Hollywood actress Ashley Judd has been known for her vocal support of abortion, but her more recent rhetoric is even more troubling to me because I was conceived in rape and also became pregnant with my now 2-year-old when I was gang-raped,.
At the 2019 Women in the World Summit in New York, Judd told moderator Katie Couric she had an abortion after becoming pregnant from rape, and went on to say, “I’m very thankful I was able to access safe and legal abortion. Because the rapist, who is a Kentuckian, as am I, and I reside in Tennessee, has paternity rights in Kentucky and Tennessee, I would’ve had to co-parent with my rapist.”
As a rape survivor myself, I’m terribly sorry that Ashley was raped and also that she endured the trauma of abortion, but if I’m being honest, my next thought was wondering why as a celebrity activist, she had a complete lack of action on behalf of other women in our shared state of Tennessee, or the neighboring state of Kentucky.
If she can use her money and fame to work to get candidates elected in our state, why doesn’t she use her wealth and celebrity to fix this huge problem she has known about for decades? Sorry, but you don’t get to use the current problems in state law to gain sympathy for your abortion when you’ve done nothing to fix the issue, or lobby for a new law in any way. I know for a fact she hasn’t because this instantly became a passion of mine when I became pregnant from rape.
According to the Rape Abuse Incest National Network (RAINN), 32,101 women become pregnant from rape each year in the U.S… If we do the math and look at Tennessee’s percentage of these cases based on population, it’s safe to assume around 640 women find ourselves in this situation every year in Tennessee alone.
The only major study ever done showed that 75-85% of women pregnant from rape do not abort our babies. In a single year, that adds up to a minimum of 480 women in our state giving birth to babies conceived in rape.
As a woman who lives with the daily fear of being served custody papers – the fear of ultimately having one of my rapists be allowed to see or even spend time alone with my toddler – I have to wonder where Ashley Judd has been all these years since her abortion.
If that incredibly real fear of sharing custody with her rapist was the lone reason for her abortion in the summer of 1984, as she described to Katie Couric and as she has publicly declared on several other occasions, why hasn’t she done something to help fix this issue since then? Why didn’t she care to help future rape survivors like me?
I feel for Ashley Judd, truly I do. No one should have to endure the physical and emotional trauma of rape. And it breaks my heart to know that she made a choice, in grief, to abort her baby. But now she wants others to have pity on her because the law didn’t protect her from the rapist potentially having parental rights. Ashley, if you knew this was a problem in 1984, why have you been so selfish to never look back and help others like me who are still dealing with this in 2020? Why does your brand of feminism only serve women who abort?
But maybe it’d piss me off less if Ashley wasn’t obviously using this situation – one she has done nothing to help with – to push for the deaths of millions of other children.
In the 35 years since her rape, while campaigning for countless Democratic politicians, she couldn’t find any time or money to help create a pathway for women in our situation to terminate the parental rights of our rapists? In 3.5 decades, she couldn’t use a little of her clout to make this suck less for anyone else? Really?
It’s hard to believe that she cares about any rape survivor other than herself when she hasn’t done anything to correct what she expressly identified as a problem so awful that it caused her to abort her own child.
And yet, when our model legislation to terminate the parental rights of rapists without requiring a rape conviction was filed last year in Kentucky, Ashley Judd was nowhere to be found. The legislation was publicized, but it didn’t promote abortion, so she was absent. She wasn’t speaking out and telling legislators about her personal story then. She didn’t campaign publicly for the bill like she has done for so many pro-abortion candidates. No, she couldn’t be bothered to show up and ask the folks she helped get elected to support such legislation.
She chose to stay home and ignore that this groundbreaking legal protection is even possible, just as she has done for the last 35 years.
My “choices” have been different altogether, perhaps because I first chose joy, rather than additional violence within my body. Having my baby who was conceived in rape gave me a reason to continue living, and being his mom has been my greatest gift. He has shown me that the best thing I can offer others is service.
Unlike Ashley Judd, I wasn’t satisfied with doing nothing, and I knew our state’s law which currently requires a rape conviction to terminate a rapist’s parental rights (like so many other states) needed to be changed. According to RAINN, rape convictions are secured in less than 1.5 percent of all cases. My rapists were never arrested or convicted, so my child and I are left without legal protection. I want better for my family and the thousands of families in Tennessee who are dealing with this issue.
I’m happy to report that the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act bill will be filed this month in Tennessee! If passed, the legislation will use the clear and convincing evidence standard – just like all other termination of parental rights cases. Our law would no longer discriminatorily hold rape victims to a higher burden of proof than anyone else.
The bill is being sponsored by Tennessee Senator Sara Kyle, a Democrat. I’ve spoken with a few pro-life Republican senators, and I expect to see them supporting this legislation too, because protecting rape victims and our children is a bipartisan issue.
While we work to make Tennessee safer for families like ours, friends of mine are still working tirelessly to make the same update to Kentucky’s law.
Although it is neither a Democratic nor Republican issue, I doubt any of us will see Ashley Judd coming alongside us to solve this problem, but I’m sure she will continue to use it to justify her own sin and her commitment to the abortion industry.
If you are a rape survivor in Tennessee or in Kentucky, whether Republican or Democrat, please join me in speaking out to get this legislation passed. Don’t be an apathetic Ashley and let another 35 years go by when we can make a difference today.
Bio:
Paula K. Peyton is a writer and pro-life speaker for Save the 1, as well as a sidewalk advocate. She was conceived in rape and is a mom of one — her son, who was also conceived in rape. She wants to make both abortion and stigmatizing people conceived in rape unthinkable.
