Legislator Defends Her Abortion After Being Raped: “I Dare You to Judge Me”
A state legislator in Ohio is defending her decision to have an abortion after she was a victim of rape and she made the bold move of sharing her personal story on the floor of the Ohio state legislature. While she feels compelled that ending the life of her unborn baby was the right decision, many women who are victimized by rape are glad they made a different decision to keep their baby.
Democratic Ohio State representative Teresa Fedor (pictured above) got so frustrated during a debate on abortion in the lower chamber of the state’s legislature that she stood up and revealed that she had been raped and terminated the resulting pregnancy.
“You don’t respect my reason, my rape, my abortion, and I guarantee you there are other women who should stand up with me and be courageous enough to speak,” she said. “What you’re doing is so fundamentally inhuman, unconstitutional, and I’ve sat here too long.”
Fedor was raped many years ago, while she was in the military. She said that even some of her family members didn’t know what had happened to her, the Toledo Blade reported.
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“I dare any one of you to judge me, because there’s only one judge I’m going to face… I dare you to walk in my shoes… This debate is purely political. I understand your story, but you don’t understand mine. I’m grateful for that freedom. It is a personal decision, and how dare government get into my business.”
Lianna Rebolledo was only 12-years-old when she was brutally raped by two men near her home. At the hospital, doctors told her she was pregnant and advised her to have an abortion. However, Lianna decided to keep her baby after she asked the doctor if abortion would ease her pain and he replied ‘no.’
She said, “If abortion wasn’t going to heal anything, I didn’t see the point. I just knew that I had somebody inside my body. I never thought about who her biological father was. She was my kid. She was inside of me.”
Now Lianna, 35, says she has no regrets about choosing life for her child and that her daughter has helped her overcome suicidal thoughts. She said, “It was really hard, but just to see that little person telling me how happy she was that I gave her her life. When she said that — and she was only four years old when she told me: ‘Mommy thank you for giving me life’ — I realized that she was the one who gave me my life back.”
She concluded, “In my situation, two lives were saved. I saved my daughter’s life, but she saved my life. Even though [the rape] was a very hard moment, if I had to go through that [again] just to know and to love my daughter, I would go through that again. She’s always been there for me. She’s the only person who has shown me a real love. And I always will be grateful.”
Meanwhile, in Australia, 17-year-old April-lee Gillen was found lying unconscious and critically injured beside a road after an attempted abduction.
A motorist found Gillen and brought her to Wollongong Hospital, where she was treated for a broken angle, collapsed lung and bleeding on her brain. Gillen was so badly injured that she suffered short-term memory loss after the incident. In fact, surgeons had to perform emergency surgery to remove a section of her skull to ease the pressure on her brain.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, at the hospital doctors put Gillen in an induced coma and two months later, found out that she was pregnant; however, because of her memory loss she had to be reminded about her baby every day. April-lee shared more about the experience with A Current Affair. She said, “I said ‘Am I pregnant? Oh my goodness’. And then I would forget because I had that thing still where I’d forget each day.”
Remarkably, despite her injuries, Gillen said she never considered aborting her baby. Initially, Gillen’s mother Leonie was concerned about her daughter’s wellbeing but supported her decision to keep her baby. She said, “…Later on, as April healed much more, she was clearer, well spoken and quite determined in what she wanted. So I said to April ‘I’ll be right by your side’. And it’s the best decision we’ve made.”
And Ashley was 14 years old when I read an article about her in the newspaper discussing that she was raped and as a result became pregnant.
From the moment Ashley found out she was pregnant, she knew that carrying her baby to term was her only option. On June 26, 2013 her son Aiden was born and he has warmed everyone’s heart that he comes into contact with.
