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Seems Todd Akin’s comment had a huge impact on women brave enough to come out and tell their stories. Women everywhere, one after the other, have been taking their tragedies to the media in a heroic effort. Shauna R. Prewitt wrote about her experience and how, years later, she’s raising her daughter who was the product of a viscous act so many of us struggle to tell. While a student in my final year of college, at age 21, I was raped. I have dissected that moment — the horrifying moment that I became a “victim” — from every possible angle. I have poked and prodded, examined and re-examined. Regrettably, I have even suspected myself in a desperate, ultimately futile attempt to understand how I became a victim….People who did not even know me were quick to comment or speculate on my rape. What were you wearing? Did you scream loudly? Did this occur in public? Eight years after my rape, I find myself on trial against ignorance again. Rep. Todd Akin’s recent comments that “legitimate rape” rarely results in pregnancy not only flout scientific fact but, for me, cut deeper. Akin has de-legitimized my rape. You see, nine months after my rape, I gave birth to a beautiful little girl. You could say she was conceived in rape; she was. But she is also so much more than her beginnings. I blissfully believed that after I finally had decided to give birth to and to raise my daughter, life would be all roses and endless days at the playground. I was wrong again. It would not be long before I would learn firsthand that in the vast majority of states — 31 — men who father through rape are able to assert the same custody and visitation rights to their children that other fathers enjoy . When no law prohibits a rapist from exercising these rights, a woman may feel forced to bargain away her legal rights to a criminal trial in exchange for the rapist dropping the bid to have access to her child. For the sake of her child, the woman will sacrifice her need to see her once immensely powerful perpetrator humbled by the court. I know it because I lived it. I went to law school to learn how to stop it. Having fought this injustice for the past several years, I have come to believe that ignorance is to blame for this legal absence. Opponents argue no woman would ever choose to raise the child she conceived through rape. The only two studies to analyze the choices made by pregnant raped women indicate otherwise — at least 30% of women who conceive by rape make this choice. Others argue that no rapist would ever seek parental rights. Not only does my experience and that of others I know prove otherwise, but it is not surprising that a man who cruelly degrades a woman would also seek to torture her in an even more agonizing way, by seeking access to her child. Today, it seems we may face a new and unbelievable challenge: convincing legislators that women can conceive when they are raped. Our heart goes out to every Woman out there who’s ever felt that indescribable fear and struggles because she was violated. Make sure you Vote this year so we can keep Congress and Fat Cat Politicos out of our Crocthes! Source Images via Shutterstock

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What Would You Do? One Woman Shares Her Story Of Pregnancy After Being Raped