SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019 | MOTHER JONES 33PLAN Cmake them more politically palatable. Yet
before the final vote on the Alabama bill,
Republican lawmakers made clear that
in the event the Supreme Court upholds
the ban, they’d prefer its restrictions be
as expansive as possible. Some legislators
expressed misgivings. “Even if this is just
a legal strategy, I also have a 16-year-old
daughter. Would I want her to carry a
baby from a rape?” state Sen. Cam Ward
wondered aloud to the Washington Post.
“That’s where my stomachache comes in...
That’s where folks feel real sick about this.”
Both Kiessling and Jessica support
Alabama’s new abortion ban, but they be-
lieve such laws need to go hand in hand
with more protections for rape survivors.
After public outcry and criticism of the
ban’s lack of rape exceptions, lawmakers
passed a measure terminating custody
rights for convicted rapists, but only for
first-degree assault or incest.
And Senator Ward’s ambivalence
shows the contradiction in Kiessling’s
agenda: many women impregnated
through rape who would otherwise
get an abortion will be forced to carrytheir pregnancies to term. “Closing
these loopholes misses the point for
what some women want,” says Mary
Ziegler, a legal scholar who has written
two books on the fight over abortion.
Alabama’s custody protections won’t
help Jessica, whose abuser was never
charged. She would like to ask state law-
makers to update the statute to use the
clear and convincing evidence standard.
“There are so many people who [the bill]
is not helping,” Jessica says. “Right now we
are telling them, ‘You have to have your
baby and you’re going to be tied to your
rapist for the rest of your life.’”
Kiessling is trying to provide that
opportunity. She is working with an
Alabama legislator to strengthen the
custody law and hopes Jessica can tes-
tify in support of a new bill. “Because
they think this doesn’t happen. They
need to have Jessica in front of them,
saying, ‘You really believe this is right?’
You are going to tell this woman that?”
Meanwhile, Kiessling is turning her
attention to closing the parental rights
loopholes that remain in most states,including in Kentucky and Ohio, which
still require sexual assault convictions
before parental rights can be termi-
nated. “It is frustrating because they
think, ‘Well, we just passed a law on
this,’ and I have to explain to them, ‘No,
you didn’t, because you require a rape
conviction.’” She’s pushing lawmakers in
her home state of Michigan to introduce
the Pregnant Rape Victim Act, which
would prohibit judges from letting an
accused rapist plea down to attempted
rape if the victim gets pregnant. If the
act passes, it would be one of the first
of its kind and would prevent cases like
Tiffany’s from happening again.
Tiffany is supportive of the initiative
and wants to be involved in pushing it
forward. “I was raped several times,”
she says. “Once by my rapist, and twice
by the courts.” QThis story was made possible with the sup-
port of the Solutions Journalism Network
and the International Women’s Media
Foundation. Additional research and re-
porting by Marisa Endicott.Lawyer Rebecca
Kiessling has spent
the last 12 years
advocating laws that
terminate rapists’
parental rights.