Unpublished, but not Unsent v3

Photo of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford giving testimony

Dear Editor,

In the days of my youth the phrase we used for what Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified to experiencing at the hands of Brett Kavanaugh was “date rape.” Most of the girls I knew who suffered date rape did so as members of a church youth group and in fact, the date rapists were usually boys in the same church youth group. Date rape meant three things: 1) you knew the assailant, but not well; 2) you blamed yourself for what happened; and 3) you didn’t mention it. Except word always got out, because generally the girl who’d been date raped and then had to keep silent about it would be traumatized just enough to make a half-hearted suicide attempt before recovering more fully (if that’s possible).

During Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing in 2018, throughout Dr. Ford’s testimony, many American women recognized that with Kavanaugh’s inevitable appointment, the same type of man capable of committing date-rape with which so many women are familiar - that can result in a forced pregnancy - would be the very same man responsible for criminalizing abortion, thus removing choice on both ends of the conception spectrum. It was simply too much to bear. It still is.

Dr. Willie Parker notes: “If a woman is not in control of her fertility, she is not in control of her life.” Date-rape is (sadly) common enough, even still, and in plenty of instances a woman becomes pregnant without choosing to do so. That has been the case since time immemorial; abortion access gave her back some control. With Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment, you can bet we’re one step closer to losing it, at the federal level, for good.