{"id":230424,"date":"2020-09-09T18:20:41","date_gmt":"2020-09-09T23:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=230424"},"modified":"2020-09-08T23:30:26","modified_gmt":"2020-09-09T04:30:26","slug":"military-abort-raped-heal-sexual-assault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/military-abort-raped-heal-sexual-assault\/","title":{"rendered":"Military women who abort after being raped must heal from sexual assault first, says veteran"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Support After Abortion<\/a>‘s first ever Healing Network Virtual Conference<\/a>\u00a0featured\u00a0Jody Duffy<\/a>, the group’s new Military and Veterans Coordinator<\/a> who works to “expand the outreach to military personnel and veterans globally.” On a recent Facebook Live event, Duffy shared her personal story of undergoing an abortion after experiencing military sexual trauma (MST) and emphasized the need for organizations working with post-abortive women to determine if they are veterans or active military personnel in order to screen them for MST.<\/p>\n

Unhealed MST can directly impede women’s ability to heal from abortion, as the abortion healing process can trigger that past military sexual trauma experience. Duffy emphasized that in order to heal from abortion, women first need to experience healing from military sexual trauma\u00a0even if<\/em> the abortion was not directly related to the MST.<\/p>\n

According to Support After Abortion’s “Healing for Military Veterans” page<\/a>, an estimated 20-40%<\/strong> of females in the armed forces experience rape or attempted rape during their military careers.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Abortion is not an act of compassion for women pregnant after rape<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Duffy stated that she went to officer candidate school to get a commission in 1980, just four years after the integration of men and women in the military. Just a few weeks from the end of the program, she and several fellow female soldiers went to the Officers Club to socialize one weekend. There, she met an officer who had been commissioned in the class one year ahead of hers. They went out that weekend, and the weekend following, and during that second weekend, he raped her.<\/p>\n

Having moved to a different base several weeks later after receiving her commission as an officer, Duffy met another officer who wanted to date her. When she told him about her sexual assault, he agreed to be just friends. Shortly thereafter, she suspected that she was pregnant from the rape, and when the pregnancy was confirmed, her new friend arranged for and drove her to an abortion facility 80 miles away for an abortion. Duffy got a doctor’s note to be exempted from physical training for a few weeks, but otherwise she said she “went back to work like nothing happened.”<\/p>\n

While Duffy met her husband not long after, telling him of her traumatic experiences “within the first two weeks” of dating “because I didn’t want it to be a secret,” she did not speak of her abortion to anyone else for 19 years until she began experiencing sudden and unexpected grief.<\/p>\n

At a March for Life event in Atlanta in early 2000, she received information about abortion recovery healing, and as she healed from her own abortion, she came to realize there was a need for women who have abortions following military sexual trauma to heal from the MST first. She cautioned that “an abortion healing program will trigger [the traumatic memories of the assault]. They need to be healed from that first.”<\/p>\n