The following story and the statistics come from RH Reality Check. The site provides news, analysis and commentary on reproductive and sexual health and justice. I urge you to read it.
My name is Dawn Hill. Though I am old now, there was a time when I was young and carefree as you perhaps are now or can remember being in your childhood. Childhood should be a happy and carefree time for all our children, but my mother found her new husband, my stepfather, much more important. He forever took the joy away from my life when I was just 11 years old: He began molesting me and continued until he began raping me when I was 13.
Mr. Mourdock last night said: “I came to realize life is that gift from God, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape. It is something that God intended to happen.”
I became pregnant, contrary to the "scientific theories" of many modern Republicans. Not only was the experience loathsome and painful, it was also impossible for me to deal with or talk about because of the times: in the fifties, abortion was illegal. Illegal in the same way the Republican Party platform states it wants to make abortion now by constitutional amendment and just as Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has suggested casually he would “be delighted” to return to.
Please, take a moment to travel back to the fifties with me.
My mother took me to Mexico, where anyone could get an abortion for a price. I have blocked out many memories associated with this entire experience, but I remember the pain. Illegal abortions are not the simple safe vacuum procedure used today by legal abortion providers. Oh, no: They were a “dilatation and curettage.”
This means that my cervix was mechanically opened by insertion of larger and larger metal “dilators” until it was opened enough to get a sort of sharpened spoon inside my 13-year-old uterus, while strangers looked at my exposed parts that were theretofore called “private.”
It was cold and dirty in the room, and then the true torture started. They shoved this curette into me and scraped away the entire lining of my uterus with the sharp side. I screamed the entire time even though no one had seen so much as a tear out of me before this moment because I had developed a stony stoicism to protect my mind from the molestation.
This pain was, however, like nothing I’ve ever felt before or since. Can you imagine what happened to those women and girls who couldn’t even get this barbaric abortion? They stuck wire hangers into themselves and bled to death or suffered other horrible complications. Then, too, I also got a terrible infection from the filthy conditions.
I can tell you, though, that I would have gotten a hundred illegal abortions before carrying that monster’s offspring and going through labor, even to give the child away. That would have been the unkindest cut of all.
For women and girls, safe legal abortions are essential. While many will choose a different path than I with their pregnancies, having that choice is essential. Any encroachment on that right is an encroachment on the life, liberty, and safety of the women and girls of America.
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/...
All bolding is mine.
Low estimate of the number of women, according to the Department of Justice, raped every year: 300,000
High estimate of the number of women raped, according to the CDC: 1.3 million
Percentage of rapes not reported: 54%
A woman’s chance of being raped in the US: 1 in 5
Chances that a raped woman conceives compared to one engaging in consensual sex: at least 2 times as likely
Chances that a woman’s body “shuts that whole thing down”: 0 in 3.2 billion
Rank of US in the world for rape: 13th
A woman’s chance of being raped in college: 1 in 4/5
Percentage of rape that meets "forcible" definition: 14%
Percentage sexual assault and rape victims under the age of 12: 15%
Percentage of men who have been raped: 3%
Percentage of girls in grades 9-12 who have been sexually abused: 12%
Percentage of boy in grades 9-12 who have been sexually abused: 5%
Percentage of rapes by strangers: 7%
Percentage of rapists who are never incarcerated: 97%
Percentage of rapes that college students think are false claims: 50%
Percentage of rapes that studies find are false claims: 2-8%
Number of rapes reported in the military last year: 16,500
Pentagon's estimated percentage of military assuaults not reported: 80-90%
Percentage of military rape victims who were gang raped: 14%
Percentage of military rape victims raped more than once: 20%
Percentage of military rape victims that are men: 8-37%
Percentage of military victims who get a "involuntarily" discharged: 90%
Percentage of charge and accused who are discharged with honor: 80%
Chances an incarcerated person is raped in the US: 1 in 10
Number of men raped that could be counted as legally raped before the FBI changed its definition in December of 2011: 0
The number of women impregnanted each year in the US as a result of rape: 32,000
Number of states in which rapists can sue for custody and visitation: 31
Number of rapes noted in commonly used World War II statistics: 0
Number of rapes of WWII concentration camp inmates: Untallied millions
Number of rapes of German women by Russian soldiers at the end of WWII: between 1m and 2m
Number of women raped in 1990s Bosnian conflict: 60,000+
Number of women raped per hour in Congo during war: 48
Percentage of women in the Congo raped: 12%
Likelihood of post traumatic stress disorder among rape victims: 6 times the average
Likelihood of alcohol and drug abuse: 13 and 26 times more likely respectively
Chances that a woman in the US is raped versus gets breast cancer: 2 to 1
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/...