Actress Ashley Judd spoke during the Democratic National Convention this week about protecting the rights of sexual assault survivors like herself. Unfortunately, Judd also gave a passionate plea for legalized abortion on demand.
The actress spoke during an event hosted by NARAL, a radical pro-abortion group that supports abortion, not just in the rare cases, but for any reason up until birth. Earlier in the week, NARAL president Ilyse Hogue proudly bragged about her abortion at the DNC as the crowd cheered.
New York Magazine reports Judd told the NARAL “Men for Choice” crowd about how she became pregnant after she was raped. She said she made the “excruciating decision” to have an abortion, and now she is glad she did.
“If abortion had not been safe and legal at that time, I would have been forced to carry to term and deliver a child that was conceived in rape,” Judd said.
The report continues:
“We are a great country, and rapists have paternity rights in 22 states, including the state in which I was raped and the state which my rapist is from,” Judd went on. In many of those states, parental rights can’t be terminated unless the attacker is convicted of sexual assault, which as we’ve seen lately is not always easy to achieve, even in the cases when women report their rapes, which in the majority of cases they do not.
It’s protecting her right to decide what to do with her body, Judd says of why she’s with Hillary Clinton, because she can’t imagine a world in which the law would have required her to make a different choice than she did. “I am very grateful to NARAL and Men for Choice for allowing me the dignity to make that excruciating decision for myself.
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Sexual assault is horrible, and survivors like Judd deserve the best care and support that society can provide. But, as is the case with Judd, sometimes rape results in the creation of a second victim – a child. That child, who did nothing wrong, also deserves care and support, not death.
Many pro-lifers do agree with Judd on one thing: It should be easier to terminate rapists’ parental rights. Women can be driven to abortion by the fear that having their child will force them to maintain contact with their abuser.
Analyn Megison, a board member of of Hope After Rape Conception, had to fight her rapist for custody of her daughter.
“My custody case in Florida against my rapist started in 2010 and went on for a little over two years. Though I had a restraining order and had pursued prosecution, he was not convicted of rape,” Megison said. “At the time he sued for custody, I did not know how many states had no or limited legal protection at that time from a rapist biological father when the child was conceived from his attack. Those states which had laws required a rape conviction.”
To protect women from this trauma, a number of states have introduced legislation to make it easier to terminate the parental rights of a rapist. New Mexico is one.
In 2015, pro-life advocates also succeeded in advocating for a new federal law, the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act, to protect women in these situations. Rebecca Kiessling, who has been working to protect mothers across the country who decide against having an abortion after they were victimized, has helped pushed the legislation on a state level.
Kiessling told LifeNews in 2015 that the new law “provides an incentive to states to pass legislation providing for a means to terminate the parental rights of rapists, using the ‘clear and convincing evidence’ standard from the U.S Supreme Court case of Santosky v Kramer.”
Kiessling is urging pro-life advocates to get involved in the battle to protect mothers from rapists who seek custody of their children after the rape and abortion rejection.
“We encourage every pro-life organization to get behind this legislation, as Right to Life of Michigan is currently championing this bill. Not only is it pro-life in effect — because pregnant rape victims will be more likely to choose life if they know they’ll be protected from the rapist, but you’ll be able to demonstrate that you really care about these women and their children, and you’ll also have the advantage of seeing rape survivor mothers testifying before the legislature,” she explained.
