Child rape survivors face extraordinary barriers in states with abortion bans
Since fall of Roe, 14 states have passed near-total abortion bans – most with no exceptions for rape or incest survivors
As children in Texas, A and her sister were raped 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 having sex with them when he found out the sisters were treated at a clinic for sexually 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 raped 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 rape or incest. A study published earlier this year estimated that 65,000 rape-related pregnancies probably occurred in states with abortion bans since Roe fell.
