Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Dear Mike Huckabee: On the Issue of Rape, STFU.


 So, Mr. Huckabee, you feel a need to come to the defense of Rep. Todd Akin, the scientific ignoramus who believes that women who are raped don't get pregnant, because “…If it's a legitimate rape the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down..”

I give you credit: you realize the stupidity of that statement, and so you’ve tried another avenue of defense: you claim that extraordinary people – like Ethel Waters – were conceived as a result of forcible rape.  And with that as ammunition, you go on your merry way with your ivory-tower, ideological approach towards women’s health.

Well, I'll agree with you on one thing.  Sometimes the child who is conceived as the result of a rape can be extraordinary.

My daughter, who I adopted at the age of six weeks, is indeed extraordinary.  And she was conceived as the result of rape. She is brilliant, possibly a mensa genius, and at the age of 18 is traveling the world tutoring English and speaking several foreign languages.  She can put most adults to shame on any intellectual topic.

But unlike you, Mr. Huckabee, I met her birth mother.  A woman proud and dignified at the same time; broken yet proactive; determined yet resigned.  As she placed her newborn child in our arms, my heart broke for the woman making this decision to give birth and place her child for adoption….while at the same time I was awestruck and joyful at the responsibility and opportunity she had placed in our arms.  Like you, Mr. Huckabee, we saw the immeasurable, boundless possibilities in that life.

But unlike you, we also saw the pain and the angst and the emotional turmoil of the woman who placed her with us.  Unlike you, I see her decision as precisely that: HER decision, one that weighed on her every day, and which was hers and hers alone.  

Unlike you, Mr. Huckabee, I see the other side of an equation that you refuse to acknowledge exists: the humanity, the dignity, the intensity of a woman making a decisions about the future.

She was a black woman.  A woman who had given birth in jail.  A woman who was the victim of generational crimes within her family, and of the federal government’s War on Drugs.

She was the kind of woman whose vote you have attempted to suppress with your support for voter id laws.

She is the kind of woman whose constitutional rights you have attempted to remove because of her conviction of a felony.

She is the kind of woman who you have tried to impoverish and marginalize by removing social service programs and nets and rehabilitation efforts.

She is the kind of woman whom the Republican Party has used as a scapegoat in discussing matters of welfare and taxes.

And she is the kind of woman whom you would surround with politician-constrained doctors to examine and direct the course of her life.

Please, Mr. Huckabee, spare me your feigned concern about the future of America, and the potential for children conceived in rape.

You know nothing – and care nothing – for the humanity involved in these situations.

I am grateful for my daughter, and the decision made by my daughter’s birth mother.  

But I also aware that the decisions were hers, and not yours. 

And it needs to remain that way.

2 comments:

susanthe said...

Beautifully done,Tully. Thank you.

Will said...

Bravo! In the wake of Akin's asinine comments, Presient Obama made a statement to the effect that Women's Health issues should not be legislated by a group of male politicians. Unfortunately, the composition of the House and Senate is considerably less than 50% female but at the very least, there should be a Women's Health Committee made up only of women to report out on any proposed Women's Health legislation.