Rape and Incest are Tragic, But
Abortion Doesn't Heal the Pain
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From: The
Pro-Life Infonet <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>
Reply-To: Steven Ertelt <infonet@prolifeinfo.org>
Source: Citizen Magazine; October 2000
by Frederica Matthewes-Green
Opinion polls on the abortion issue sometimes reveal profound moral
confusion among many Americans, such as the people who tell pollsters
that abortion is murder, but that it should remain legal. There is no
ambivalence, however, on abortion when it involves rape and incest.
According to a 1999 Wirthlin poll, 62 percent of Americans would endorse
a law prohibiting abortion except in cases when the pregnancy would kill
the woman or when it is the result of rape or incest. Remove that last
clause, and support for the pro-life position drops 30 points.
It seems like common sense. Sexual violence is a nightmare. Dragging it
out for nine months of pregnancy seems but an added cruelty. Then
there's the child, for whom the truth about his or her father could be
devastating.
But did anyone think to ask the victims themselves?
In their new book, Victims and Victors (Acorn Books, 2000), editors
David Reardon, Amy Sobie and Julie Makimaa draw on testimonies of 192 women
who experienced pregnancy as the result of rape or incest, and 55 children
who were conceived through sexual assault. It turns out that when victims of
violence speak for themselves, their opinion of abortion is nearly
unanimous-and the opposite of what the average person expects.
Nearly all the women interviewed in this anecdotal survey said they
regretted aborting the babies conceived via rape or incest. Of those
giving an opinion, more than 90
percent said they would discourage other victims of sexual violence from having an abortion.
On the other hand, among the women profiled in the book who conceived
due to rape or incest and carried to term, not one expressed regret about
her choice.
Of those giving an
opinion, 94 percent of rape victims and 100 percent of incest victims said abortion was not a good option for other
women in their situation.
"I feel personally assaulted and insulted every time I hear that
abortion should be legal because of rape and incest," says Kathleen DeZeeuw,
whose testimony is included in Victors and Victims. "I feel that we're
being used to further the abortion issue, even though we've not been asked to
tell our side of the story."
Her side of the story starts with skipping a church meeting to go with a
girlfriend to a local coffeehouse. The sixth of eight children, Kathleen
was raised in a Christian home with strict rules against associating
with anyone outside her family's church congregation. So perhaps Kathleen was
naive when she agreed to go to a movie with a young man she met at the
coffeehouse.
Soon after, her head was being bashed against his car window until she
was too weak to resist. Somehow she knew the rape that followed would make
her pregnant.
"I remember screaming over and over again," Kathleen said-a
reaction that brought only laughter from her assailant. He threw her out of the car,
with a warning that he'd hurt her worse if she told anyone. She made her
way home feeling shattered and dirty.
Kathleen, only 16, kept the secret until it couldn't be concealed. When
the pregnancy became obvious, her parents were distressed and her
siblings were disgusted.
"Because I wouldn't talk about it, many rumors started about me,
and everyone had his own interpretation of what must have 'really'
happened." She was sent to a maternity home a thousand miles away.
That's where something began to change in her heart. At first, she was
repulsed at the thought of carrying "this man's child," yet as
she felt
the baby kick and move, her horror began to change to sympathy.
"I began to realize that this little life inside me was struggling,
too . . . I was no longer thinking of the baby as the 'rapist's' . . . I now
thought of this baby as 'my baby.' My baby was all I had. I felt
abandoned by everyone. I had only this life inside me to talk to."
Not that everything was easy. The first time Kathleen held her son,
Patrick, she felt "revulsion," because he looked exactly like
his father-a
resemblance thatremained as he grew into adolescence.
"The laughter of my little boy often reminded me of the hideous
laughter of this guy as he had raped me." But Patrick kept telling his
mother she
needed to forgive, as he himself had forgiven her sometimes-pained
reactions to him as well as the actions of his unknown dad. In the end,
forgiveness set Kathleen free.
Victims of sexual violence need counseling and care, Kathleen says, and
plenty of time for healing. "To encourage a woman to have an
abortion is to add even more violence to her life," she says. "Two wrongs
will never make a right."
Kathleen's association of abortion with "even more violence"
gives us the first clue to why victims of sexual violence might resist abortion. As
Reardon points out, "Abortion is not some magical surgery which
turns back the clock."
What rape takes away from a woman, abortion cannot restore. Though many
outsiders view abortion as a quick and sanitary procedure that takes
place behind closed doors, to the woman it is a second assault, a disturbing
reminder of the invasive violence she already has endured.
"Many women report that their abortions felt like a degrading form
of 'medical rape,' " Reardon writes. "Abortion involves a painful
intrusion
into a woman's sexual organs by a masked stranger . . . For many women
this experiential association between abortion and sexual assault is
very strong . . . Women with a history of sexual assault are likely to
experience greater distress during and after an abortion than are other
women."
Second, Reardon says, post-abortive women typically feel guilty, dirty,
depressed and resentful of men-the same feelings that are common after a
sexual assault. Rape and incest victims who abort get a double whammy of
these difficult emotions. "Rather than easing the psychological
burdens of the sexual assault victim," he writes, "abortion adds to
them."
THE REAL PROBLEM
For victims of incest-itself a form of rape-the case is even stronger.
For these girls, pregnancy can represent their only hope of escaping the
abusive situation. They may have been threatened and beaten; they may
have been told, for example, "If you tell your mother, I'll kill
her."
To such a girl, pregnancy may not be the problem. Incest is the problem,
and pregnancy may be the solution-a way to force someone to recognize
her plight and rescue her. Reardon writes: "Unlike pregnancies
resulting from rape, most incest pregnancies are actually desired, at least at a
subconscious level, in order to expose the incest."
Reardon discovered that in virtually every case of pregnancy after
incest, the abortion was not the girl's decision. "In several cases, the
abortion
was carried out over the objections of the girl who clearly told others
that she wanted to give birth to her child."
Instead, the abortion was demanded by the adults in her life, and
frequently-for obvious reasons-by the perpetrator himself. Abortion
turns
out to be a great way to destroy evidence.
Dr. Julio C. Novoa performed five abortions on three sisters who had
been habitually raped by their father. The doctor didn't suspect a thing.
"When these patients came to my office, they came with a mother,
and you, as a doctor, feel comfortable that the family knows," Novoa said in
the book. "They never, never made a mention or a hint" that
anything was wrong. The girls were between 13 and 19, and their mother facilitated
the incest and the abortions.
The situation ended only when the youngest girl scrawled at the bottom
of a history test that she hated life and wanted to die.
But surely a young girl who is pregnant shouldn't be encouraged to have
a baby, should she? She probably has unrealistic ideas that the baby will
provide her with the unconditional love she craves. She may have naive
fantasies that the child will be like a doll she can dress up and play
with.
"It is precisely the young girl's attachment to her baby, whether
realistic or unrealistic, which ensures with 100 percent reliability
that
she will be traumatized by the abortion," Reardon writes. "To
the young girl, the abortion is not an act of free will by which she is regaining
her future. It is the destruction of her baby, her 'baby doll,'
even. . . . Which would the young girl rather have? A baby or a
traumatic
surgery wherein she is forced to participate in the murder of her
baby?"
HEALING BY ADOPTION
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the most loving thing a young girl can
do for her child is also the best for her own emotional well-being: Give
birth, then place the child for adoption. Reardon cites a 1979 article
by Dr. George E. Maloof, a San Francisco-area psychiatrist who strongly
recommended that children conceived in incest be adopted, not only for
the child's sake but so the original family can begin to heal.
(Incidentally, children of incest are not doomed to be victims of deformity
due to "inbreeding." Such problems typically emerge following
a repeated pattern of incest over several generations.)
Writes Maloof: "Only after having the child adopted can there be
some assurance that this new life will not simply become part of the
incestuous
family affair. The family can be consoled by the knowledge that they
have broken their incestuous pattern."
Some women who had children after rape, then raised them, feel adoption
would have been the better course. Kathleen DeZeeuw writes: "I
personally believe that for her child's sake, the rape victim should strongly
consider adoption. That may sound strange coming from me, but I know the
emotional problems that can result from being daily reminded of the
assault. In many cases it may be truly better for the child that he or
she not be subjected to this added turmoil."
Sharon Bailey* saw conflict over her daughter become one of the stresses
that undermined her marriage. She says her daughter "would have had
a more normal life" if she had been adopted.
On the other hand, Nancy Cole* raised a child after being impregnated by
her father and is satisfied with her decision.
"My daughter is now 18, loves the Lord and is happy and
well-adjusted. I have raised her all my life, and I know I made the right decision."
CONQUERING THE RAPE
While it looks at first glance as if rushing victims of violence to an
abortion clinic is the greatest kindness, listen carefully and you'll
find
it is not at all what they want.
"The victim may sense, at least at a subconscious level, that if
she can get through the pregnancy she will have conquered the rape,"
Reardon
writes. "By giving birth, she can reclaim some of her lost
self-esteem. Giving birth, especially when conception was not desired,
is a totally selfless act, a generous act, a display of courage, strength
and honor.
"It is proof that she is better than the rapist. When he was
selfish, she can be generous. While he destroyed, she can nurture."
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