The 2012 presidential election seemed to hover around social and moral issues more than anything else. In August, a particularly interesting story was that of Shauna Prewitt. As shown in her CNN coverage, Shauna was raped while in college. As a result, she conceived a child which she decided to keep. Word of her story began to grow while she was speaking out against comments made by Republican senator candidate Todd Akin. As reported by the New York Times article, Akin claimed women could not get pregnant during what he called “legitimate rape.” That, “to his knowledge woman had a way of shutting their bodies down to prevent conception.” I’m going to go ahead and say that I disagree and find that comment ignorant. Of course, there is absolutely NO medical evidence to back up his claim.

            Ridiculous as that situation was, it helped bring Shauna’s story and a disturbing issue to the forefront. While awaiting trial, Shauna was served with custody papers. The man who allegedly raped her was suing for parental rights to her daughter. Many of us never think about a situation like this actually happening. If it did, of course we assume there would be no chance of a rapist actually gaining parental rights over a child. However, after doing some research Shauna discovered that there are very few laws out there that could prevent that from happening. A map used on motherjones.com shows which laws are in place for each state regarding a rapist claiming legal rights for custody and even visitations with the child. One of the saddest and scariest aspects about these cases is that rapists and their lawyers have actually been using this as a tactic in their favor to lower sentencing. In a “The Meddin Law Firm” article they state “The rapist will allow the victim to have full custody if they don’t prosecute him for the crime of rape. Rapists do this as a bargaining tool, asserting their power over their victims.” In other words, the easiest way for women in this situation to rid themselves of their attacker and to protect their child is to allow their rapist to go free. If the woman does choose to pursue the trial, even if her rapist is found guilty of the crime, the woman could still be forced to co-parent their child with them. Of course, they can go to court seeking sole custody for their child, but as the Shauna Prewitt case shows, this can be a long and expensive nightmare that many women don’t have the time and money to fight.

            I definitely feel these laws need to be enforced across the states. It is terrible that women who have already had such a traumatic experience should also fear something like this happening to them. Shauna, as a lawyer, has been a driving force in appealing to states to pass more laws to help remove parental rights from rapists. She wrote a very extensive paper on the issue and since its publication by the Georgetown Law Journal in 2010 three more states have passed these laws. This is a huge issue in my eyes. Our legal system is in a sad state when we cannot prevent a victim from being blackmailed by their assailant in order to go free. I believe by committing the crime of rape someone is giving up their rights to be anywhere near a child and that there should be laws in place that prevent it, regardless of the situation.