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What About Rape?

Woman Conceived in Rape: How Pro-Lifers Should Handle the Rape Question

Pro-Life Group Demands Candidate Training After Akin Rape Dust-up

Social Myths About Abortion After Rape

Let's Listen to the Victims of Rape

Women Pregnant By Sexual Assault – WPSA / Special Report on Sexual Assault Pregnancy and Abortion

What About Rape?

During the 2012 Election, those in favor of abortion often referred to rape as a reason why abortion should remain legal in all 9 months of pregnancy, for whatever reason.

Most people, including many pro-life individuals, avoid the question of whether abortion is “ok” in the cases of rape. But it’s time for the pro-life movement to have an open, honest discussion about the tragedy of rape and abortion.

Join SFLA this Thursday, November 15th at 8:30pm(EST)/7:30pm(CST), at www.WhatAboutRape.com to WATCH the live “What about Rape?” discussion at University of St. Thomas in Houston, TX, and get ready to hear this issue be talked about in a way you have never before heard!

** This week, advertise this event on campus with our sample flyer, gather your group, and, then on Thursday, watch the live discussion featuring a rape survivor who became pregnant, an OB/GYN, and a person conceived during a rape.
[Students for Life, 13 Nov 12]

Woman Conceived in Rape: How Pro-Lifers Should Handle the Rape Question

Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock ultimately lost their races for the U.S. Senate in part because of a controversy created after both answered media questions about their position opposing abortion in cases of rape or incest.

Rebecca Kiessling, a pro-life attorney conceived in rape, says the problem is not that they hold the pro-life position opposing abortion in such circumstances but that the answer to the question left them set up for criticism.

In a column she wrote, Keissling offers pro-life candidates advice on how to better respond:

    I knew this would happen! I predicted that Republican party apologists would blame Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin’s losses on the fact that they are 100% pro-life, instead of acknowledging that the losses were due to how poorly they expressed their positions.

    And sure enough, the day after the election, Ann Coulter did just that. In her article entitled, “Don’t Blame Romney,” she spent half of the article blaming these two Senate candidates for daring to defend the life of every preborn child. Her exact words were, “because these two idiots decided to come out against abortion in the case of rape and incest,” calling them “pro-life badasses,” “purist grandstanders,” with “insane positions,” who were “showing off.” Unfortunately, Coulter has a huge following and will surely influence many uninformed readers with her misstatement of the facts and her flawed reasoning. I have great concern that these Senate losses will have a chilling effect on pro-life legislators and voters. Hence, a swift and thorough response is in order.

    I was not only conceived in rape, but nearly aborted at two back-alley abortionists. The only reason I wasn’t killed through a brutal abortion is because I was legally protected. My heroes are those pro-life legislators and activists who were hard-working and intelligent enough to understand that mine was a life worth saving.

    Coulter went on to erroneously write that Mourdock and Akin lost because they had “abortion positions that less than 1 percent of the nation agrees with.” Her figure is way off, and she has totally ignored the fact that their abortion position adheres to the Republican party platform!

    Additionally, the 1% figure Coulter threw out there is just not even close to being true. Polls in the last few years have consistently shown that the number is between 20 to 24% of Americans who believe abortion should be illegal in cases of rape. The other 31%+ of Americans who are pro-life with exceptions are 99% of the way there, and only need to be nudged another 1%.

    My experience shows that this is easy to achieve – if you try, just as how my story changed the heart of Gov. Rick Perry during his presidential campaign. And that’s the key.

    Why continue to minimize? Why not stand up and really defend our lives? We need to try to gain ground on this issue, by educating the public, by equipping candidates and legislators on how to most effectively respond to the rape question, by making ads with children conceived in rape available for anyone who wishes to utilize them, and by removing rape exceptions from the law, beginning with the Hyde Amendment.

    Tell me that my life was not worthy of protection and that I don’t deserve to be living, and I’ll show you who is the one who is extreme.

    We must not discriminate! Children conceived in rape are surely the most outcast members of our society, being unfairly demonized and portrayed as a “horrible reminder of the rape,” “the rapist’s baby,” “tainting the gene pool,” and even “demon spawn.”

    If we are going to gain ground in this effort to protect unborn children, we must maintain a standard, and we must make more of an effort to educate. I believe that the best people to do so are those of us who have been on the front-lines as pro-life speakers who were conceived in rape, who have been spending our entire adult lives defending our right to life.

    We’ve heard every question, every challenge, every argument. Why not utilize us? Just to name a few, there is Ryan Bomberger, Susan Jaramillo, and Pam Stenzel. On my website, there are dozens of stories of others conceived in rape and who became pregnant by rape. We’ve publicly shared our stories for a reason – please use them!

On this point, Keissling is right. She and other people like here who were born after they were conceived in rape are the face of the abortion-rape issue.
Any candidate who faces such a question need only refer to Rebecca and the men and women like her and respond, “Can you look them in the eye and tell them they should have been killed instead?”

Such a retort would likely be met with silence and without the controversy their answers generated.
[Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 11/9/12, http://www.lifenews.com/2012/11/09/woman-conceived-in-rape-how-pro-lifers-should-handle-the-rape-question/]

Pro-Life Group Demands Candidate Training After Akin Rape Dust-up
One of the top pro-life political groups says it will change the way it endorses candidates following the national dustup over comments Missouri Republican candidate Todd Akin made during a Senate debate.
http://www.lifenews.com/2012/11/0

7/pro-life-group-demands-candidate-training-after-akin-rape-dustup/

Social Myths About Abortion After Rape

The Elliott Institute has just published a powerful article titled ‘My Rape Pregnancy and My Furor Over Social Myths’ by Deana Schroeder, a member of the Ad Hoc Committee of Women Pregnant By Sexual Assault (WPSA).

She recounts the story of being drugged and raped at 17 and then, after becoming pregnant, being persuaded to have an abortion by family, counsellors and doctors who ‘intended the best’ and ‘wanted to help’.

But the result was to add ‘more layers of trauma, self-doubt, grief and guilt’ to the trauma of the rape itself.

Schroeder argues that ‘they had total confidence in the social myth that abortion is the best option, even the only option, in cases of sexual assault’.

She quotes a national study published in 1996 which found that half of the estimated 32,000 rape pregnancies which occur each year end in abortion.

The fact that so many women choose to give birth after rape, despite the social expectations and pressure to abort, should give us pause, she says : ‘Why aren’t all rape victims embracing the conventional wisdom that abortion is the best treatment for rape pregnancies?’

A hint, she says, is found in another study of 164 women who had rape pregnancies (conducted for the book Victims and Victors) in which the majority of those who had abortions said it only caused additional problems and the vast majority regretted having abortions.

By contrast, among those who delivered the child, satisfaction was higher and none stated any regret for giving birth.

Some people may remember a powerful testimony from 2008 in the Daily Mail: ‘I was raped and left pregnant at 16… but I still love my baby’.

‘People have been horrible,’ said the mother. ‘But that just made us more determined to fight for this innocent little child. She had not asked to be conceived, had she? If I have to, I will say that she was the good that came out of something bad. And I will tell her that, however she came to be, I have never ever regretted having her, and I would not be without her for the world.’

With abortion after rape – the issues and emotions involved are not as straightforward as most people presume.

Reprinted with permission from Peter Saunders’ blog.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/blog/social-myths-about-abortion-after-rape
[12 Nov 12, Peter Saunders]

Let's Listen to the Victims of Rape

In the Nov election, at least two candidates (Indiana, Missouri) can attribute a large portion of their loss to media capitalization of well-meaning but very clumsy or misinformed statements about rape in the abortion context. It is a hot topic.
Actually, the person rarely heard from is the rape victim. Hear from one. Listen to her. And, if this is a topic of particular interest to you, there is abundant information on this topic referenced in this letter.

The "Hard Cases:' Rape

Note: The following is a guest post (copied from the Elliot Institute Action Alert) from a member of the Ad Hoc Committee of Women Pregnant By Sexual Assault (WPSA).

I've been there. Not Todd Akin. Not Richard Mourdock. And certainly not their critics who sanctimoniously imagine that they know what pregnant sexual assault victims really want and need.

As my story shows, all too often, our self-appointed champions do more harm than good. I was 17, drugged and raped. When I learned I was pregnant, my family, counselors, and doctors took control. They intended the best. They wanted to help me.

And even though there are literally no studies showing any benefit from abortion, they had total confidence in the social myth that abortion is the best option, even the only option, in cases of sexual assault.

Even many pro-lifers approve of abortions in cases of rape. So surely it must be the best choice, right? Not in my case. It just added more layers of trauma, self-doubt, grief and guilt. The negative impact lasted for years. I'm not alone.

 A national study — http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8765248 — published in 1996 found that half of the estimated 32,000 rape pregnancies which occur each year end in abortion. Note: half. Not even 60 percent.

That so many women choose to give birth after rape, despite the social expectations and pressure to abort, should give you pause. Why aren't all rape victims embracing the conventional wisdom that abortion is the best treatment for rape pregnancies?

A hint is found in another study — http://afterabortion.org/2010/sexual-assault-and-abortion-survey/ of 164 women who had rape pregnancies (conducted for the book Victims and Victors — http://afterabortion.org/2005/victims-and-victors-speaking-out-about-their-pregnancies-abortions-and-children-resulting-from-sexual-assault/)

In that study, the majority of those who had abortions said it only caused additional problems and the vast majority regretted having abortions.

By contrast, among those who delivered the child, satisfaction was higher and none stated any regret for giving birth.

Why are these facts so little known?

It is because many people on both sides of the abortion debate are more concerned with their ideologies than they are the complex nitty-gritty details which confound sound bites.

Because the actual experiences of pregnant sexual assault victims have not been widely heard, the social myth that abortion is the best, or even the only, option in cases of rape pregnancies is almost universally accepted.

This universal myth creates its own set of problems for women.

When a pregnant sexual assault victim balks at having an abortion, she will almost immediately faces queries of suspicion from family and friends.

How can any woman have a rapist's child, they wonder? And then the suspicion mounts . . . maybe she lied. Maybe she was not really the victim of a "legitimate" rape?

And so the assumption that surely a real rape victim would want an abortion creates a new pressure on hurting women, in a time of intense crisis, to accept the recommendation of abortion, despite moral qualms and heightened sensitivity to victimization, to swallow their reservations and have the abortion if only to silence the rising doubts about their rape story.

 I hope I've convinced you that the rape and abortion issue is not as simple as you've always assumed.

This is why I have joined the Ad Hoc Committee of Women Pregnant by Sexual Assault (WPSA). https://www.facebook.com/supportwpsa

For eight years, we have been petitioning — http://afterabortion.org/rapepregnancypetition/ — Congress t

o hold hearings to allow us to describe our own experiences, insights, and needs.

It is our hope that if policy makers, the media, and well intentioned people on all sides of the abortion debate finally hear the truth from those who have been there. Only when our voices and experiences are included in future discussions and arguments over rape, incest, and abortion will those discussions and arguments be less blatantly ignorant and hurtful.

Whatever side of the abortion debate you are on, I hope you'll agree that our voices should be heard. Please call your representative and senators and ask them to endorse our petition. It's time to replace posturing with knowledge. And in this case, knowledge can come only from those who have actually been there.
~~~ The author is a member of the Ad Hoc Committee of Women Pregnant By Sexual Assault (WPSA).

A Call to Action

We need a broad grassroots effort to build a platform by which women who experienced a pregnancy resulting from sexual assault will finally be heard. But so far, the WPSA petition has gone mostly unnoticed.

Call your legislators. Please call your state and federal legislators and ask them to take a public position in favor of having the hearings requested by WPSA. Call your pro-life and pro-family leaders. Please call any of the pro-life and pro-family groups you support, especially any with lobbyists in Washington, D.C., and ask them to support the hearings. Become a WPSA Supporter.

To be a part of this effort, go here http://afterabortion.org/rapepregnancypetition/ to read the petition and sign up to be a WPSA Supporter (just fill out the webform there to be added to our Supporters' List). Share this information. Then, please share this information, and copies of the petition, with your legislators and with pro-life leaders and lobbyists. And share it with other pro-life advocates, family members and friends and ask them to become WPSA Supporters, too.

WPSA is now on Facebook! If you are on Facebook, "like" the Support WPSA Page and share it with others.

If you are a woman who has experienced a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, you can join WPSA and add your name to the petition (you need not go public to join WPSA). Thank you for supporting this effort!
[12 Nov 12, AAPLOG]

Special Report on Sexual Assault Pregnancy and Abortion


 The Hard Cases: New Facts, New Answers (reproducible download)  http://www.theunchoice.com/specialreports/sexualassault.htm

Victims and Victors  http://afterabortion.org/2005/victims-and-victors-speaking-out-about-their-pregnancies-abortions-and-children-resulting-from-sexual-assault/

 Get Involved
 Support WPSA Join WPSA Like WPSA on Facebook Link to this article. http://afterabortion.org/rapepregnancypetition/

General literature on rape-related pregnancy: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8765248
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