INCEST: NOT ALL ABORTION CASES ARE BLACK AND WHITE...,

By Michele Goodwin
New York Times

(Ms. Goodwin is a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of “Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood.”)

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi that provides no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. What’s at stake in this case matters to the countless girls and women who have been raped — including those who, like me, were raped by a father, an uncle or another family member.

It was the early morning of my 10th birthday the first time that I was raped by my father. It would not be the last. The shock was so severe that I temporarily went blind before I began the fifth grade a few weeks later. By the time the school year began, my father had taken me to see a battery of doctors — a medical explanation would paper over the fact that the trauma caused by his sexual violence had caused my body to shut down.

The physiological suffering that I endured included severe migraines, hair loss and even gray hair — at 10 years old. While other girls may have longed for puberty, I loathed the idea of it. My body became a vessel that was not mine. It had been taken from me. I lived in fear of the night, and the footsteps outside my bedroom door.

I gravitated to closets — I would find the deepest corner, sit with a flashlight, read and rock myself. Only years later, while in therapy at 16, would I understand that my involuntary rocking when relating to these experiences was the manifestation of my stress and anxiety.

My father’s predations were hidden behind wealth, social status and his acting the part of a committed and attentive parent. I attended elite schools in New York City, studied ballet at a renowned academy and took private violin and tennis lessons. 

My father never missed a parent-teacher conference. However, that veneer of normalcy belied intimate family violence that had begun years before with his physical abuse of my mother. At times he was so violent that she was hospitalized.

At age 12, I was pregnant by my father, and I had an abortion. Before we got to the doctor’s office, I had no idea that I was pregnant. My father lied about my age and the circumstance of my pregnancy, informing the doctor that I was 15 and that I had been reckless with a boyfriend. 

My father shook his head, explaining to the doctor that he was doing all that he could as a single parent – my parents had divorced by this time – but that I was out of control. 

Both men seemed to convey contempt toward me. For many years, the shame of my father’s lie lingered with me – the stereotype embedded in the narrative of the risky, hypersexualized Black girl.
My shame was never about the abortion. I will forever be grateful that my pregnancy was terminated. I am fortunate that my body was spared an additional trauma imposed by my father – one that today would be forced by some state legislatures and courts. No child should be pressured or expected to carry a pregnancy and give birth, or to feel remorse, guilt, doubt or unease about an abortion under any circumstances, let alone rape or incest.

As Justice Harry Blackmun recognized in his majority opinion in Roe v. Wade in 1973, the barriers to a decent life are enormous when there is an unwanted pregnancy — for many, they are insurmountable.

In the end, my way out was to leave the economic security of home at age 15. That, too, is a decision that I will never regret. But it was not easy. When I left, I had $10 and no access to the savings account my father held for me. I enrolled myself in a public school on Staten Island. 

To support myself, I cleaned the house of a very kind couple. I lived in an unfinished attic and survived on a modest diet that mostly consisted of beans, rice and cans of tuna. To win my freedom from my parents, I went to court, where I endured interrogation from ill-prepared and insensitive lawyers about being raped as a child.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/opinion/abortion-texas-mississippi-rape.html?action=click&algo=bandit-all-surfaces&block=more_in_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=630731447&impression_id=b4e33c14-52b2-11ec-9716-8bd5df15910c&index=1&pgtype=Article&pool=more_in_pools%2Fopinion&region=footer&req_id=432508748&surface=eos-more-in&variant=0_bandit-all-surfaces