VICTIMIZING IMPREGNATED RAPE VICTIMS
WITH Mother TERMINOLOGY
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
A female impregnated against her will is not responsible for
the pregnancy, to the pregnancy, and is not mother to the ovum
fertilized by force. Characterizing as mother—birth
mother, biological mother, first mother, real mother—an
impregnated rape victim, any female impregnated against her will is a
deliberate act of social violence against her.
To label as mother someone who battled profound sexual trauma,
who struggled with her deepest, personal fidelity, who clutched the
disintegrating parts of her body and spirit and grasped at the rescue line of
termination to all connections with an unwanted pregnancy, whether through
abortion or confidential adoption, is cruelty in its purest form—casual, quiet,
and invisible. And is an insidious attempt
to subjugate, control, and stigmatize women.
Couched in the sentimental, the term mother feigns
benign as it draws upon the collective heartstrings of society with notions of
warmth, protection and hunger fulfillment: a candle in the window, a fire in
the hearth, apple pie in the oven. It is
not benign. Used against a girl, a woman
emancipated from a forced pregnancy, mother terminology is a sly, saccharine
weapon. It instantly prejudices: she
is contemptible, immoral, disgraceful.
It abuses: shun her; shame her. It punishes: remind her, call her mother. It demands: receive motherhood as
compensation for sexual violence.
It preaches: upholding mother fantasies is more important than
tending to a living, brutalized female. It
rebukes: she cannot hide; she cannot flee. It declares: she is forever obligated.
Mother terminology mocks an impregnated rape victim. It mocks her injury. It mocks her trauma. It mocks her terror, her revulsion at the
rapist inhabiting her body. An
impregnated rape victim is the lowest form of sexually brutalized female, forbidden
to claim injury or crime even within her own self reference. She is not permitted victim status. The catastrophic injury of pregnancy is
negated. She is discarded and labeled
a mother with child. The sexual
violence she was subjected to is irrelevant.
What was forced into her body cavity is now designated as hers. The rapist now is her rapist. Any rescue from his tyranny, any
disconnection from his enforced maternity, from his lifetime tie to her—his
victim—is viewed as her cold abandonment of a helpless child—of her baby;
of her son; of her daughter.
Mother terminology victimizes a girl, a woman impregnated against
her will in the most sickening way possible: it imposes emotional suicide.
Appropriate vocabulary exists to replace mother
terminology: biological source; biological origin; biological female;
biological carrier. Terms that allow for
dignity and self determination. Terms
that help protect a sexually victimized woman from social, religious, and legal
mob rule. Civilized language that does
not incite cultural emotion, words that ease social prejudice and reduce the abuse
perpetuated against impregnated rape victims—any woman impregnated against her
will—language that does not minimize and maternalize violence and target a victim
can be employed as easily as not.
My question is: why do you treat me like this?
Women In Hiding Press
