Most Americans believe there should be exceptions to strict abortion bans.Ĭarole Joffe, a professor and sociologist who studies abortion policy at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco, says that despite public opinion on the matter, most of the anti-abortion bills introduced across the country in recent years haven't included exceptions for rape or incest. Public opinion, even in Texas, favors exceptions to strict bansįor decades, public opinion - even in Texas - has been pretty consistent about allowing some exceptions to laws that restrict abortion. She says SB 8 "clearly is taking away any choice that they have."
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"And so when you have something like SB 8," Nelson says, "what it is doing is, it's further taking control and power away from the survivor right at the moment when they need that power and control over their lives to begin healing."įaulkner says it's important to give sexual assault survivors options on how to move forward in their lives.
For survivors, that further strips away agency, Nelson says, after their sense of safety and control has already been violated. "The impact of finally coming forward and then being told there are no options for you is devastating," says Faulkner, who directs the Institute for Child and Family Wellbeing at the University of Texas at Austin.īeing forced to carry a pregnancy to term can be harmful financially, psychologically and, sometimes, physically. Monica Faulkner, a social worker in Austin who has worked with sexual assault survivors, says not having the option of terminating a pregnancy will make recovering from an assault even harder. "And so, there again, she is not going to know that she is pregnant by six weeks and she's not going to be able to resolve that pregnancy." "That dissociation can lead to a detachment from reality and the fact that she's pregnant," Nelson says. That's because to cope with the trauma of the abuse, they often grow numb to what's happening to their bodies. While many people don't realize they are pregnant until after 6 weeks, Nelson says this is a particular problem for those who are being repeatedly raped or abused. "Devastating" for survivors of repeated rape and abuse Social workers in Texas say that's causing serious harm to sexual assault survivors in the state. Notably, the law also makes no exceptions for people who are victims of rape or incest. According to a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist national poll, Texas' law is unpopular across the political spectrum. The law, Senate Bill 8, is currently the most restrictive ban on the procedure in effect in the country. In Texas, abortions are now banned as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.
1, when the state law went into effect, her options would have been severely curtailed, Nelson says. The girl was eventually able to get help, but if this had happened after Sept. She certainly didn't know that she was pregnant." "She had no idea about anything about her body. Piper Stege Nelson, chief public strategies officer for the SAFE Alliance, says the father didn't let the young girl leave the house. Back before Texas' new abortion law went into effect, the organization counseled a 12-year-old girl who had been repeatedly raped by her father. The SAFE Alliance in Austin helps survivors of child abuse, sexual assault and domestic violence.