amendment. Does that mean women impregnated by despicable men can shoot the men in self-defense? Pro-lifers don’t mind taking the lives of living contemptible people, just not potential people. Except that legislators do not think rapists are despicable people; they are people just like themselves, and maybe are themselves.
Yes, women can and do sexually abuse and rape. About 14% of the reported incidences are about women. That leaves about 86% men.
For untold millions of girls in this country, men have helped themselves to their bodies. Men and boys in their families. I had an acquaintance when I was a teenager who confessed to a few of us that her disgusting brother had been forcing her to have sex with him since she was nine years old. She couldn’t tell her parents. She couldn’t make it stop. She just wanted to be able to move out and go away to college in two years. I have never forgotten that girl or her story. She lived in a grand house and had all the other privileges a rich daughter could have, yet she was humiliated and shamed. I wonder how she is now. Two men I have been deeply involved with also experienced incest within their nuclear families. They couldn’t get pregnant so they only have the emotional wounds whereas the women have them all over their psyches and bodies. I also spoke to women in Ethiopia a few years ago who told me that girls were always told it was dangerous for them outside their homes because boys and men could rape them. She told me it was a wrenching experience for most girls to be in their homes; the danger was ever present, by multiple males, and was widespread. Right. Make these girls and women carry pregnancies, give birth, and thank God for that little wonder.
“One in three-to-four girls, and one in five-to-seven boys, are sexually abused before they turn 18, an overwhelming incidence of which happens within the family. “
Men do not have rights to the bodies of girls and women just because they are men. They should be called out for privileging men’s criminally violent behavior over the health and welfare of girls. Incest and rape are violent crimes. They forever harm their victims. I know. I’ve been raped and sexually assaulted. I did not get pregnant, but I have never been able to let it go. The memories are forever. I have seen the devastation wrought on boys and girls. They haven’t been able to let it go, either.
See Tracy, N. (2021, December 17). Sexual Abusers - Who are These Child Abusers?, HealthyPlace. Retrieved on 2022, September 11 from https://www.healthyplace.com/abuse/child-sexual-abuse/sexual-abusers-who-are-these-child-abusers
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