Ms. Magazine: Doesn’t Matter How 14-yo Got Pregnant, Get Her an Abortion

by Jill Stanek | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 2/5/13 11:45 AM

Ms. Magazine tweeted this on January 28…
… linking to this post on its blog:

She was 14 years old and going into the 9th grade. From the moment she learned she was pregnant, she contemplated what to do. Not comprehending how to even deliver a baby (let alone how to take care of a child for the rest of her life) prompted grave fears about her future.
Being the eldest of an immigrant family of seven, she learned early to take on the role of her family’s translator and primary caretaker. She could not fathom how she would tell them about her pregnancy. She pondered the level of disappointment her family might feel and the distress she would put on them with the possibility of a baby.
Not knowing the options available to her, she withheld her pregnancy from her family and friends. She had never felt so alone, confused and afraid. The days passed and her belly grew. Knowing what she had to do, she finally found the courage and sought help from her grandmother and aunt. At 21 weeks, my cousin found the proper care and support to have an abortion.

Author Daisy Khamphakdy went on to lament increasing barriers to abortion, especially for those who are “young, low-income women of color.”
Never once did Khamphakdy show concern for how her cousin got pregnant. Yet, according to Planned Parenthood, her cousin was likely raped by an adult man. From a December 2010 PP Fact Sheet:

• Teenage girls with older partners are more likely to become pregnant than those with partners closer in age

From an October 2012 PP Fact Sheet:

• Teenagers who have been raped or abused also experience higher rates of pregnancy – 4.5 out of 10 pregnant adolescents likely have a history of abuse. Teen girls with a history of abuse are more than twice as likely to become pregnant as peers who do not experience abuse.
• For women younger than 18, the pregnancy rate among those with a partner who is six or more years older is 3.7 times as high as the rate among those whose partner is no more than two years older. Adolescent women with older partners also use contraception less frequently…

And from this PP Fact Sheet from the early 2000s, now deleted online but which I saved a screenshot of:

• Teenagers who have been raped or abused also experience higher rates of pregnancy – in a sample of 500 teen mothers, two-thirds had histories of sexual and physical abuse, primarily by adult men averaging age 27.

What if the writer’s cousin had indeed been raped? Was it a family member? Did the grandmother and aunt have an ulterior motive to help the girl get a late-term abortion so as to kill the evidence? Did they send the girl back to her abuser?

Liberal feminists don’t care. To care would be to admit abortion is sometimes used to exploit girls and hide crimes. To care would be to support legislation, rather than twist it and oppose it, to protect girls and women from coerced abortions by their rapists.
Because nothing can interfere with abortions, even if it coerced by child rapists.
LifeNews.com Note: Jill Stanek fought to stop “live birth abortions” after witnessing one as an RN at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois. That led to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act legislation, signed by President Bush, that would ensure that proper medical care be given to unborn children who survive botched abortion attempts.