Sophie was a happy, well-adjusted, optimistic student, age 14... looking forward to entering high school, where she'd play softball, or maybe be a cheerleader... the world was there for her taking.
All that changed when one of her neighbors, a boy of 16, decided to rape her. Sophie got pregnant from the encounter.
Sophie unfortunately lived in a state where abortion is illegal, even in cases of rape and incest. For whatever psychological reasons, Sophie refused to name her attacker. She and her family, who didn't have much money, would face the social and financial burdens of her pregnancy on their own. Most of the humiliation, shaming, ostracizing... Sophie would have to bear most of that alone, of course.
Sophie did have somewhat of a choice, however: she could try to convince her parents to pay for a trip out of state, where she could get that abortion, and maybe hold on to some of her dreams. She wasn't really certain, though, if her parents could afford all that,,,, or even believed her rape story in the first place. Truly heavy considerations and decisions for a 14 year old girl.
For the sake of our story, we don't even know the attitude of her parents toward abortion. Did they support the politicians who enacted the ban? How did they feel now that their own lives were so affected?
Whether or not Sophie ultimately had the abortion, was Sophie's childhood robbed from her by a rapist? By the state? By neither, or by both?
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