I was raped and I gave a baby up for adoption. Guess which was worse.

Lorraine

Okay, I was raped by someone I knew. We had been dating for a few weeks, but nothing serious. I didn't want to see him anymore. He came to my apartment, which was a six-floor walk-up in a tenement; the lock on the door to the outside was broken and so he could get all the way up to my apartment. At one a.m. when he began banging on my door, waking up the neighbors on my floor. Doors were opening, people were looking. He was shouting: I know you are in there!

I was embarrassed. I let him in, thinking we would talk about this sanely. But no. He had been drinking, he was furious I was the one who called it quits, he threatened me and forced himself sexually on me before he left. It was clear his whole reason for raping me was to show me that he was in charge, that HE, not me, go to decide when whatever relationship we had was going to be over. In the malarkey-filled brains of some Republicans (see chart), my rape would not qualify as "legitimate."

Akin, GOP to women: We are in charge of your bodies, no exceptions for rape

Lorraine

The current rage over rape and abortion set in motion by the incredibly inane comment of Todd Akin, GOP Senate candidate in Missouri, has set us to thinking about our own adamantly pro-choice position: a woman's body is her own and it is her own to decide if she will or will not carry a fertilized egg to term, that is, have the baby.

Akin's ignorance has upped the debate over whether abortion is ever palatable to some, because all he really did is state what true anti-choice zealots believe: that all and any abortion (and that includes the Morning-After Pill and IUDs) methods, regardless of the timing, are Go-directly-to-hell wrong.

Neither a rape, nor time, erases this first mother's love

Lorraine

Many of you have privately sent me a link to the story about the 94-year-old birth mother, Minka Disbrow, who was contacted by her 77-year-old daughter and their six-year-reunion since then. Though it is old news by now, I keep finding links to it in my mailbox. Even my husband, who rarely forwards adoption stories to me, got into the act. Minka Disbrow, the mother, is celebrating her hundredth birthday, the Associated Press did a story about the reunion and relationship with her relinquished daughter who reached her six years ago. The ages of the women involved make people sit up and take notice. I love Minka Disbrow because she is a brave women indeed. 

Part of the story that is almost overlooked is that the child, now named Ruth Lee and the mother of a retired astronaut, was the product of what could have only been a brutal rape.