An Open Letter to Rep. Akin

A SYTYCB entry

*Trigger warning*

Hello, Rep. Akin

My name is Natalie Kelsey. I’m nineteen years old and I recently graduated from Paul Smith’s College. I’m emailing all the way from New York because I was so struck by a recent statement of yours. I don’t expect a response, but I will humbly ask you for one.

I’m going to be very frank with you about this, because this issue is very close to my heart. I don’t expect to change your mind or garner your sympathy, I don’t even expect you to understand. I just need to be heard.

I don’t tell many people about this, so you can consider yourself one of a privileged few. I am a victim of what you would likely call “legitimate rape.” I was only eight years old, walking to a friends house because I was locked out of my house. Two men plucked me off the street and drove away with me. Just like that, that easy. One of them drove while the other raped me and forced me to perform oral sex. When they were finished, they threatened my family’s lives if I breathed a word to anyone about what had just happened. For almost a decade, I kept quiet. I felt ashamed, violated, and less-than-human. My own family did not take the news well. Instead of giving me the support I needed, they focused on how long it had taken me to tell them. Perhaps worst of all, the man who raped me was never caught, never brought to justice.

Now, this, to you, I assume is “legitimate rape.” And, because I was only eight years old, there was no way for me to have become pregnant. However, if I had been a few years older, that would have been a possibility. What if I had been fifteen? And what if I had been wearing a short skirt? What if I had been drinking? Would that make me responsible for what happened to me? Would that mean I deserved to be used up, then thrown back onto the street like yesterday’s garbage? I would like a straight answer to that question. A yes or no and a simple explanation, please.

If I had been fifteen, I could have gotten pregnant. Was I supposed to derail my entire life for a rapist? I think it is very presumptuous of you to think that you could possibly know what that situation would feel like. I think it is arrogant of you to assume you know what is best for all women, and I think it is wrong to assume that the existence of underdeveloped tissue that *could* be a baby one day is more important than the life and happiness of a woman who has already contributed to society. When you say that the potential baby is more important than the woman, you reduce the woman to nothing more than a brood mare for the state. You say she has nothing to offer beyond what is in her uterus. I think we both know that’s not true.

Heaven forbid it, but what if your own mother, or your sister, or your daughter were raped? Would you judge her? Would you be able to tell her, even as her world shakes beneath her, that her trauma shouldn’t be over? Would you tell her that it’s all her fault?

That said, if women’s bodies could just “shut down” the ability to get pregnant when they didn’t want to be, we would have no need for abortion, would we? Your pseudo-science is offensive, ignorant, and hurtful.

Lastly, I implore you, I beg you, to try harder to put yourself in a woman’s shoes. No rape is not forcible. No rape is illegitimate. No rape victim is worth less than any other. We’ve been judged too harshly already. Please do not further that.

Thank you for your time,

Natalie Kelsey