Female lawmakers open up about rapes
COLUMBUS: For more than two decades, Nancy Mace did not speak publicly about her rape. In April, she chose to break her silence before her colleagues in South Carolina’s legislature.
A bill was being debated that would ban all abortions after a foetal heartbeat is detected; Mace, a Republican lawmaker, wanted to add an exception for rape and incest. However, her colleagues in the House dismissed her amendment saying some women invent rapes to justify seeking an abortion.
“For some of us who have been raped, it can take 25 years to get up the courage and talk about being a victim of rape,” Mace said.
As one Republican legislature after another has pressed ahead with restrictive abortion bills in recent months, they have been confronted with raw and emotional testimony about the consequences of such laws.
Female lawmakers and other women have stepped forward to tell searing, personal stories - in some cases for the first time.Yet, personal horror stories have done little to slow passage of bills in Georgia or Alabama.
In Ohio, a foetal heartbeat bill passed even after three lawmakers spoke out on the floor about their rapes - among them state Rep Lisa Sobecki, who argued for a rape exemption by recounting her own assault and subsequent abortion. “It’s not just our stories,”Sobecki said. “It’s giving voice to the voiceless.”
One such woman is Gretchen Whitmer. In 2013, she was minority leader in the Michigan state Senate when she spoke against a Republican-backed effort to require separate health insurance to cover abortion. A visibly upset Whitmer told her colleagues that she had been raped more than 20 years earlier. She thanked God that she had not become pregnant by her attacker.
Earlier this week, Michigan’s Republican-led legislature passed two bills to restrict abortions and sent them to the governor.That governor is now Whitmer. She said she will veto both of them.