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| Abby Hafer |
However, that is not the end of the problems with rape exemptions. Yes, there are still more ways in which they do not work. For this reason, journalists and other opinion-makers should not allow people to get away with saying that they support exemptions to abortion bans in cases of incest or rape. They should especially not allow this when stated by politicians. When someone says that they support abortion bans, but with exemptions for rape and incest, journalists must ask that person what they actually mean. That is, what would it take to exercise a rape exemption? How would it work?
For instance, would the law require a police report of the rape? This is what many U.S. states require. What about a simple claim of rape? Would the authorities need a named suspect? Would an arrest or a prosecution be required? Would the prosecution have to be successful? We need details on people’s positions.
But here’s a major problem: most rapes are not reported to the police, and pregnancies from rape are common.
A January 2024 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Internal Medicine, estimated that in the 14 U.S. states that had total abortion bans at the time, while those bans were active through the end of 2023, more than 500,000 women and girls of reproductive age were raped. The estimated result was that more than 64,000 women and girls became pregnant as a result of rape — in those states alone. The authors insist that, having worked with domestic abuse survivors, the numbers simply confirm what they see on a daily basis — that sexual abuse and violence are horribly common.
If these numbers seem shocking, they should be. But they also point up an inescapable fact — that rape is vastly underreported, and most rapes do not result in police reports.
One usual reason why these crimes go unreported is because the victim’s life would be worse if she did report it.
In part, this is because it is common for a woman who was raped to be abused by her partner. If that is the case, then reporting the crime to the police increases the risk of violence being further visited on the already unfortunate woman. Add to that many victims do not trust the police. Further, even in these times, there is a stigma associated with rape, and most rape victims do not want to live with that stigma.
Here is a real-life example of this type of problem.
At one point in time, Texas had a ban that only allowed a legal abortion if the woman got to a clinic and had the abortion all within two weeks of missing her menstrual period. But there was a rape exemption to this ban.
An abortion provider in Texas had a patient who was 10 weeks pregnant when she visited the clinic. She was pregnant because she had been raped. The patient had hoped to get an abortion secretly because her rapist was also her abusive boyfriend, and she didn’t want him to find out about it.
Since the cramping and bleeding that result from a medication abortion closely resemble the bleeding and cramping from a miscarriage, she had hoped that her abuser would never find out that she had gotten an abortion. If she had reported the rape, then her abuse would have become much worse. So she was unwilling to report the rape. This meant that she would have to leave Texas in order to get an abortion. And once it turned out that she would have to leave Texas in order to get an abortion, the chances of her getting an abortion decreased to zero since she would no longer be able to secretly get her abortion by slipping away for an hour or two during the day.
This case has already happened in the real world.
All of this makes it clear that the problem of underreporting of rape should be included in any discussion of rape exemptions to abortion bans because it greatly affects whether these exemptions are meaningful in any realistic way.
So, in addition to the problem of lack of access to abortion services, the problem of underreporting of rapes is already documented and known. This known phenomenon of the vast underreporting of rapes means that rape exemptions to abortion bans, if they require a police report, do no good whatsoever for the vast majority of the people whom these exemptions are supposed to help.
So, if lawmakers, opinion-makers and others say that they support abortion bans but with rape exemptions, then they should be required to say whether a police report would be required in order to exercise the rape exemption. And if it is required, then said lawmakers and others should be required to explain why they support an essentially meaningless gesture that does the vast majority of victims no good whatsoever.
This is the third part in a series. Part one: Rape exemptions to abortion laws, or why women shouldn’t have sex for fun. Part two: More reasons why rape exemptions to abortion laws don’t work: Access.
Dr. Abby Hafer is a biologist, educator and writer with a doctorate in zoology from Oxford University. She teaches human anatomy and physiology at Curry College. She is the co-author of Bill H.471, a bill in the Massachusetts legislature that requires that all science taught in public schools be based on peer-reviewed science. Learn more at professionaldebunker.com and reach her at ahafer@curry.edu.
The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, LexisNexis Canada, Law360 Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
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