i met a girl at this student conference who has had a very difficult life, and she struggles with incredible trauma every single day. TW for rape, incest, SA
she was born as a product of her father raping his niece. when she was 11, her father reentered her life, and she suffered from his sexual abuse for a long time before she was saved by a teacher who noticed her injuries and demeanor. i don’t have the full picture or timeline of her life, but i know from her stories that she has experienced sexual abuse from other men too. now she lives with her adoptive mom.
it was not her father, but one of the men who assaulted her got her pregnant, and she gave birth to the child at 10 years old.
her abusers have not been punished because they have been protected by those they have connections with.
even after all of that abuse and tragedy and pain and cruelty, i never once heard her say she regretted having the little girl. instead, she kept saying she didnt understand how anyone could not see that the little being in your womb is a person. how anyone could not understand that the little being in there is a life. she herself was that little life who someone would have considered worth extinguishing; she herself was that little baby who came from tragedy and would be born into tragedy. how could she throw away a life that came into being just like her? how could you “remove some fetal cells and tissue” knowing that could very well have been you? she couldn’t. of course she couldn’t. because no matter how much trauma someone has been through, their life still has purpose and meaning. her life still has purpose and meaning, and her little daughter’s life has purpose and meaning.
she is an example of someone who people would say “does not have a life worth living” because it is difficult. a child of incestuous rape, bounced around in the foster care system, experienced sexual abuse for years on end, gave birth to a child at 10 years of age.
when people know a child is going to have a hard life like this, they decide it’s better for the life to not be lived at all. they decide for this person that they are better off without living through all that.
this is not even mentioning the tragedy of how many babies who would be disabled have been aborted, and will continue to be aborted. how many babies with down syndrome, deformities, autism, illnesses—all aborted because they will not live “normal” lives.
you do not get to decide that someone else’s life is not worth living.
