I was raped when I was 17 years old by someone I thought was my friend.
My rapist didn’t just take my virginity, he took my dignity, too. He took away my senses of self, safety, and security. He took away my friends and destroyed my reputation. He altered forever, my past, my present, and my future.
My concept of sex was still based on what I had seen in the movies, so I naively believed that girls always lost their virginity gently and tenderly in some candlelit love-scene set to a Tears for Fears song. But mine was taken from me with the sharp, burning, ripping pain of sexual assault.
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I had tried to tell my friends what had happened. I tried to tell them he forced himself inside me. They didn’t believe me. I was a “whore” and he was a “hero.” My only reality was shame.
I have carried the trauma of that rape with me for 32 years. In ways big and small, some imperceptible, some quite literally standing up and slapping me in the face. The trauma has never fully gone away.
But I’ve never been able to physically touch it.
I’ve never had to contend with morning sickness because of it. Never had to burp it, bathe it, or diaper it. I’ve never had to hold it to my breast while it looked up at me with its rapist father’s face.
There are tens of thousands of women and girls in this country right now for whom that is not true. Their trauma is not only etched into their minds, it’s in their wombs, in their arms, and suckling at their breast.
And I simply cannot fathom the inhumanity of forcing that reality upon anyone. Especially not someone who was raped. But according to a new research letter published in the medical journal, JAMA, since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, there have been an estimated 520,000 rapes in 14 red states with partial or total abortion bans. And out of that number, there have been roughly 64,000 pregnancies resulting from rape.
Sixty-four thousand.
And in those same red states over that same time span, there have only been 10 or fewer legal abortions in each of those states. Ten.
So what options does a pregnant rape victim have in a state like Texas? Are they able to drive or fly to a blue state thousands of miles away? Take off work, pay for travel, find a doctor, have a procedure, stay at least two nights and then travel home?
Most are forced to carry the baby to term. Forced to carry that perpetual, physical reminder of pain. Their shame and guilt, fear, sadness, and anger in the flesh, needing to be nurtured, protected and loved by them.
How does someone reconcile that?
Their reproductive autonomy was taken from them when they were raped and again when they were forced to carry the fetus resulting from that rape. Sex they didn’t want to have resulted in a baby they didn’t want to have.
They had no say in any of it. How does a survivor grapple with that? I just don’t understand.
I know I couldn’t have. I barely survived the isolating darkness of my own mind.
This cruel reality is one Republicans want us to accept, but we must reject it. For 50 years, rape victims had the right to take back their own power—until June 2022, when it was taken from us.
As a survivor myself, and as a mother to a 10-year old girl, I will not rest until we take that power back.
And to every victim of rape out there right now, I hope you know that I see you. And I understand. If you’re feeling guilty or ashamed for what was done to you, I want you to know that you did nothing wrong and that you are not alone. We are all in this together.
