Protesters take part in the Women’s March and Abortion Justice Rally in Austin, Texas, on October 2. The rally targets Senate Bill 8, a state law that bans it. nearly all abortions are as early as six weeks pregnant, with no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest.
SERGIO FLORES / Sergio Flores / AFP via Getty Images
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SERGIO FLORES / Sergio Flores / AFP via Getty Images
Protesters take part in the Women’s March and Abortion Justice Rally in Austin, Texas, on October 2. The rally targets Senate Bill 8, a state law that bans it. nearly all abortions are as early as six weeks pregnant, with no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest.
SERGIO FLORES / Sergio Flores / AFP via Getty Images
The SAFE Alliance in Austin helps survivors of child abuse, sexual assault and domestic violence. Back before Texas’ new abortion law went into effect, the organization counseled a 12-year-old girl who was repeatedly raped by her father.
Piper Stege Nelson, director of public strategy for SAFE Alliance, said the father did not let his daughter out of the house.
“She’s pregnant,” Nelson said. “She didn’t know anything about her body. She certainly didn’t know she was pregnant.”
The girl was eventually able to get help, but if this happens after September 1, when the state law goes into effect, her options will be severely limited, Nelson said.
In Texas, abortion is now banned as early as six weeks of pregnancy. The act, Senate Bill 8, is currently the most restrictive ban on the procedure in force in the country. According to a recent NPR / PBS News Texas law is unpopular on the political spectrum.
Notably, the law also makes no exceptions for those who are victims of rape or incest. Social workers in Texas say it’s causing serious harm to sexual assault survivors in the state.
“Grief” for survivors of repeated rape and abuse
While many people don’t realize they’re pregnant until 6 weeks, Nelson says this is a particular problem for people who have been raped or abused repeatedly.
That’s because in response to the trauma of abuse, they often become numb to what is happening to their bodies.
“That dissociation can lead to a separation from reality and the fact that she’s pregnant,” says Nelson. “And so again, she won’t know that she’s six weeks pregnant and she won’t be able to deal with that pregnancy.”
Monica Faulkner, a social worker in Austin who has worked with victims of sexual assault, said not having the option to terminate a pregnancy would make recovering from an assault even more difficult. than.
“The impact of finally moving forward and then being told there are no options for you,” said Faulkner, who directs the Institute for Child and Family Health at the University of Texas at Austin.
Forcing a full-term pregnancy can be financially, psychologically, and sometimes even physical. For survivors, it further undermines their right to self-determination, Nelson said, after their sense of security and control has been violated.
“And so when you have something like SB 8,” Nelson said, “what it’s doing, it continues to take control and power from the survivor right at the moment when they need that power. and take control of their lives to start healing. “
Faulkner says it’s important to give sexual assault survivors options about how to move forward in their lives. She said SB 8 “obviously eliminates any choice they had.”
Public opinion, even in Texas, favors exceptions to strict bans
For decades, public opinion – even in Texas – has been fairly consistent about allowing some exceptions to laws restricting abortion. Most Americans believe there should be exceptions to strict abortion bans.
Carole Joffe, a professor and sociologist who studies abortion policy at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco, says that despite public opinion on the issue, most bills against Abortion that was given around the country in recent years is no longer available. ‘Excluding exceptions for rape or incest.
“What we have seen over the years is a significant escalation,” she said. “I think what Texas highlights is our disregard for the needs of women and girls, or people who can get pregnant even if they don’t identify as women.”
The history of these exception types is a bit complicated. Joffe notes that in the late 20th century, it was more common for states to include exceptions for rape and incest than now.
This trend of removing exceptions for rape and incest began about 10 years ago, she said, after the Tea Party gained power in Parliament and in many states. As more legislatures became more politically conservative, anti-abortion groups began to gain more influence in the legislative process.
The anti-abortion movement is squeezing state legislatures
Meanwhile, even as some state legislatures have stepped up restrictions on abortion, public opinion has remained fairly stable,” Joffe said, with the sentiment that abortion should be allowed. pregnancy in cases of rape and incest. She said the growing power in the state legislatures of the anti-abortion movement,” she said.
In 2019, a coalition of anti-abortion groups sent a letter to national Republican officials following the passage of controversial abortion laws in Alabama. In it, the groups asked GOP leaders to “reexamine decades-old arguments” regarding exceptions to rape and incest.
In Texas, the growing power of hardline conservatives in the state has helped the anti-abortionist successfully push for more restrictive laws.
John Seago, legislative director of Texas Right To Life – an influential anti-abortion group that promoted SB 8, said political changes in the Texas legislature helped enact strict abortion laws more becomes easier.
“Over the last ten years, in Texas, our Republican majority has been growing,” he said. “And right around 2011/2013, we actually got enough votes to pass strong legislation.”
And “strong” Seago means being uncompromising in things like allowing abortions when serious fetal abnormalities are discovered. Texas eliminated those exceptions a few years ago. And now that the new law in Texas doesn’t exempt rape and incest, Seago said, it’s more in line with the underlying philosophy that groups like him hold.
“We’re talking about innocent people’s lives – that it wasn’t their crime, it wasn’t their cruelty that fell victim to this woman,” he said. “And so why should they take the punishment?”
Pregnancy problems arising from sexual assault are not uncommon. One study estimated that nearly 3 million Women in the US became pregnant after a rape.
