[acb-hsp] I Was Raped, and It Got Me Pregnnt

[Kenneth Semien, Sr.]

Peter,
This message is very enlightening.  I have been a proponent of personal
choice due to the fact that we never know how traumatic a rape can be.  I
refuse to judge a situation when I have no clue about what really occurred
and how an individual was affected by the experience.
Kind Regards,
Kenneth Semien, Sr.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "peter altschul" <paltschul at centurytel.net>
To: "Acbhsp" <acb-hsp at acb.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2012 5:54 PM
Subject: [acb-hsp] I Was Raped, and It Got Me Pregnnt


> I Was Raped, And It Got Me Pregnant -- What Akin and Other
> Extremists Will Never Understand
>   August 22, 2012
>   At 19 years old, I became an unwilling expert on the topic of
> rape.  I learned about rape's savagery and its psychological
> trauma.
>   Lately, we've been hearing from men who don't know much about
> the subject at all.  On Monday, Senate candidate Rep.  Todd Akin,
> R-Mo., created a stir when he said, "If it's a legitimate rape,
> the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
> But his casual, off-the-cuff ignorance is just the latest in a
> long line of insults.  In March, Kansas Rep.  Pete DeGraf said,
> "Women should plan ahead for rape the way he keeps a spare tire."
> A few weeks after that Indiana state Rep.  Eric Turner said,
> "Some women might fake being raped in order to get free
> abortions." I can't stand by and watch these men who have no
> personal experience with sexual assault pretend to know so much
> about it.
>   I do know about rape.  I received an education of the highest
> degree, and now it's my turn to teach.
>   My story begins during an overnight at my best friend's camp on
> a lake in Central New York.  I rode to the camp with my best
> friend and her husband, who was in the Navy and home on leave.
>   When we got there, she told me I could have the best bedroom
> upstairs since everyone else was sleeping on the first floor.
> Feeling special, I unpacked my belongings in the secluded little
> room at the end of the hall.  That night, I was the first to go
> to bed.
>   Sound asleep, I awoke in the middle of the night to the force
> of a cold, calloused hand across my mouth.  It was my best
> friend's husband.  He was a big guy, and I was frozen with fear
> and intimidation; I could not move a muscle.
>   Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.  My eyes were
> screaming at him: Why are you doing this to me? But my voice was
> silent.  His hand clamped over my mouth had stopped the flow of
> words.  I wondered what I had done to make this happen, to make
> my best friendbs husband want to hurt me?
>   Then I realized he wasn't alone.  I saw the second face in the
> darkness -- another friend I had known all my life was now on top
> of me.  The pain began shooting through my body as he tore off my
> underwear.  It felt like everything stopped in that moment,
> mentally and physically.  My breathing stopped.  The blood in my
> veins stopped flowing.  I realize now that this was just the
> beginning of what it is like to be raped.
>   My old life was gone, over.  Now, I walked into darkness
> shackled to a completely different existence, one I could never
> have imagined.
>   After that night, my mind turned against me.  Poisonous
> thoughts seeped into every crevice and I had nightmares of
> faceless strangers chasing me every night in my dreams.  I did
> not trust anyone.  I blamed myself.  I believed that I would
> never be able to cleanse the filth off my body.  I never pressed
> charges, because at 19 years old (and this was 30 years ago), I
> wasn't even sure if this was legally a crime, since I knew the
> men who raped me.
>   But just when I thought the horror couldn't escalate any
> further, things got worse: My period never came.  At first, I
> assumed it was due to the stress and anxiety, so I waited.  I
> waited and waited, and fear swarmed in my mind.
>   Eight weeks after I was raped, Planned Parenthood gave me the
> confirmation: I was pregnant.  The woman who worked there tried
> to tell me about my options, but I ran.  I threw up in the
> parking lot.  I drove around for hours praying this was all a
> dream.
>   Any chance to remotely reclaim who I was disappeared in that
> moment.  My whole worldview was challenged.  I'm a Catholic, and
> I didn't understand: How could this happen to me?
>   I was innocent.  I did nothing wrong.  But I was overwhelmed by
> fear, guilt and shame.
>   Just when I thought I might be able to push the ugliness of
> this savage act out of my mind, I realized I would never be able
> to escape.  It would not let me go.
>   I was mentally, emotionally and spiritually broken, and the
> thought of what had resulted from this vile act took my
> self-hatred into another dimension.  I wanted no memory of that
> night, would do anything possible to erase it in the hope that it
> would somehow ease the sick, disgusting feeling I got every time
> I looked in the mirror.  I realized that in order to maintain
> what little sanity I had left, I had to terminate the pregnancy.
>   Six months after the rape, I dropped out of college and
> developed an eating disorder.  I collapsed into alcohol abuse and
> had abusive relationships.
>   It took me 12 years of trying to kill myself before I could
> actually verbalize to a trusted counselor what happened to me.  I
> spent the next eight years trying to reverse the damage that was
> done.  Twenty years of serving time for a crime I didn't commit.
>   Rep.  Akin and those who argue about "legitimate" rape, you
> have no idea what you are talking about.  You don't know what it
> is like to have your sacredness ripped away, ferociously taken
> without your permission.  A pregnancy resulting from rape is a
> reminder of violence, hatred and brutality forced upon your body.
> And to tell a woman who has gone through the horror of being
> raped -- which can and does, in fact, result in pregnancy -- that
> she again does not have the power or control to decide what
> happens to her body afterward is an outrage of epic proportions.
>   I have learned to speak up about my experience, to never again
> be silenced.  But unfortunately, I can't stop men who are not
> experts from spouting off on things they don't know.  I wish they
> would.  I'm tired of people on news show and running for
> political office offering their opinions on rape and what a woman
> should do about it.
>   The only individual who should be able to make this choice is
> the woman who was raped.  End of story.
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