For Louisiana Congresswoman Delicia Boyd, the uphill battle she faces to exempt pregnancies resulting from rape and incest from Louisiana’s strict abortion ban is not only morally righteous, but also personal. There is also.
As a Republican-dominated legislative committee is scheduled to consider and vote on Boyd’s immunity bill on Tuesday, the New Orleans Democratic lawmaker speaks to the importance of letting rape and incest survivors decide their own fates. She decided to share her story publicly to highlight her sexuality. If passed, the bill would still have to pass both Republican-led chambers.
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Boyd’s mother was the victim of statutory rape by a man nearly twice her age and was only 15 when Boyd was born. Boyd was born in 1969, four years before abortion was legalized under the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
More than 50 years later, pregnant rape and incest survivors in Louisiana find themselves in similar situations. That means they are forced to carry their babies to term in a state with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country or travel to another state. Abortion is still legal.
Louisiana Democratic state Rep. Delisha Boyd looks out her office window on May 3, 2024 in New Orleans. As Boyd faces an uphill battle to advance a bill that would add rape and incest cases as exceptions to Louisiana’s near-total abortion ban, Democratic lawmakers hear the mother’s harrowing story and how it affected them. Explain what kind of impact it had. (AP Photo/Stephen Smith)
Proponents of the Louisiana ban say the lawmaker might not exist if Boyd’s mother had been given the option of an abortion.
“Aren’t you happy to be here?” Republican state Rep. Tony Baccarat asked her, according to a report in the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate.
Boyd says she doesn’t regret being born. She just thinks that’s why her mother died before her. Boyd said her mother turned to drugs, which Boyd believes was largely due to the trauma of giving birth and raising children as a teenager, and as a result, she died in her 30s. She died before that happened.
“There was a life to a life,” Boyd told The Associated Press in an interview after a brief but emotional hearing in Congress last week. “Then you’re telling me to consider her life less important than mine.”
Ms Boyd added that her story was likely “an exception to the rule”. Other children with teenage mothers may end up in foster care or turn to drugs or crime, she said. She said just because she was safe doesn’t give her “the right to dictate what to do within her family.”
Since writing the bill, Boyd said she has heard similar stories. It’s the story of a girl in Louisiana who was raped and gave birth at age 13, and a 9-year-old girl who became pregnant after being sexually assaulted.
Like several other Republican states, Louisiana’s abortion law goes into effect in 2022 following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, ending half a century of nationwide abortion rights. Ta. The only exceptions to the ban are if there is a significant risk of death or disability to the mother if the pregnancy were to continue, or in the case of a “medically futile” pregnancy, meaning the fetus has a fatal abnormality. be.
There were 7,444 abortions reported in Louisiana in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those, 27 were committed by people under her age of 15. Nationwide, 1,338 of her pregnant patients under the age of 15 underwent abortions, according to the CDC.
A study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association found that in states where abortion is banned in all or most cases, there were more than 64,000 rape pregnancies between July 2022 and January 2024. found.
A legislative committee is scheduled to consider Boyd’s bill on Tuesday. Last year, a nearly identical bill was effectively killed in the same committee. The committee postponed a hearing that began last week to give Boyd time to adjust.
Boyd said he plans to amend the proposal to make the rape and incest exception apply only to people under 17. She hopes the changes will help move the bill forward to consideration in the full chamber.
Of the 14 states that ban abortion at all stages of pregnancy, six make exceptions in cases of rape and five states make exceptions in cases of incest. But Boyd faces an uphill battle in Louisiana. Louisiana is a reliably red state firmly embedded in the Bible Belt, where some Democrats are also opposed to abortion.
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She hopes that by sharing her mother’s story, the reality faced by pregnant rape and incest victims will be brought to light, and maybe even change the minds of opposing lawmakers. I hope so.
“No one took care of her. No one cared to think about what was going on with her emotionally, psychologically, and maybe spiritually. They were left to grow,” Boyd said.
