'What are we putting survivors through when we ask them to be the 'acceptable' face of abortion, when we politicize their most painful traumas to advocate for basic health-care access?'
Photo: Matthew Busch/Bloomberg via Getty Images On July 1, the Indianapolis Star published a story about out-of-state abortion patients coming to Indiana for care. Opening the piece was a grim anecdote about a 10-year-old rape survivor who, at six weeks and three days pregnant, was just over the limit to get a legal abortion in her home state of Ohio.
It’s understandable why so many of us latch on to these stories: The deaths, the prison sentences, the children forced to carry a pregnancy to term all vividly demonstrate the ultimate end point of a world where reproductive autonomy is conditional. And yet when we make these stories the centerpieces of our abortion rhetoric, we are asking the most vulnerable, the most traumatized among us, to shoulder an even greater burden by becoming the public face of abortion rights.
It’s also worth noting that, even as many see rape and incest exemptions as some kind of balm that soothes the cruelty of an abortion ban, these “exemptions” provide little beyond a façade of compassion. As this week has made clear, few rape survivors are ever deemed truly worthy of an abortion. Even a child — who by legal definition can only be raped — is not a perfect enough victim for the anti-abortion camp.
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