Before we became estranged, one of my in laws called my relative whom I’ll call Sarah a murderer.
No pause.
No doubt.
Just certainty.
Sarah was 13.
She became pregnant a year after my father started sexually abusing her.
And somehow—
that wasn’t the part people focused on.
They focused on the abortion.
I keep coming back to one question:
What kind of moral framework looks at a child in that situation and still chooses condemnation?
People want to debate this.
They want to talk about:
definitions
timelines
philosophy
But this isn’t theoretical.
This is a 13-year-old girl
being told what she must do next
in a body that had already been through too much.
There’s a belief that says:
The pregnancy must continue. No exceptions.
Even here.
And I’m supposed to call that protection?
Because when I look at it, I don’t see protection.
I see a child being told:
what happened to you doesn’t change what we expect from you.
And I see people who will never live that reality
standing outside of it
calling her a murderer for refusing it.
Here’s the part I can’t ignore.
The same moral certainty doesn’t always show up when harm happens inside institutions those same people who condemn abortion trust.
Investigations.
Reports.
Stories that surface years too late.
EVIDENCE.
And suddenly—
everything is more complicated.
So I have to ask:
Why is the outrage so clear in one direction—
and so complicated in another?
If this is about protecting children,
then that protection has to be consistent.
It has to include:
the child who was harmed
the child being asked to carry that forward
the systems that allowed it to happen
But what I keep seeing is something else:
A demand for an outcome
without responsibility for what follows.
I grew up in instability.
I know what it does to a person
to be brought into a world that isn’t safe and where you aren’t wanted.
My birth mom herself wanted to abort me, but dad wouldn’t let her because he wanted another daughter to sexually abuse.
When people ask me “aren’t you glad she didn’t get to kill you?”
My answer is: No.
I wish she would have been able to exercise her bodily autonomy and escape an abusive man. She later killed herself at 37 after he kidnapped me 7 years prior.
I wouldn’t be here typing this, but I also wouldn’t know or care about that.
So, when I hear policies that increase the likelihood of being born into abuse or neglect—
without the same urgency for care, safety, and support—
I don’t hear “pro-life.”
I hear:
“My personal morality matters more than anyone or anything else.”
I believe the person who lives the consequences
should be the one trusted to decide.
Sarah was not a murderer.
She was a child.
In an impossible situation.
Making a decision she could live through.
And if your moral framework cannot hold compassion for that—
then it is not a framework I trust
to make decisions about anyone else’s life.
And, if there was a murderer in this story, it was not a woman.
It was a man - a man I called dad.
This hurts something deep in my soul. As you illustrate perfectly, the “pro-life” stance is an attempt to take a moral high ground which in reality is anything but. It neglects the women’s needs above anything else. I don’t understand why the world works in such a way where it becomes the woman’s fault when such things happen to her, and then the result of rape is expected to be a “blessing.” I don’t get it. I really don’t.
Thank you for writing this. ❤️