Apr 16
Why we should never force rape or incest victims to carry a pregnancy to term
As more and more conservative states enact harsh, punitive anti-abortion laws — claiming they’re “pro-life” — it’s worth looking closely at what happens after sexual assault, to determine whether forcing a woman to bear the child of her attacker is such a good idea. (Spoiler alert: It isn’t.)
Here’s the science from a study cited by RAINN: “Ninety-four percent of women met symptomatic criteria for PTSD at Assessment 1, decreasing to 65% at Assessment 4 (mean = 35 days postassault), and 47% at Assessment 12 (mean = 94 days postassault).” The study is one of many that show sexual assault causes emotional and mental trauma in addition to the physical harm it may do. For adult women who are raped, the mental/emotional after-effects are those of PTSD. Reliving the trauma in dreams or flashbacks, avoiding people or places that bring back the memory of the assault, and then there are the serious symptoms:
- Negative thoughts about yourself, other people or the world
- Hopelessness about the future
- Memory problems, including not remembering important aspects of the traumatic event
- Difficulty maintaining close relationships
- Feeling detached from family and friends
- Lack of interest in activities you once enjoyed
- Difficulty experiencing positive emotions
- Feeling emotionally numb
Many rape survivors become suicidal. Those who might tend toward depression can see it become far worse.
From the Cleveland Clinic, how depression during pregnancy can leave women unlikely to take care of themselves, more likely to use drugs, tobacco and alcohol, and less likely to bond with the baby growing inside them. (Imagine that risk on top of knowing the fetus within you comes from someone who attacked you. I can’t.)
Think about the likelihood that a rape victim forced to bear her attacker’s child won’t take care of herself; might well drink too much, smoke, or take drugs; feel emotionally isolated. Then remember that most of the states passing these laws don’t do much to support pregnant women (let alone the babies they have, once they’re born). If a victim of rape has a low income but isn’t poor enough to be eligible for Medicaid — in states like Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Florida, where Medicaid expansion never happened — she’s unlikely to get any help because she can’t afford to see a doctor, let alone a therapist.
Now let’s talk about girls who are sexually assaulted by a member of their family. Their fathers. Their brothers. An uncle, a granddad, a cousin, and in-law. Someone they thought they could trust.
There’s a kind of trauma much-studied and researched by Bessel van der Kolk that he calls Developmental Trauma Disorder, or DTD. It’s what happens to children who grow up in homes where they don’t feel safe and loved, where the adults who should protect them are the ones who do them harm. From his paper describing the disorder: “ the vast majority of people (about 80%) responsible for child maltreatment are children’s own parents.” Van der Kolk has also written a book about DTD called “The Body Keeps the Score,” which goes into detail about how childhood trauma affects us for the rest of our lives — and not just mentally and/or emotionally, but physically, with illnesses like heart disease, COPD, asthma, kidney disease and stroke showing up more often than in adults who weren’t victimized by a caretaking adult during childhood.
If you’ve read this far and are still unmoved by the long-term harm suffered by victims of sexual assault — and the added trauma they’ll experience if forced to give birth to an attacker’s child — at least consider the financial cost.
When a child is unsafe, he or she grows up with ACEs risk factors. ACEs is an acronym for Adverse Childhood Experiences, and if we were to end them in North America we could save billions of dollars a year.
ACEs have been studied for decades by researchers at Kaiser Permanente in California (Dr. Vince Felitti is someone I worked with when I was at KP) and at the CDC. The impact of them on physical health over the years after someone grows into adulthood are immense, and the loss of productivity on the part of those adult survivors of childhood trauma is impossible to measure. Imagine if all of us who grew up neglected, abused, otherwise hurt by people who claimed to love us didn’t have to deal with the mental and emotional consequences? If we didn’t miss work because of health problems brought on by the long-term stress and drain on our brains and bodies?
Imagine a world in which women were able to determine for themselves when they were ready to become moms, and knew they’d be supported if they did?
