Far From the Tree

by Solomon, Andrew

  1207 According to Encyclopedia of Rape, edited by Merrill D. Smith (2004), pages xiii–xvii, the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1780 BCE) “declared that a virgin was innocent if raped, but that her attacker should be executed. Married women who were raped were considered to be guilty of adultery and could be executed along with their attackers.” The Hittite Code of the Nesilim (c. 1650–1500 BCE) prescribed that “a woman who was raped within her own house could be executed.” The Assyrian Code of Assura (c. 1075 BCE) “permitted a husband to kill or punish his wife if she was raped.”

  1208 Rape in ancient Greece is explored in Daniel Ogden, “Rape, adultery and the protection of bloodlines in classical Athens,” in Rape in Antiquity, edited by Susan Deacy and Karen F. Pierce (1997), pages 25–41.

  1209 For more information on rape in ancient and seventeenth-century law, see “Ancient law codes,” in Encyclopedia of Rape, edited by Merrill D. Smith (2004), pages 14–15; and Else L. Hambleton, Daughters of Eve: Pregnant Brides and Unwed Mothers in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts (2004).

  1210 Rape in classical mythology is discussed in “Art,” in Encyclopedia of Rape (2004), page 15; and James A. Arieti, “Rape and Livy’s view of Roman history,” in Rape in Antiquity, edited by Susan Deacy and Karen F. Pierce (1997), pages 209–29.

  1211 See “Rape of the Sabine women,” in Encyclopedia of Rape (2004), pages 196–97; and Norman Bryson, “Two narratives of rape in the visual arts: Lucretia and the Sabine women,” in Rape: An Historical and Cultural Enquiry, edited by Sylvana Tomaselli and Roy Porter (1986), pages 152–73.

  1212 The permissibility of infanticide of rape-conceived children is discussed in John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (1998), page 200; see also “Pregnancy,” in Encyclopedia of Rape (2004), pages 154–55.

  1213 For more information on Galen’s ideas of rape and fertility, see “‘Blaming the victim’ syndrome” (pages 26–28) and “Pregnancy” (pages 154–55) in Encyclopedia of Rape (2004).

  1214 St. Augustine’s discussion of rape and humility is cited on page 251 of Corinne Saunder, “Classical paradigms of rape in the Middle Ages: Chaucer’s Lucretia and Philomenia,” in Rape in Antiquity (1997), edited by Susan Deacy and Karen F. Pierce, citing to Augustine, City of God Against the Pagans, vol. 1, edited and translated by George E. McCracken (1957).

  For Latin aficionados who wish to go to the source, here’s the Bishop of Hippo’s own words as they appear in Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 40 (1899), 1215–50: “[XXVIII] Non itaque uobis, o fideles Christi, sit taedio uita uestra, si ludibrio fuit hostibus castitas uestra. Habetis magnam ueramque consolationem, si fidam conscientiam retinetis non uos consensisse peccatis eorum, qui in uos peccare permissi sunt. Quod si forte, cur permissi sint, quaeritis, alta quidem est prouidentia creatoris mundi atque rectoris, et inscrowtabilia sunt iudicia eius et inuestigabiles uiae eius, uerum tamen interrogate fideliter animas uestras, ne forte de isto integritatis et continentiae uel pudicitiae bono uos inflatius extulistis et humanis laudibus delectatae in hoc etiam aliquibus inuidistis. Non accuso quod nescio, nec audio quod uobis interrogata uestra corda respondent. Tamen si ita esse responderint, nolite admirari hoc uos amisisse, unde hominibus placere gestistis, illud uobis remansisse, quod ostendi hominibus non potest. Si peccantibus non consensistis, diuinae gratiae, ne amitteretur, diuinum accessit auxilium; humanae gloriae, ne amaretur, humanum successit opprobrium. In utroque consolamini, pusillanimes, illinc probatae hinc castigatae, illinc iustificatae hinc emeatae.

  “Quarum uero corda interrogata respondent numquam se de bono uirginitatis uel uiduitatis uel coniugalis pudicitiae superbisse, sed humilibus consentiendo de dono Dei cum tremore exultasse, nec inuidisse cuiquam paris excellentiam sanctitatis et castitatis, sed humana laude postposita, quae tanto maior deferri solet, quanto est bonum rarius, quod exigit laudem, optasse potius ut amplior earum numerus esset, quam ut ipsae in paucitate amplius eminerent: nec istae, quae tales sunt, si earum quoque aliquas barbarica libido compressit, permissum hoc esse causentur, nec ideo Deum credant ista neglegere, quia permittit quod nemo inpune committit. Quaedam enim ueluti pondera malarum cupiditatum et per occultum praesens diuinum iudicium relaxantur et manifesto ultimo reseruantur. Fortassis autem istae, quae bene sibi sunt consciae non se ex isto castitatis bono cor inflatum extulisse, et tamen uim hostilem in carne perpessae sunt, habebant aliquid latentis infirmitatis, quae posset in superbiae fastum, si hanc humilitatem in uastatione illa euasissent, extolli. Sicut ergo quidam morte rapti sunt, ne malitia mutaret intellectum eorum, ita quiddam ab istis ui raptum est, ne prosperitas mutaret modestiam earum. Vtrisque igitur, quae de carne sua, quod turpem nullius esset perpessa contactum, uel iam superbiebant uel superbire, si nec hostium uiolentia contrectata esset, forsitan poterant, non ablata est castitas, sed humilitas persuasa; illarum tumori succursum est inmanenti, istarum occursum est inminenti.

  “Quamquam et illud non sit tacendum, quod quibusdam, quae ista perpessae sunt, potuit uideri continentiae bonum in bonis corporalibus deputandum et tunc manere, si nullius libidine corpus adtrectaretur; non autem esse positum in solo adiuto diuinitus robore uoluntatis, ut sit sanctum et corpus et spiritus; nec tale bonum esse, quod inuito animo non possit auferri; qui error eis fortasse sublatus est. Cum enim cogitant, qua conscientia Deo seruierint, et fide inconcussa non de illo sentiunt, quod ita sibi seruientes eumque inuocantes deserere ullo modo potuerit, quantumque illi castitas placeat dubitare non possunt, uident esse consequens nequaquam illum fuisse permissurum, ut haec acciderent sanctis suis, si eo modo perire posset sanctitas, quam contulit eis et diligit in eis.”

  1216 Rape in seventeenth- to eighteenth-century America is discussed in “Rape in the United States: Eighteenth century,” Encyclopedia of Rape (2004), pages 179–81; and Else L. Hambleton, Daughters of Eve: Pregnant Brides and Unwed Mothers in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts (2004).

  1217 The quotation from the Kingston British Whig occurs on page 115 of Patrick J. Connor, “The law should be her protector: The criminal prosecution of rape in upper Canada, 1791–1850,” in Sex Without Consent: Rape and Sexual Coercion in America, edited by Merrill D. Smith (2001), pages 103–35.

  1218 For more information on the rape of African slaves and disparate treatment of black and white suspects and perpetrators, see the chapter “Slavery” in Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (1975), pages 153–69; the entries “African-Americans” (pages 5–7) and “Slavery” (pages 234–36) in Encyclopedia of Rape (2004); Diane Miller Sommerville, “‘I was very much wounded’: Rape law, children, and the antebellum South,” in Sex Without Consent: Rape and Sexual Coercion in America, edited by Merrill D. Smith (2001), pages 136–77; and Diana Miller Sommerville, Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South (2004).

  1219 The legal requirement that women resist is discussed in the Encyclopedia of Rape entry “Rape in the United States: Nineteenth century,” pages 181–83.

  1220 The experience of rape-conception in the mid-twentieth century is discussed throughout Rickie Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Roe v. Wade (2000); the quotation from the mother (“If a certain male wanted to get out of being named the true father . . .”) occurs on page 73.

  1221 See the Encyclopedia of Rape entry “Freud, Sigmund/Freudian theory,” pages 82–83.

  1222 The quotations from Menachem Amir come from his study Patterns in Forcible Rape (1971). From page 254: “Reflected in women is the tendency for passivity and masochism, and a universal desire to be violently possessed and aggressively handled by men”; and page 258: “In a way, the victim is always the cause of the crime.”

  1223 See Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (1975).

  1224 Brownmiller’s call for “gender free, non-activity-specific” sexual assault laws occurs on page 378 of Against Our Will (1975).

  1225 The historic definition of rape as “an act of sexual intercourse und
ertaken by a man with a woman, not his wife, against her will and by force” occurs in the Encyclopedia of Rape entry “Rape law,” page 186. Marital rape and the marital exception are discussed in Diana E. H. Russell, Rape in Marriage (1990); David Finkelhor and Kersti Yllö, License to Rape: Sexual Abuse of Wives (1985); Jacquelyn C. Campbell and Peggy Alford, “The dark consequences of marital rape,” American Journal of Nursing 89, no. 7 (July 1989); and the Encyclopedia of Rape entries “Hale, Sir Matthew (1609–1676)” (pages 94–95) and “Marital rape” (pages 122–24).

  1226 Michel Foucault’s pronouncement “There is no difference, in principle, between sticking one’s fist into someone’s face or one’s penis into their sex” occurs in his essay “Confinement, psychiatry, prison,” in Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–1984 (1988), page 200.

  1227 For a discussion of state and federal laws on sexual assault in the United States, see the entry “Rape law” in Encyclopedia of Rape (2004), pages 186–89.

  1228 The relative severity of punishment for sexual offenses is discussed in the entry “Rape law” in Encyclopedia of Rape, pages 186–89; and Diane E. H. Russell and Rebecca M. Bolen, The Epidemic of Rape and Child Sexual Abuse in the United States (2000).

  1229 Statistics on sexual assault occur on pages 35–36 of Patricia Tjaden and Nancy Thoennes, Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence against Women Survey (2000). The CDC’s identification of rape as “one of the most underreported crimes” occurs in the news item “Sexual Assault Awareness Month, April 2005,” Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report 54, no. 12 (April 1, 2005), page 311.

  1230 This passage is based on my interview with Marina James in 2008. All names in this passage are pseudonyms.

  1231 Wolfgang Jöchle originally argued that fear might induce human ovulation in “Coitus-induced ovulation,” Contraception 7, no. 6 (1973); and Mary M. Krueger in “Pregnancy as a result of rape,” Journal of Sex Education & Therapy 14, no. 1 (1988); for a recent review of the subject, see Juan J. Tarín, Toshio Hamatani, and Antonio Cano, “Acute stress may induce ovulation in women,” Reproductive Biology & Endocrinology 8, no. 53 (2010), pages 1–13.

  1232 The estimate that as few as 3 percent of female rape victims become pregnant comes from Allen J. Wilcox et al., “Likelihood of conception with a single act of intercourse: Providing benchmark rates for assessment of post-coital contraceptives,” Contraception 63, no. 4 (April 2001), pages 211–15.

  1233 Melissa M. Holmes et al. report an increased incidence of pregnancy among rape victims who are regularly abused in “Rape-related pregnancy: Estimates and descriptive characteristics from a national sample of women,” American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology 175, no. 2 (August 1996).

  1234 The estimate that twenty-five thousand rape-related pregnancies occur annually in the United States comes from Felicia H. Stewart and James Trussell, “Prevention of pregnancy resulting from rape: A neglected preventive health measure,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 19 (November 2000); the thirty-two thousand estimate is from Melissa M. Holmes et al., “Rape-related pregnancy: Estimates and descriptive characteristics from a national sample of women,” American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology 175, no. 2 (August 1996).

  1235 For the 1996 study of child-bearing decisions made by rape victims, see Melissa M. Holmes et al., “Rape-related pregnancy: Estimates and descriptive characteristics from a national sample of women,” American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology 175, no. 2 (August 1996).

  1236 The quotation from Ana Milena Gil (“Pregnancy born of desire and fed by love . . .”) comes from her paper (with Ana Maria Jaramillo and Bertha Ortiz), “Pregnancy resulting from rape: Breaking the silence of multiple crises,” Women’s Health Collection, January 1, 2001.

  1237 The rape victim’s question “If someone shot you, would you walk around with a bullet inside of you?” comes from Natela Cutter, “‘Anne Smith’: A rape victim found relief in the abortion,” U.S. News & World Report 124, no. 2 (January 19, 1998).

  1238 The statement “The baby was innocent . . .” comes from Amy Engeler, “I can’t hate this baby,” Redbook 192, no. 4 (February 1999).

  1239 All quotations from Joan Kemp come from her article “Abortion: The second rape,” Sisterlife, Winter 1990.

  1240 The quotation from Kay Zibolsky (“The baby was part of my healing process . . .”) comes from Marie McCullough, “Abortion, rape debate,” Chicago Tribune, September 26, 1995.

  1241 The quotation from Kathleen DeZeeuw (“I began to realize that this little life inside me was struggling, too . . .”) comes from the film Children of Rape (1994).

  1242 The quotation from Sharon Bailey (“Basically, my feelings were ‘It’s just you and me, kid’”) occurs on page 86 of Victims and Victors: Speaking Out about Their Pregnancies, Abortions, and Children Resulting from Sexual Assault, edited by David C. Reardon, Julie Makimaa, and Amy Sobie (2000).

  1243 The quotation from Kathleen DeZeeuw (“The first time I held him . . .”) comes from the film Children of Rape (1994).

  1244 The quotation “I had tried to convince myself . . .” occurs on page 87 of Victims and Victors: Speaking Out about Their Pregnancies, Abortions, and Children Resulting from Sexual Assault, edited by David C. Reardon, Julie Makimaa, and Amy Sobie (2000).

  1245 The passage by Padmasayee Papineni comes from her article “Children of bad memories,” Lancet 362, no. 9386 (September 6, 2003). It has been condensed. In full: “Rape survivors have a much greater fear about intimacy and in terms of attachment dimensions, have less confidence in others’ dependability, less comfort with closeness, and more fear of abandonment. This fear of attachment manifests in the relationship with the child, and feelings of rejection by the mother towards the infant can lead to a wide range of psychological consequences in the child. A series of interviews done with children conceived through rape who lived with their mothers, revealed that the mother-child relationships formed were very traumatic, since the ’children constantly reminded mothers of the horrors of rape, and that inevitably influenced mutual relations.’”

  For the source of the quote “children constantly reminded mothers of the horrors of rape, and that inevitably influenced mutual relations,” Papineni cites to Vesna Nikoli-Ristanovi, Women, Violence and War: Wartime Victimisation of Refugees in the Balkans (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000); who in turn cites to H. Sandher and B. Johr, Befreier und Befreite (The Liberator and the Liberated) (Berlin: Kunstmann, 1992), page 94.

  1246 This passage is based on my interview with Brenda Henriques in 2007. All names in this passage are pseudonyms.

  1247 My primary source on the history of abortion law is Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973 (1997); and the Encyclopedia of Rape entry “Abortion,” pages 2–4.

  1248 The quotations from the American Medical Association come from the organization’s position statement “Pregnancy from rape does not justify abortion,” Journal of the American Medical Association 43 (August 6, 1904), page 413.

  1249 The rise in illegal abortions during the Great Depression is chronicled in chapter 5 of Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973 (1997), pages 132–59.

  1250 The suggestion that offering abortions to unmarried women and widows would result in “lowering of the moral tone” occurs in Frederick J. Taussig’s review of Abortion: Legal or Illegal? by A. J. Rongy, Birth Control Review 17 (June 1933), page 153, as cited in Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973 (1997), page 142. Taussig’s description of social and economic conditions that would justify offering abortions occurs on pages 443–44 of his book The Prevention and Treatment of Abortion (1910), as cited in Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973 (19
97), page 142. It has been condensed. In full: “In a poorly nourished woman with a large family, we must regard the saving of fetal life with less concern than in the woman who can and will carry out sanatorium treatment for the required period of time during and after her pregnancy, and for whom the saving of the child is a matter of great concern. In such women with but one or no children we may, even in active cases, refrain from intervention, while in those whose external conditions make the pregnancy and the subsequent care of the child a serious burden, we would incline more readily, even in latent cases, to an interruption.”

  The words “deserve” and “abuse,” which appear here in quotes, do not appear in Taussig, but in Reagan.

  1251 The 1938 trial of Aleck Bourne for abortion is described in Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973 (1997), page 175. Later in life, Bourne became an antiabortion advocate, serving as a founding member of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. See A Way of Life: Affirming a Pro-Life Culture in Northern Ireland (London: Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, 2002). From page 56: “In 1938, a London gynaecologist named Aleck Bourne tested the laws by performing an abortion on a 14-year-old girl who had apparently been raped by several soldiers. He gave himself up to police, was charged with an illegal abortion, and pleaded not guilty on the basis that the girl’s mental health would have been adversely affected by giving birth. Bourne was acquitted after the judge, Mr Justice Macnaughten, told the jury that the proviso permitting an abortion to save the life of the mother included in the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929 should be read back into the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. Then, controversially, he invited the jury to decide whether Dr Bourne’s declared intention amounted to ‘preserving the life’ of the young woman. The jury acquitted him and the case was never appealed.