Once again abortion and domestic violence are intertwined as earlier this month an Ohio father pled guilty to beating his 17-year-old daughter for refusing to have an abortion.
The girl’s mother also participated in the attack, but the charges against her were dropped.
According to police reports, Brian Schultz drove his daughter to an abortion clinic in Cleveland and made an appointment for her after he found out she was pregnant. When they returned home, the daughter indicated she did not want to go through with the procedure. The girl said that he father punched her in the face and, along with her mother, proceeded to kick her in the stomach.
Pro-choicers like to talk about a hypothetical world where abortion is banned, and violent men use forced pregnancies to control women and keep them dependent. But we live in the real world, where the opposite seems to be true. Every week there’s a new story about a woman being “kept in line” with coerced abortion–and suffering horrific consequences if she doesn’t submit.
There was the Ohio woman who was shot by her boyfriend for saying no to abortion.
There was Remee Lee, whose boyfriend tricked her into taking an abortion pill after she ignored his demands to terminate.
There was the guy who hired a hitman to kill his girlfriend because she wouldn’t have her pregnancy “taken care of.”
And that’s just a handful of examples that made the news. How many others do we never hear about, because they’re quietly resolved at a Planned Parenthood clinic? Even abortion supporting groups admit that women seeking abortions are seven times more likely to be victims of domestic abuse.
At least this story has a happy ending. The daughter went on to have her baby in December, and her father is off to prison for a year. I hope that her story gives courage to other pregnant women facing coercion or violence because they stand up for the life of their child.
