Forced motherhood is a violation of a woman’s consent, her body, her psychology and medical safety, and her future.
TRIGGER WARNING: Discussion of sexual assault.
The looming specter of the death of Roe v. Wade has me feeling enraged. And sad. And completely outraged. Not only will our collective children and grandchildren have less constitutional rights than their parents and grandparents, for the first time in half a century, but they will also be subjected to absolute state control over their own bodies and destiny.
I want to first explain that I am a man (he/him), and I need to apologize if I am misreading or misrepresenting the intensity and reality women face with the abolishment of abortion rights. But this is how I see things.
Second, and this is something I’ve had a hard time verbalizing because I fear trivializing the subject, but I feel that government control over reproductive decisions feels awfully familiar. It feels a lot like rape.
I spent 16 years as a campus law enforcement officer, with a certification in sexual assault investigation. Over my career I had investigated and advocated for victims through roughly 20 sexual assault reports. These incidents were all different. Everything from date rape to unwanted criminal sexual contact, to forcible sexual assault. And the common denominator for all of these investigations boiled down to one glaring issue: NO CONSENT.
How can we tell women (and men) that they can’t be touched without their consent, yet allow the government to force a woman to gestate an unwanted zygote-to-child for 9+ months. To undergo the pain, humiliation, and medical risk of unwanted childbirth — the risk of death itself. To then financially tether a woman to an unwanted child, and to raise an unwanted child no matter their status in life, financial health, or life and career aspirations. All without CONSENT.
This sounds like a gross analogy when I say it out loud, but subjecting a human being to forced birth and motherhood feels a lot like rape. Rape of her body, rape of her life, rape of her dreams and possible happiness. There is ZERO consent here. How is this any different?! I saw a sign someone made that said, “Forced motherhood is female enslavement.” I agree with that. But it is also rape. I feel that it is literally THAT much of a bodily and life violation on a woman.
I often see the outrage boiled down in the mainstream media to that of, “Women who have been raped will be forced to have a rapist’s child,” and, “will the government now provide funding to women who were forced to carry a pregnancy to term?” These are awful things in and of themselves, but it also misses the point. The act of removing consent over a woman’s reproductive choice in and of itself is the rape. A rape where the perpetrator is Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch. Where these so-called “Justices” (where is the Justice in this?!) hold her down, to allow state religious extremists to violate her body, her life, and her future.
Consent is everything. The abolishment of Roe v. Wade feels familiar indeed.
