Please excuse the morbidity of the question. I’m thinking of situations like Elizabeth Fritzl or Jaycee Duggard, or the fictionalized one in Emma Donoghue’s Room. Assuming the psychopath rapist/kidnapper doesn’t really care what happens to the baby, would you try to raise it? Would you smother it Beloved style? Would you do nothing and curl up in a fetal position till it eventually starved?
I couldn’t help asking myself that. I think it might probably be the latter…being totally traumatized at all. I don’t even want kids in a non kidnapping situation. The idea of being forced into parenthood feels like a second kind of rape to me. I don’t think I’d possibly be able to go through with it.
Hm, it’s hard for me to say. I know for me, I felt an incredible connection and obligation to my kids the moment they were out of me. So I’d be miserable during the pregnancy, but it would likely continue without access to any means to end it. So I’d get to the birth and immediately want to care for this little thing. Hell, now I want to grab ANY little thing and care for it. Damn maternal instinct.
Well, if you’re a guy and you want to respond, you could imagine you were a female. As most of us haven’t and hopefully will never be in this situation, we’re only going by what we’d do in an imagined scenario.
I did wonder about that, torie. I’ve never given birth so I don’t know what I’d feel. I do know that the idea of any kind of sexual assault or rape really horrifies me to the point that any reminder of it would be very traumatic. I don’t know if I’d end up loving it or if I’d just always look at it and think, “Product of horrifying rape”…
I think in setups like these, people tend to focus on cause and effect as if they’re immediate and linear. From this imaginary perspective we see a rape and a birth, it’s easy to forget all the intervening time in between the events. It’s easy to forget the torture or subsequent rapes or whatever. I think that by the time the baby came, I’d see it as an event in itself, not a consequence of the rape. I think I’d be hurting enough for loving companionship by that point that I’d consider it a blessing.
It’s like when you think of being paralyzed. You think how aweful that would be and how your life would change and how it’d be the worst thing that could happen to you (figuratively speaking). But to the people that this actually happens to, it’s just the way life went. They got in the car, crashed it, and now they’re how they are. Most of the time, they move on. They still see friends and still laugh at movies. Life goes on.
In other words, I don’t think I’d kill the baby any sooner than I’d drive my wheelchair into the swimming pool.
Think if the baby were a girl for a second. There is no escape in your future or hers as far as you know.
Women smothered babies in concentration camps, and I understand why. I don’t know if that’s what I’d do - I think it’s the kind of thing that you don’t know unless it happens to you - but it’s not out of the question. I think Chessic Sense has a point about people who say they’ll kill themselves if they become badly disabled.
Keeping in mind that I adore children and want them desperately: I can’t imagine I’d feel anything but intense love for a child of mine, conceived and born under any circumstances, with any sort of father.
In my current situation (committed relationship with a man I’d like to have children with) I would absolutely pursue a medical abortion if possible, was I raped. But if I was held captive for the duration of this hypothetical pregnancy I don’t think I would harm my own body in an attempt to rid myself of the fetus, and I would love the child that resulted because it was my own.
I’d have several months to try everything possible to end the pregnancy. You mentioned birthing and then letting the baby starve; I’d try starving myself, first, in a desperate attempt to induce a miscarriage. It seems less awful all around, that way.
Chessic does, however, have a point about potential companionship.
Along the same lines as what Chessic had to say, in this hypothetical scenario it would be a bit different from being raped once and becoming pregnant. As horrible as the confinement and rape would be, the specific rape that led to conceiving the child wouldn’t be obvious. It would be part of the whole situation instead of looking at the child and remembering a *specific *attack.
My view is going to be skewed on this because I’m not a woman, but I can at least try to imagine how I’d feel in that situation if I was one. I think I’d care for the child as best as I could, because I’d love my child and I’d try to have hope that we could eventually get away. I can totally see how someone might smother her newborn out of mercy, though.
Is everybody who’s sure they’d raise the baby remembering that the baby will probably be given the same rape and torture as you? Either when it grows up or as a child? It’s not just about “will I raise my rape baby” in this circumstance.
If it’s connected to a whole situation, wouldn’t that make it even worse, though? You wouldn’t look at the child and see one horrible scenario–you’d see a reminder of the hell your life has become.
That would depend on the specific case, I don’t think I’d have that particular fear if I was kidnapped by the FARC or ETA (not that I’ve ever heard of ETA raping their captives; keep them in tiny holes, yes, rape, no). If it was a Fritzl case, yes, but she seems to have been able to protect her children from that.
I don’t think you would, though. It’s obvious from the outside because we’re only told of two events (rape and birth) and we’re fastforwarding through 9 months of pregnancy. That’s a lot of life in between. Our relationships to things change over time. Eventually, it stops being “the new couch” and starts being “the couch”. Eventually, it’s no longer “my boss” but “Jim”, or something like that. We add characteristics to objects once we learn more about them and spend more time with them.
I think that if I held up this baby and said “What is this?”, you wouldn’t go “That’s a product of rape.” You’d go “That’s Jessica.” While we posters, on the outside of the scenario, look at it and go Jessica=rape, anyone in the situation would think Jessica = blue eyes, wakes up at 4 am, likes peas and hates carrots, knows “mama” but not “Mom”, birthmark on right thigh…oh, and also rape. When you aren’t in the situation, it’s easy to forget all the other meaningless (or otherwise) characteristics and memories that wash over or cancel out that rape memory.
I’ve heard women say “Every time I’d look at the baby, I’d think of the rape” and I’m going “I doubt that very much.”
That’s a situation so far from anything I’ve ever experienced, I really don’t know what I’d do. Assuming the conception happened after I’d been a prisoner for years, Stockholm syndrome may have set in and I wouldn’t have a rational, healthy perspective anymore. If I had no way of escaping with the baby, I like to think I’d kill it to spare it from a life of pain and imprisonment, but who knows if I’d have the strength to go through with that.
Was this really necessary? I haven’t seen this movie yet.
To answer your question…I would like to think I would do exactly what those girls did and raise the child to the best of my ability with all the love and compassion I could muster through the trauma.
That said, I’ve done things I never thought I would when the rubber met the road. Who really knows what I would do?
