No, I really don't want to fight about it, if you don't agree with me we never will. They say Obama is going to veto the bill anyway.
What I want to talk about is an aspect of the bill that filled me with such rage that I had to get off the internet for a few hours to calm down.
That an exception to the rule is that if you report rape to the police, then you can get an abortion after 20 weeks.
Listen, maybe a woman had a right to her privacy. Maybe, she's not ready to tell anyone she was raped.
Do you know how it feels to have an unwanted sexual act happen to you? I bet many of my readers do because it's a grotesque underbelly of our society that continues to happen even though it's public knowledge that it's disgusting.
In our society, it's so hard to come out and say something happened to you. I didn't tell my family until I was in college though the things that happened to me were in middle and elementary school. So why are you going to force someone to come out and say they were raped within a 20 week period?
When it happened to me, I felt gross. I felt like I let everyone around me down. I felt like I was alone and not worth anything. These feelings just don't go away and the journey is different for anyone.
Did I want to tell the police? Hell no. That would mean everyone would know. That would mean uncomfortable tests and the possibility of disbelief of friends and family. It meant the possibility of disbelief of a judge and jury. That's crushing. And I've seen it happen. How?
Because rapists don't have signs on their head that says 'Hi I'm a rapist.'
So forcing someone to come forward is so completely mentally damaging in the long run I can't even. I can't even because most of my friends have stories and they will never come forward. That I never did. That a group of lawmakers are deciding for such a large group of people that if they get pregnant from one of the most traumatic things in the world, that they have to suffer further from public judgment.
It should be the choice of the individual to deal with the situation anyway they can so they can BE a survivor.
After I spoke at Take Back The Night at school, I felt bad because I didn't tell the whole story. I told the part of the story I was comfortable with accepting out loud. But even still so many women and men reached out to me (I didn't forget you male survivors we just happened to be talking about a bill about abortion) and doing something like that really puts in perspective that even though the statistics are scary, they are still way way off.
We need to start talking about consent in all sense of the word. The house does not have my consent to take away my right to privacy. My right to grieve in private. You are forcing women to have children when you have not lived their lives. You don't know what they're going through. You don't know how they will treat the child after being forced to have it. Or if the mother is desperate enough, illegal abortions. You can't stop someone who is desperate.
Sure, there are many cases in which the child is born and things turn out great. But life is not one size fits all. It's complicated and messy and there is more than one way to deal with trauma.
Don't forget that you deserve happiness. And someone else's choice does not make you gross, or worthless. Don't let anyone dull your shine and take back the night.
Lots of love,
Samantha the fatulous
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