'I love my child but I'm raising my rapist's baby'

Kelly Rissman reports on a story that highlights the hurdles women can face in the reproductive care system in America

- Kelly Rissman

For more than a decade, “Melinda” has raised a child she never wanted – a child that was the product of rape.

“I love my child. But if I could go back in time and get an abortion, I would 100 per cent of the time,” she told The Independent.

Melinda, whose name was changed at her request to protect her child, said her perspective often “trips people up” but it doesn’t mean she hates her child – she just wishes she’d been able to get an abortion.

While she technically could have accessed the procedure in her home state of Tennessee at the time, it wasn’t really an option. Significant barriers stood in her way: being a victim of rape, not having money, and reeling from the shock tactics of a fake clinic.

Her story exposes the hurdles that pregnant women faced more than a decade before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June 2022 changed the landscape of abortion in the US.

While anti-abortion rhetoric has swirled for decades, it spread like wildfire during Donald Trump’s presidency. Not only was his vice-president outspoken abortion opponent Mike Pence but he also appointed half of the justices who voted to reverse Roe. In 2021, Ohio Senator JD Vance – Trump’s 2024 running mate – called rape “inconvenient” while praising Texas’s abortion ban.

Since then, state-level bans on the procedure have swept across the country. Now, Tennessee has no clinics at all, due to the state’s ban that went into effect on 25 August 2022.

Last year, 170,000 pregnant women travelled to other states to get the procedure due to bans. Back then, travelling from her small town to another city – let alone another state – was out of reach for Melinda.