08/11/2024
“As children in Texas, A and her sister were r***d multiple times by their stepfather and his friends before she found she was pregnant earlier this year.
“We both had STDs because none of them used condoms,” A said. Their stepfather stopped s*xually abusing them when he found out the sisters were treated at a clinic for s*xually transmitted diseases. One of his friends did not.
The sisters fled to a domestic violence shelter when A found out she was pregnant, and managed from there to find abortion pills through a network of underground activists. “If I couldn’t have an abortion, I would have killed myself,” A said. “The man who r***d me was a pig, and I did not want to have his baby inside of me.”
Since Roe v Wade was overturned by the US supreme court in 2022, 14 states have passed near-total abortion bans. Ten of those states, including Texas, have no exceptions for survivors of r**e or in**st. A study published earlier this year estimated that 65,000 r**e-related pregnancies probably occurred in states with abortion bans since Roe fell….
Ledbetter said she had seen a 10-year old become pregnant after her mother’s boyfriend s*xually assaulted her, with the mother’s knowledge. “Her little body was unable to carry the pregnancy, and she started to have a uterine rupture before the fetus was at a viable gestation.” The complications of preterm labor and uterine rupture necessitated a C-section to save the child’s life; the fetus did not survive. “An abortion would have saved this 10-year-old child great suffering and trauma for the rest of her life,” Ledbetter said.”
Since fall of Roe, 14 states have passed near-total abortion bans – most with no exceptions for r**e or in**st survivors