How Do Women Who Become Pregnant as a Result of Rape and Raise Their Child Make Sense of This Experience?

Despite thousands of women giving birth to children who were conceived as a result of rape each year, there is a lack of research into the experiences of these women and therefore little evidence base for how they can be best supported. Each time a societal conversation about reproductive rights and access to abortion emerges, conception as a result of rape is centred as the primary example of the need for access to abortion. The lack of discussion or curiosity about the experiences of women who conceive a child as a result of rape outside of this emotive debate, for example to consider how women who conceive as a result of rape and raise their child can be supported, inadvertently creates a narrative that these children would be impossible to keep and that women in this circumstance would only want to choose abortion.

Taking a critical feminist stance, I used thematic analysis to analyse two long-form semi-structured interviews conducted by myself and six first-person accounts by women who had raised a child who was conceived as a result of rape that were available online.

The following themes were identified in the thematic analysis of the interviews conducted with women: 1. ‘‘Conceiving’ a Child as a Result of Rape’, 2. ‘Having the Child is a Good Thing’ and 3.‘Support Needs to be Informed by Understanding of the Context’. The main themes identified from the thematic analysis of the first-person accounts available online were: 1.‘Making sense of the conception whilst navigating social judgment’, 2. ‘Women Need Choices’ and 3. ‘Having the Child is a Good Thing’. These thematic analyses were considered alongside each other in the discussion to answer the research question under three main themes: 1. ‘Social Expectations Compound the Difficulties’, 2. ‘Love, Motherhood and Survival’ and 3. Women need Autonomy and Access to Support’. The first theme addresses some of the challenges experienced by women who conceive a child as a result of rape and the ways that the societal response can add layers of complexity. The second considers the ways in which women identified having their child and becoming a mother as part of their surviving the trauma of having been raped. The third theme highlights the importance of autonomous choice and support for women who conceive a child as a result of rape, from pregnancy through to raising their child.

The current research reveals the extent to which conception as a result of rape is not discussed with women or children that have personal experience of the circumstance, either in public discourse or research. It is posited that the idea that children who are conceived as a result of rape are unloveable is an unidentified rape-myth, which denies women access to supportive conversations at the decision-making stage when they conceive a pregnancy as a result of rape. The results of the thematic analysis are considered alongside previous literature and broad indications for policy, services and practitioners are discussed. Recommendations for future research are also offered, which largely centre around acknowledging the dearth of research and as such, poor understanding of this topic, pointing to a need for extensive additional research.