What sexual assaults in Ukraine reveal about Arizona
Here in Arizona new laws are conceived, debated and approved in the sedate confines of the State Capitol. The real world is kept at a safe distance.
Because of this, our politicians sometimes seem not to know — or to care — about the toll a new law may have on the citizens required to follow it.
The process lacks context. There is sometimes no connection between the abstract and the real.
Like when the Republicans who control the Arizona Legislature voted not to include an exception for rape or incest victims in the latest bill to restrict abortion access.
It was easy for them to pass such a bill, and for Gov. Doug Ducey to sign it, knowing they would never have to look a rape victim in the eyes and tell her the state of Arizona is adding an additional horror to the nightmare she already has experienced.
These days, however, we’re reading and hearing a lot about the harsh reality of sexual violence. The awful reality.
In Ukraine news reports are surfacing of numerous instances of rape against women by Russian invaders.
Ukraine’s ombudswoman for human rights, Lyudmyla Denisova, spoke of one awful occasion in which 25 women and girls, some as young as 14, were assaulted.
There have been many other cases. And reports of at least nine pregnancies.
Pregnant rape victims have options in Ukraine. In fact, prior to the Russian invasion there were reports about how women from Poland crossed the border into Ukraine in order to take advantage of the health care services for women that are available there.
Rape is a personal apocalypse, whether it occurs in a warzone or in a quiet suburban neighborhood.
If you feel some sense of empathy and relief knowing that sexually assaulted Ukrainian women have the option of getting an abortion, then you should feel the same about every woman who is attacked.
No matter where the assault occurs. One of the arguments for denying an
exception for rape and incest victims in Arizona’s latest anti-abortion law — an excuse I heard again and again — is that not many rape victims get pregnant. As if that matters.
Still, we could look at the numbers. Statistics nationally indicate that roughly 5% of women and girls who are raped become pregnant. Nationwide that amounts to many thousands.
According to numbers published in 2019 by the Office of Women’s Health at the Arizona Department of Health Services, crime statics gathered from 2017 said that more than 2,800 women in Arizona
had been raped that year. Five percent of that number is 140. One-hundred and forty pregnant rape victims is … a lot. It’s horrendous.
Imagine that many of our mothers, daughters, wives, sisters, friends, coworkers, suffering one of the worst experiences imaginable and then having to go someplace else (provided they have the resources) if they can’t bear the thought of carrying the pregnancy to term.
Taken in the broader context — in the real world — it is heartbreaking that those rape victims would find better empathy and better access to care in war-torn Ukraine than they would in Arizona.