I'm From Alabama And Gave Birth To My Child's Rapist Because I Could not Get An Abortion

I will tell you what I know of the way silence grows roots inside of a person, which is a brutal, crushing vacancy where a voice should be.

I was 17 when I was raped by a classmate. He was someone I knew, someone I trusted, but in the end, none of that mattered. I would not be pregnant until I was pregnant as a result of the assault. My daughter, Zoe, would grow with a fatal congenital birth defect that took away her ability to think, or emote, or connect to the world in all the fundamental ways that make a life worth living.

I was forced to give birth to the child of this rape, always connected in some way to the man who was so much of me. I lived in Alabama, which this week welcomed a draconian new abortion law, but the state's politicians have never seen it. To them, we are collateral in a game of politics, and the suffering they inflict matters very little – if at all – to them. They have no interest in perspective or stories like my own, but I must speak – or else the woman behind me might not.

It starts with a man at a water park in Destin, Florida, and I'm 9 years old. He grabs his inner tube as he passes by, reaches under and sticks his fingers up between my thighs. His thumb strokes against me. I look over at him, shocked. I want to scream, but he smiles back at me. His eyes are everywhere I am. He says, reassuringly, "Looked like you were drifting off, just thought I'd help," and lets me go. I float like flotsam, jetsam down the Lazy River, and the space between my legs is burning, my heart is pounding, but I say nothing because he was just trying to help.

Second semester, freshman year of high school, I am waiting for my mother to pick me up. A boy I've never got me down, behind me and grabs my ass. I stumble forward, my head whipping around in time to see him sprinting towards the gym. "It was a dare!" He shouts back at me, as if it gives me reason and excuse to have me under his hands,

There is a boy whom I dance with at the military ball in my sophomore year. The following Monday at school he begins stalking me. He follows me to my classes even though I never tell him my schedule, asks me who knows where I live, I feel myself alone in the courtyard and tries to kiss me. He writes violent stories about me in class after I reject him. In these stories, he has my throat for my deceit, for leading with smiles and kindness. "He's done that to half of us in this class," the other girls explain. "The teachers will not do anything."

These men are not my rapist. Neither are the men who begin to get their hands on their windows, starting when I'm 13, who shout the things they want to do to me – and whitings are piercing and lecherous, and always reminding me you are on display, before driving off. No, they are not my rapist, but each of them takes something from me – starting with my agency, my dignity, my sense of safety. They plant little seeds of self-doubt that grow unchecked; the roots spread outward, the silence flows into me, and into my mouth. Slowly, excruciatingly, I am alienated from myself.

This is not the first occasion, but we must revisit the origins of trauma. I must continue to draw the poison from the wound if I want to see you there. I refuse to let the infection spread, can not stay on my tongue.

Here we are again, back at the Before: I am 17 years old, I am a junior in high school. The darkness in my kitchen is beaming at me like an open mouth. My body is bent against granite. The corner of the table is a constant stinging presence against my stomach. A hand, not my own, is around my throat – all 10 fingers dug in like claws. They are hands that I trusted, the hands of a boy from my Algebra II class. I try to reconcile the hands pushing down my shorts, wrapping around my throat, holding me still, with the hands that brushed up when I reach for a pencil or a piece of gum.

My pulse is churning, my own blood is a hostage in my veins. I do not know how we have been studying quadratic equations and watching a movie. When his fingertips crept down the inseam of my shorts, I knew that something bad was about to happen – a gut instinct. They call it that because you feel it first, you have a stomach upside down in your stomach, and it burns there.

I do not know what he was thinking about, if I got him into my body or my initial reticence when I got up and moved away. I am so accustomed to this point to men who turn and run away I can not follow my path in the kitchen, and even if it is happening – visceral, undeniable – I still can ' Do not believe it's happening. The throb of life is trapped inside me, and I'm trapped inside me, and my body is heavier than it has ever been. My teeth grind together – but my spine, it folds over so easily, a burnt matchstick crumpling under a thumb.

I feel every bit of flesh and bone – feel my shadow where it 's pressed flat against the wall. And life is starting and horrible and inescapable in this moment, and my mind is still a part of my body but I do not want to be. His body is in mine, but I do not want it to be, and somewhere amid it, I notice that my mother was too tired to throw away.

I'm shouting, right? Yes. I do it silently though. I do not use words. I make myself small. I trap the things I mean to say Stay there, do not move, and he says, "Stay there, do not move." I keep my eyes cast to the ground. I tether myself to places I do not belong: the white tile, the crack running through it. I think I'm going to be one of the two, and I think it's so quiet and so much so.

It is this I remember most: the moment of division when I go limp, the fight evacuates my body, and the rest of me goes with it. The hand around my throat falls away. I watch myself from the other side of the room. I am here, and she – both me, and absolutely not – there, and we are no longer the same. We say, "You're not alone," when this happens, but in this moment I am alone. I am locked inside a moment from which I can not leave, and I'm going to leave you there, and what is left behind is the great gaping maw of shame and silence.

It effectively dispossesses me of my voice. After, I'm afraid, always worried my attacker will come back for me. I would like to see him from the parking lot and tell me to speak to him that night out loud, because I would rather bear this shame than endure the indignity and violation all over again.

I'm getting pregnant from this rape, but I will not know it's too much late. I lose weight. It is not uncommon for me to go without a cycle because I am an athlete, and have an undiagnosed hormonal disorder that I will not know about for more years.

I walk and speak and smile, but I'm convinced that I'm living in the kitchen, and my world is no longer real. I am paralyzed the moment reality tries to assert itself. I have the constant, repeated compulsion to climb atop a building, to step off and let the ground rise to meet me. This is my first thought when the pregnancy test comes back positive. The doctor tells me that the baby is eight months along, and I am climbing to the top of a skyscraper.

It diagnoses my unborn daughter with hydranencephaly, explaining how to cure cerebrospinal fluid. The only reason for this is that it is the most important reason for the survival of life. If she is born, she will suffer and die so very, very young – and I step off the ledge.

The doctor tells me that, I can not receive an abortion that will prevent this pain – both hers and my own. Alabama does not make exceptions for these cases at this stage of pregnancy, and it is beyond my family's means – and I fall down and down.

I give birth to Zoe on Oct. 27, 2005. I am 18, my legs are spread in front of a full room of doctors as I push her out into the world. She does not cry at all, but she breathes, and my mother cries. They wait to see if they will die and I violently thrust my mind out of my body. I can not be here for this. I can not stay in this room. I watch the second hand on the clock tick tick tick.

When they finally bring her over to me, I can not bear my eyes to linger there. I do not want to love her because I am so far away, but I love her anyway. She is blind, deaf, unable to suck, she is already expiring, but she does so much faster.

I have a front row seat to my daughter's suffering for an entire year – the grievance moves towards the day, merciless and unstoppable. Every other moment until her final one, she lives in pain. I wake up to change her diaper in the morning and I find it an angry red rash that had not been there. I apologize to her, my tears falling on the collar of her asia I smear hydrocortisone on her. Even this spell of stimulus to the bread and butter of a seizure. Her legs stiffen, her body locks so tight I'm afraid her bones will break. She is diagnosed with diabetes insipidus. She has got her place in the vein along her skull, because every other day has been touched. Her body is swollen from being unable to regulate its own fluids. She hardly looks like herself. I hold her hand in my open palm, stroking over the distention of her skin. I can not make out her tiny knuckles.

I am afraid of falling back with Zoe because of reflux, even medicated, is so severe that the risk of aspiration makes it unsafe for her to sleep prostrate. Zoe can not cry, so she can not let us know if she has vomited. We always have her in our arms. I sit with my back against the headboard of the bed, I clutch to my chest to keep warm, and I stare out into the dark corners of my room. My fingertips press against the pulse on Zoe's wrist and I count the beats to stay awake.

Zoe – every inch of her life runs like sand between my fingers. Do you think I am not preoccupied by it? Can you fathom how many times I held my daughter in my arms and felt like a monster because I could offer her no respite? I'm blaming myself – even now I'm coming back to the days after my rape. I wish I could go back and pry open my mouth, make the words come out so that my mother, asleep in her bedroom, would like to know what was happening in my kitchen and come to my rescue – and ultimately Zoe's rescue. But are not solutions to disasters always that way afterward – obvious?

Zoe's Heart Stops Beating on March 6, 2007, in a hospital emergency room. We'll never know if it was the seizures or the fever that started in the night, but she slips away between one moment and the next. At night I stand in that same kitchen, the epicenter of my silence, and I stare down the contents of the medicine cabinet, wondering how much I would need to take to go to sleep and never wake up. I am only 19 years old, but it seems to be over, the world and my life and the future I once knew. I think then that I will never look at my body and see a body – I will always see a crime scene. I'll never be done feeling violated. I'll never be done with the grievance. I will be here – they are my constant companions.

This is how we treat the women where I live – here in Alabama my body, never ever been forced to endure my and never once felt the residue of my violation divinely compelled to appropriate my autonomy. I feel such anger and sadness at their limits, their inability to perceive reality, and their willingness to leverage our lives and well-being in exchange for a "red meat" vote.

The new Alabama abortion ban has nothing to do with mercy or the preservation and sanctity of life. The politicians in this state of mind have not expired children. They do not care a child is wanted, fed, loved and provided for. They do not care about the things they thrust on the shoulders of women and children, and they do not care about the fallout.

Our politicians express their desire to understand the destructive nature of silence in victims of rape and incest, and instead base their law on their idealistic fantasies of how they feel in crisis. This willful ignorance is a violence in and of itself. It makes my skin crawl and my stomach turn that another trespasser has inserted themselves into some part of me, without even touching me, without being forced to confront my voice before speaking over it. This is not compassion, this is cowardice. They dishonor us all.

I am not ashamed to say that if I had been given the option of a so-called "later-term" abortion, I would have taken it. I know the value of being given a choice because I know what it is. It should have been my decision, and certainly not that of some faceless interloper who will never experience my reality, or Zoe's.

I would have done anything – anything at all Zoe's relentless suffering. I have been told this is selfish. I have been called cruel. I have been called a monster. I have been called unthankful for not having loved each other with my child. But explain to me how do you do it? I'm going to live in my life, I'm not going to be happy.

Hilarious and brilliant daughters who are hilarious and so full of light. One day Will I be allowed to go to this world, to my hands can not reach, and how will I protect them then? I can not hide with my body forever. I find myself speaking more and more, adding my voice to the multitude, because I do not want to be the things that happened to me. I do not want them to feel that insidious burden of silence, not when my words could reach out and make a noise.

Here in Alabama I often am said that when a person becomes pregnant, it is no longer their body. I must disagree. I have lived in this body for 31 years, I know its limitations and its triumphs. I am beginning, just now, to relearn the sound of my voice. I know the cost of every bone-deep scar, and I carry the weight of those scars because I have been given no other choice. No one else can bear my scars for me. This is my body, and I know what it is to have my body invaded.

Now tell me, am I truly not my own?

Dina Zirlott is a 31-year-old stay-at-home mother. She lives in Mobile, Alabama, with her husband and three young daughters. In her spare time, she likes to bake and decorate cakes with a highly questionable level of expertise – and taste.

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