Over 35 years ago, at the young age of 13, Lesley McAskie was raped. She lived with her parents in northern Ireland, where abortion is illegal. So they took her to England instead, where she was made to go through with an abortion — an experience that still haunts her to this day.
“I met a boy when I was on holiday. He expressed an interest in seeing me again, through a friend of a friend, and then I just happened to meet up with him at a disco, and then he arranged to meet me the next week, and I did,” Lesley recounted. “I went to his home, and it was there that he raped me.”
READ: My son was conceived in rape, but his life has dignity and a purpose
After confirming that she was, indeed, pregnant, her parents made the arrangements for her abortion, something that she said happened quite quickly. The young woman received no counseling, yet the nurse explained what would happen to her preborn baby in grisly detail.
“I remember a nurse coming to me, and she was kind of consoling me, but not really, and then she said something which alarmed me and it stayed with me for the rest of my life,” she said. “She said, ‘Do you know what they’re going to do to your baby?’ and I said, ‘No, not really.’ And she said, ‘Oh, they just put this instrument into you and then they chop it all up and they’ll suck it out into a bag and then they throw the bag in the bin.'”
The nurse’s description is very similar to Dr. Anthony Levatino’s factual description of an aspiration abortion (also called suction abortion or D&C abortion and one of the most common first trimester abortions committed):
“I don’t feel I was given any information about the abortion procedure at all, except for what that nurse gave me,” she continued. “I was given no counseling beforehand, I was given no counseling after.”
Lesley explained that for the next 37 years, the abortion continued to affect her, until she finally sought help. “And I have to say, the rape never figured in that,” she admitted. “Surprisingly so, I got over the rape…but I never got over my abortion experience.” Lesley then said that what women need after rape is things like compassion, care, and counseling — but not abortion.
READ: Raped women who had their babies defy pro-choice stereotypes
Abortion advocates frequently use rape as a reason why abortion needs to remain legal. They make a number of claims as to why women need abortion after being raped, but each one of the claims is wrong (here’s how). A woman who has been raped has already had to survive one violent act; forcing her to go through another violent act, often with little information, does not lead to her healing. Encouraging abortion after rape also fails to promote justice, as it sentences an innocent person to death, while allowing the person actually responsible — the rapist — to get away scot-free. Not even the rapist is sentenced to death for his crime. Why should an innocent child have her life taken because of the violence of her father?
Abortion facilities like Planned Parenthood are all too happy to cover up the crime of rape if it means performing an abortion and raking in the money. Not only have Live Action’s undercover investigations found that multiple facilities across the country refused to contact authorities when confronted with an undercover investigator posing as a young girl who been raped, but there are also countless real-world examples.
Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry isn’t interested in helping rape victims; in fact, they harm them even further by refusing to help bring their perpetrators to justice and subjecting them to more brutal violence.
READ: Does Planned Parenthood help rape victims…or their rapists?
Rape is a horrific crime; there is no disputing that fact. But women deserve better than abortion after suffering through something so awful — just as Lesley McCaskie explains.
