MIAMI – According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, sexual violence against women is common.
The CDC states that “more than four in five female rape survivors reported that they were first raped before age 25 and almost half were first raped as a minor.”
That is why child advocates worry about Florida’s impending six-week abortion ban, saying the rape exception requirement to show proof prevents access, and that concern is grounded in mounting evidence from states with similar rape exception conditions.
Amanda Altman of Kristi House Children’s Advocacy Center worries about the potential impact Florida’s six-week abortion ban will have on victims of sexual violence.
“We work with kids who are victims of trauma, primarily sexual abuse, and we have a specialized program for girls who are survivors of sex trafficking,” said Altman. “I am incredibly concerned about them.”
Sex violence victims impregnated by their abusers face burden of proof hurdle to abortion care access.
Florida’s Heartbeat Protection Act, which takes effect on May 1, offers an exception up to 15 weeks for rape, incest and human trafficking victims, but adds that victims, “must provide a copy of a restraining order, police report, medical record, or other court order or documentation providing evidence that she is obtaining the termination of pregnancy because she is a victim of rape, incest, or human trafficking.”
“It really denies sex crime victims access to abortion so often disclosure happens very delayed,” said Altman.
BY THE NUMBERS:
Per the National Crime Victimization Survey, in 2022 only 21.4% of rape/sexual assault were reported to police and the rate of rape/sexual assault was 1.9 per 1,000 persons age 12 or older, or 531,810 nationally.
PREVENTING REASONABLE ACCESS?
Dr. Sami Heywood explains how Florida will soon will be joining other states that already implemented restrictive abortion bans with rape exceptions, which some researchers have said prevented reasonable access to abortion care.
“In no other form of health care do we require someone to prove that a crime took place in order to provide care that a patient needs,” said Heywood. “What the studies shows in other states, and I don’t expect Florida to be any different, is that these laws are written in such a way that politicians can say, here in Florida that won’t happen, but when we look at very similar laws in similar states we are seeing that those victims are being re-victimized because they are not able to get abortion. I know as a physician practicing in Illinois that I have seen patients from those states who are victims of sexual assault travel to our state for abortion care that they couldn’t obtain at home.”
Added Altman: “If a child who has been the victim of a sex crime is forced to carry an unwanted child they are being re-traumatized and re-victimized so we are really doing them a disservice and preventing them from healing.
READ THE STUDIES:
Study on pregnancies as a result of rape in states with bans: “Although 5 of these states allow exceptions for rape-related pregnancies, stringent gestational duration limits apply, and survivors must report the rape to law enforcement, a requirement likely to disqualify most survivors of rape, of whom only 21% report their rape to police.”
WeCount study on number of abortions per state since Dobbs.
Planned Parenthood of Montana Chief Medical Officer Dr. Samuel Dickman told Local 10 News Wednesday in a statement:
“Survivors of sexual violence will suffer under Florida’s six-week abortion ban, and we know from other states with so-called ‘exceptions’ for rape and incest that these policies are basically meaningless in practice. The extremely burdensome legal requirements imposed on rape survivors under Florida’s six-week ban will re-traumatize survivors and put them at even greater risk of violence from abusers. Abortion bans cause confusion and chaos for all patients, and survivors of sexual violence already face incredibly difficult and sometimes impossible barriers to getting the healthcare they need. Many survivors will have no choice but to continue pregnancies caused by rape.”
Millions more sex violence victims will now face conditional rape exception to a restrictive abortion ban
Heywood said when Florida joins the other abortion-ban states with rape exceptions – Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, West Virginia, and North Dakota – it will have a “huge impact” given Florida is one of the largest states in the country.
“A tally of the five states that have bans and abortion rape exceptions, their populations, does not even equal Florida’s,” explained Heywood, based on US Census Data. “So this is a huge impact, Florida being added to that list of states” would add millions more people, “who are affected by these laws.”
A Pew Research study found that “sizable majorities of U.S. adults say that abortion should be legal if the pregnancy is the result of rape (69%).”
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation: “Many of these exceptions are not workable in practice. Although sexual assault exceptions are intended to protect survivors, experts agree that they rarely work,” adding that for some rape survivors who did compline the necessary documentation they were still not able to access abortion care “because they couldn’t find any abortion providers in their state.”
“When you put a 15-week ban on abortion and require that a victim of a sex crime has documented evidence that that crime occurred, you are really preventing them from having access because you are assuming they have filed a police report or they have come to a place like Kristi’s House and already sought help when the odds are they haven’t even disclosed to anybody yet,” said Altman.
This November, voters in Florida will have the opportunity to weigh-in on abortion access when they head to the polls.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline offers free, confidential, 24/7 support to survivors and their loved ones in English and Spanish at: 800-656-HOPE (4673) and Hotline.RAINN.org.