For many people in this debate right now, the prospect of imagining a child having to carry her rapists baby to term is inconceivable and many adults are speaking out which is what advocacy looks like, and still many people in the debate on both sides do not know what it is like to be faced with that possibility or the complete implications of what that would look like.

So, let me tell you what it is like to contemplate that:

I was 11 the first time it happened, and the first time he didn’t use a condom- I hadn’t had my first period yet. When I did have my first period, I thought that the blood that was coming out of me was an injury that he had caused when he had raped me (because that had happened before) and so I felt like I couldn’t go to the nurse (I was at school) because then I would get in trouble. No one told me what to expect. I learned what rape was from Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, which I hadn’t seen until after it had been happening for a year. Before I even fully comprehended what was happening, I was faced with the possibility that I could get pregnant. I learned that from my health class in 7th grade.

This is real. The decisions you debate online, and these scenarios that ‘the snowflakes who are offended by everything’ are talking about are real, and so are the 12-year-old girls behind them. I was that 12-year-old girl. When I was abused, the person who hurt me would remind me, quite frequently, that if anyone ever found out he would kill me. You wanna know what I thought about when I thought about getting pregnant? ‘If I get pregnant then someone will know, and then he’ll kill me and my child.’ I was 12 years old and I WAS thinking about this scenario.

People who debate that girls should carry their rapist’s child claim to be pro-life, meaning that the reason it is morally impermissible to have an abortion is that it ends the life of the child/fetus. Have you thought about the possibility that this policy could increase the death rates of both children?

If my abuser had found out that I was pregnant, there is no doubt in my mind he would have killed me and the child. As someone who struggled with anxiety and depression due to abuse- I’m sure it would’ve looked like I died by suicide.

What happens to the child who is already living in this case? What about the 12-year-old girl, who is being abused and neglected in her own home, who is carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders? Let’s say my abuser didn’t kill me, let’s assume I lived, I was pregnant, I told, and someone managed to protect me, and I lived through the birth, then what? I bring my child back to the home I was abused and neglected in? Or maybe you force the child to be put up for adoption? Because I was abused, and people found out- I go into foster care? What about my brother? Would we be together? The weight of that responsibility and ‘choice’ also placed on that young girls’ shoulders… on my shoulders. The responsibility of splitting up my family. It’s not right. You can talk about how at the end of the day that it is the abuser’s fault and that is true, but as a 12-year-old, I wasn’t able to see that, and I didn’t have someone to tell me otherwise.

We’re struggling to protect the children already born into this world. In these debates, we often lose sight of the child right in front of us. With a new focus on trauma-informed care- we have adapted child protective services to account for the fact that adult parents who have experienced significant trauma often need extra support with parenting due to past trauma; while most parents don’t intentionally set out to hurt their kids, many adults unintentionally end up doing this. Children who are being raped and neglected are often experiencing this at home, and you want to not only bring another child into that environment, but you want one abused child to raise another?

I am going to take this one step further. All these debates are also grounded upon the assumption that any life is better than not living, that any life could not possibly be worse than death. I am genuinely thankful that you didn’t live through what I went through; that you didn’t wake up every day wondering whether that was true or not. I am glad you were not faced with that choice for yourself, let alone, another living being that you were supposed to be bringing into the world.

These two issues are not separate but intertwined. I am so angry I could scream. I am angry for all the 12-year-olds in the world who are being abused, literally right now, and are listening to adults tell them that if they have an abortion they are committing an irrevocable sin, a moral wrong and that they will not be loveable if they do, oh and also we’re going to send you to jail. I am especially angry for the girls out there who have families that cannot and/or do not meet their basic human needs, and they also are expected to weigh what it would look like to bring another child into that situation.

Please share this.

One thing we need at this time is for survivors to know they’re not alone, and that someone is a lot of people are pissed that a bunch of white men in Alabama are more concerned with the unborn baby than with the child experiencing sexual abuse, their life, or their safety.

(Then, eventually, we can talk about the coincidence that this bill is being put forth by white men (in power)- the same demographic of men who are most likely to sexually abuse a child.)