Opinion: Vote for girls who can’t, who’ve been sexually abused, like me

Editor’s note: This column contains descriptions of sexual violence that may upset some readers. If you or anyone you know is a victim of sexual violence, you can contact The National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673). You can also reach out via online chat: online.rainn.org and in Español: rainn.org/es.
In 1976, Jimmy Carter defeated incumbent Gerald Ford to become president. I was 6.
It was dark. A TV on top of a chest of drawers broadcast the election results. I was in my mother and her boyfriend’s bed watching. My mother was at work on the third shift at a plastics plant. I had fallen asleep.
That night, I was raped for the first time by a man whom my family trusted. He took my pink flannel pajama bottoms off and sexually abused me. I cried. I had no idea what was happening.
It would be the first time of many over the next eight years. And 48 years later, it might as well have been yesterday.
This is incredibly unpleasant to write about it. I am tense and sick to my stomach as I type. I don’t like remembering. I tried to write about it in a fiction writing class in college ‒ figuring I could hide the truth in the fiction name. I dropped the class after writing the first chapter. Too much, too soon.
My story of survival (I guess that’s what it is) reminds me that victims who get pregnant are judged and shamed, and now with the limitations of and politicizing around abortion rights, they’re denied a choice about a situation forced on them.
I was lucky in one way. Somehow, I didn’t get pregnant. Somehow, I didn’t have to deal with that ‒ to figure out how to get rid of a pregnancy or decide to carry my rapist’s child. I don’t want that choice to be taken away from any girl or woman. It will be taken from even more of us if we don’t fight for it.
Watching the historic 2024 presidential election play out has made it even more clear that this year’s election is about women’s rights more than anything for so many voters. Considering that, I decided to tell my story and the details I had never shared with anyone until recently. I worry for all the girls out there who are dealing with or will deal with a similar nightmare.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022, the abortion choice has been taken away for so many women. Since the decision, 13 states have made abortion illegal, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. 
I imagine a child ‒ like I was ‒ having to carry a child that was forced upon them in a horrific way. Having to be a teenage mother. Having to deal with that in addition to the rape.
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Nearly half of all rape survivors were first raped as minors, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to the Children’s Assessment Center in Houston, adult retrospective studies show that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men were sexually abused before they turned 18. That means there are more than 42 million adult survivors of child sexual abuse in the United States.
It is estimated that 73% of child victims do not tell anyone about the abuse for at least a year, 45% of victims do not tell anyone for at least five years and, of course, some never disclose at all.
I was one of those who didn’t tell anyone until I was a teenager ‒ and didn’t tell some in my immediate family until I was in my 30s.
I’m scared of what I don’t remember. And I worried my family would be mad at me for writing this.
I recently spoke with my siblings and my stepmom (later she adopted the four of us she didn’t give birth to – we were adults) about me telling my story so publicly. Everyone was supportive.
I remember how it felt at 6 years old. He told me it was OK because he loved me. I knew it was wrong and this wasn’t love. He was an adult, and I was supposed to listen to him.
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I used to ask God why this was happening. I used to talk to God. I used to think, “Well, if this has to happen to someone in my family, it should be me.”
I can only speak for myself, but I imagine that’s the frame of mind so many young women and girls are in when they face this type of abuse. Why?
I never thought about the fact that I could have gotten pregnant, not until later in life. The thought of it makes me ill. That’s why it’s unfathomable to consider forcing anyone to be a mother, let alone a girl who was abused.  
I write this hoping that someone else, even one person, feels heard.
I write this hoping that someone else, even one person, considers someone like me, someone who didn’t have to make a choice and those who do, those who can’t choose now, those who might not be able to choose depending on the outcome of the election.
J. Kyle Foster has been a journalist for 35 years, the last 15 months with the USA TODAY Network for The News-Press and Naples Daily News.