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.
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