I am a rape baby. Hear me out.
By: Betty Newel
Tags: Abortion, Rape Culture, Pro Choice, Baby, Life

I am a rape baby. Hear me out.

Im not a writer, nor am I one to spread my personal life around on the internet, or in general, actually. In fact, I created a Medium account this morning just to post this.

There has been a controversial debate going on the last few days since the new Texas abortion law was signed; I’m here to provide a unique prospective to those who are willing to listen.

28 years ago, a woman was raped. Soon after, she found out she was pregnant. She was a bartender, a single mother with one child already, and did not have the means to raise another. She had a choice to make. She could either get an abortion or give the baby up for adoption. She wore baggy clothes so no one would notice the bump start to emerge as she internally struggled to make a decision.

She wasn’t a bible thumper, but she occasionally made it to church when she wasn’t working Sunday brunch. She heard about a Catholic Social Service in the area that assisted with people in her situation. She went, and that’s when she decided she would provide a better life for the baby, rather than ending it’s life.

She went through portfolio after portfolio of families who were looking to adopt a newborn baby. No one was just quite right. And then the social worker pulled out a portfolio that had just been submitted. The woman had red hair, just like hers. The couple had been married for 5 years and have tried over and over to get pregnant but couldn’t. They went through many miscarriages and just couldn’t do it anymore so they chose to adopt. The husband was a car salesman making over $100k a year and the wife worked at the local credit union, but planned to be a stay at home mom if they were to have a baby.

This was the family she chose to give her baby to.

And that baby was me.

I see so many people using the argument, “what if someone gets pregnant from rape?”

I am here to provide a voice for the voiceless.

I am here to speak on behalf of the other people out there who were also conceived by rape but are too afraid to speak up.

I am a product of rape and if it wasn’t for the choice my birth mother made, I would never have existed.

I would never have made any memories. I never would have been a piece of my family’s puzzle. My husband would be married to someone else. Someone else would have my job. I wouldn’t be alive right now. I never would have existed.

The past few days have triggered something in me that I never talk about although it has shaped me in ways I didn’t realize until now.

I’m not a hardcore Pro-Lifer. I have actually been pro-choice throughout my adult life. But this debate has led me to reflect on my own experience, and so far, I have not found another person in the same circumstance speak out.

The point I am trying to make is, before you are so quick to say babies conceived from rape should be aborted, think about the life that you are taking away. Think about all the things that baby could be. That baby could grow up and develop a cure for an incurable disease. I’m being facetious, but it could be true. Think about the families who struggle to conceive, who would provide a wonderful life to these babies that some of you are so quick to disregard and treat like a bug that you selfishly kill because you just don’t want it around.

I have dragged this post on long enough, and if you are still reading, I remind you that I am not a writer, just an average human trying to speak up.

If you think I’m one in a million, I can point you to my also adopted brother, who was not conceived from rape, but his birth parents were drug addicts and he was born with a meth addiction. Even they chose to give their baby a better life rather than kill it.

I end with this. “Thou shalt not kill” does not mean, “Thou shalt not kill unless the life is conceived through rape or the life is inconvenient”.

It simply means, “Thou shalt not kill”. Period.