Rep. Cori Bush opens up about getting an abortion after being sexually assaulted as a teenager: 'You don't know my story'
Oma Seddiq | Publié le
- Rep. Cori Bush shared her experience of being sexually assaulted and getting an abortion when she was a teenager.
- "I felt like there was no mercy," Bush told Vanity Fair in a new interview.
- Bush will speak publicly about her story during a congressional hearing on Thursday.
- See more stories on Insider's business page .
Rep. Cori Bush in a new interview published Wednesday opened up about her personal experiences of being sexually assaulted and getting an abortion when she was a teenager.
The Missouri Democrat was 17 years old when she learned that she became pregnant with a man who assaulted her, she told Vanity Fair.
"I just remember I was laying there and I just didn't know what was happening…I couldn't make it make sense," Bush told the magazine about her assault that took place in 1994 at an annual church trip in Jackson, Mississippi.
When a mutual friend informed the man about the pregnancy, he laughed, the lawmaker said.
"So then I realized, Okay, I'm on my own with this thing," she told the magazine, adding that she then had to book multiple appointments at a local clinic to get an abortion.
"It was a very, very cold situation," Bush said of her interactions with the clinic's staff. Before the procedure, she said she was required to attend a counseling session, in which the counselor spoke "very belittling and degrading" to her and encouraged her to terminate her pregnancy.
Upon arriving and leaving the clinic, Bush was also bombarded by anti-abortion protestors, she said.
"I remember thinking…You're yelling at me, but you don't know my story. You're not going to help me with this baby if I had the baby. I felt like there was no mercy, coming from people that didn't even know me," Bush told Vanity Fair.
Beyond protecting abortion rights, Bush highlighted the need to address the different treatment that Black women face in the healthcare system compared to their white counterparts.
The progressive lawmaker plans to share her story - one that she's "never fully told publicly before" - at a congressional hearing on abortion rights on Thursday, she said in a tweet on Wednesday.
"And I am not ashamed," Bush said.
The congresswoman's comments come as Republican-led states across the country are trying to pass restrictions on abortion. Democrats have sharply criticized a recently enacted Texas law that bans the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, a time when many women do not yet know they are pregnant.
Starting December 1, the Supreme Court will review a major abortion case that could threaten Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.
Via PakApNews