A woman who was conceived in rape has spoken against the pro-abortion narrative in a letter to the editor for the Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate.
Amber Dubois is a wife and teacher, whose mother was raped as a teenager. Though her mother did not live near her family and was not religious, she did not have an abortion — something Dubois said many others might have considered.
“Instead, to this day, she tells me I am the best decision she ever made,” Dubois wrote. “She told me she knew I was a human life, and that the gift of a beautiful life would outweigh the nightmare of being violated. She agreed that I should not be killed because of the horrific crime of my biological father. She decided that I would be her child, no matter what.”
Many, even among those who call themselves pro-life, say exceptions to laws protecting preborn children should be included for women who are raped. But, Dubois said, people like her do not deserve a death sentence for the crimes of their parents.
“What if we were all labeled, tried and judged for the worst crimes of our parents?” she asked.
Though abortion after rape has been described as a more compassionate option, rape survivors have said they regret that decision.
“I could never ever deal with my rape because I was so focused on what I had done in choosing abortion,” rape survivor Ashley Sigrest previously explained. “And that’s what people don’t understand when they tell rape victims, ‘Oh yes, have an abortion so that way you can go on and we can deal with the rape.’ But the abortion just makes the rape 1,000 times worse because now you have these two horrible events that you have to deal with.”
Ultimately, Dubois argued, children conceived in rape should be treated as the valuable human beings they are, with inherent dignity like everyone else.
“’I’m pro-life except in the case of rape,’ translates as ‘I am pro-life except in the case of Amber,'” she said. “It is personal. The label of a ‘rapist’s baby’ is insulting to me, my mother, my spouse. Being the offspring of a traumatic event does not make me a defective person, and I do not deserve to be defined as such.”
