Raskin brings up a truly horrifying scenario

[wnylib]

33. How do you know what "most women and girls"

will want to do if forced to give birth? Have you ever conceived a child from rape? Had a miscarriage? Been "accused" of using birth control when you didn't get pregnant soon enough after marriage? Had to go out of town for a D & C after a miscarriage because a local religious hospital would not allow it?

You say that you are knowledgeable on the "Baby Scoop Era." Is that knowledge from books, films, songs, and websites? You demonstrated an inability to comprehend the emotional state of a young person forced to bear and give up the child fathered by a rapist when you said that you suspected my relative was "deeply wounded" by the separation from her child no matter how it was conceived. Really? Do you think that being raped had nothing to do with how she felt? Do you think that she did not have the rape burned into her every second of the 9 months she carried that child? Do you think that she really wanted to raise that child herself as a permanent reminder of the trauma that created it?

I can tell you how she felt because she confided in me. First, she did not feel prepared to raise any child. Second, she could not bear the thought of looking at a child that carried half of its genes from its rapist father. She feared that it would physically resemble him and haunt her for the child's lifetime. She feared that she would treat the child badly, maybe even abuse it because of the circumstances of its conception. So she decided that it was best for the child's sake to have someone else adopt and raise it.

Being separated from the child after its birth was the least of her worries. The rape itself troubled her the most. It was so traumatic and brutal that she blocked out parts of it, only to have flashbacks later. During her pregnancy the focus was so much on the fetal development that she did not heal psychologically from the rape itself.

When the flashbacks came, and she could not c0ntrol or stop them, she chose death as her escape.

Tell me again how knowledgeable you are about the Scoop Baby Era.

Remember Madonna's song, "Papa Don't Preach"? There was a period of backlash against abortion when young women and teens were encouraged to have their babies and keep them as a statement about motherhood vs. abortion. Some young teens deliberately got pregnant. Groups in schools made pacts with each other to do it.

When abortion (and then contraception) becomes criminal, in the culture of Evangelicals forcing their views, pregnancies among unmarried girls and women will again be treated as shameful. They will be told, as they were in the pre Roe period, that they are not fit to raise a child and should give it up. Under such social pressure many will feel pushed to do it.