A Massachusetts woman who chose life for her child after being raped is fighting against her convicted abuser for sole custody of the child.
The Boston Herald reports the woman, who is unnamed in the report, filed an appeal last week to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court after a lower court decision allowed the convicted rapist to seek parental rights of the child.
The woman argues that it is painful to be “forced” to face her attacker in family court, and that convicted rapists should not have parental rights to child “born as a result of their criminal actions,” according to the report.
Here’s more about the case:
Her attorney, Wendy Murphy, also argues that it “discriminates against religious victims who are not free to choose abortion,” such as her client, who chose to keep the baby based on her Christian beliefs.
“My client is being ordered by the government, by a court order, to participate in family court … and she didn’t commit a crime,” Murphy said. “That means going to court whenever he feels like filing something. This is all incredibly imposing on her freedom and her liberty.”
Murphy appealed the appellate court decision to the SJC, which declined to review it in late January, according to the suit. The suit also names Attorney General Maura Healey’s office, which represented the Supreme Court in past filings in the case.
In an emailed response, Jennifer Donahue, a spokeswoman for the SJC, did not address the basis of the suit, but said the high court’s decision not to review the case “is not necessarily a reflection of its views on the merits of the case or an endorsement of the Appeals Court’s decision.”
For many years, pro-life attorney Rebecca Kiessling has urged 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. Her organization, Save The 1, helps women victimized by rape to choose life for their children.
In 2015, she applauded a new federal law, the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act, which protects women who are victims of rape and decide to keep their baby. Kiessling told LifeNews at the time 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.”
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Kiessling said many women in her organization know first-hand what it means to have to battle an abuser for custody of children.
“Several members of Save The 1 who were conceived in rape suffered molestation by their rapist fathers because they were not protected by law …” Kiessling said in 2015. “Other women from our organization … were repeatedly raped as their rapist used contact with the child to continue raping her.”
In 2016, Michigan passed a new law to help prevent a rapist from gaining custody of a child conceived in the act of violence. Right to Life of Michigan supported the measure.
“A child deserves love and protection, not to be used as a bargaining chip for rapists to threaten their mothers and escape prosecution,” RTLM President Barbara Listing said in 2016.
Few studies have been done on women who become pregnant by rape and their choices about giving birth or having an abortion. However, the limited research on the issue indicates more than 70 percent of women do choose life for their unborn babies, despite the violence of their baby’s conception.
LifeNews Note: File photo.
