Simply yet brilliantly written, and powerful beyond words:

At 14, It Was No ‘Gift From God’, Trust Me

My father saw it as his mission to train me in my job as a woman – to sexually please men. I could go into details about the abuse, but that’s not the point of this post. (I spent my early 20s in intense therapy, up to three times a week, and I can say that PTSD is not a life-sentence.) At age 14 my father impregnated me
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Perhaps my ‘magical lady parts’ hadn’t yet learned the whole ‘shut it down’ trick; perhaps I lived in the real world and not in fantasy land. But in no world and at no time was that fetus a gift from God.

Fortunately for me, my father was only crazy in one way. He liked to have sex with minor girls; he didn’t want them to give birth. He took me to the “abortionist”

The writer goes on to provide a righteous, thorough smackdown of the whole “God meant it to happen” idiocy:

Anyway, that God (should s/he exist) allows evil to happen is unquestionable. That does not make it his/her intent – if you accept that God created free will. If you don’t accept free will then I guess that if I go out and castrate every guy with a glint in his eye that I don’t like that would be God’s gift as well. Bullpucky. As a parent, I allowed my children to climb on monkey bars. That my daughter fell and broke her arm was an accident – not my intent and certainly not my ‘gift’ to her. That my son didn’t fall was also an accident – he actually didn’t tend to climb as high at as young an age (he sledded into a fence post for a concussion instead). My actions and intent were the same in both cases - age appropriate supervision of risk-taking and dealing with the consequences of choices and random chance.

And then she describes a phenomenon I myself have observed, especially from those who call themselves “conservatives:”

I am astounded, far more than I should be, at the inability of some people to consider circumstances beyond their own experience. I wonder, should, God forbid, Mourdock’s wife be impregnated through stranger rape, would he raise that child with love as God’s gift to him? I certainly don’t wish such a tragedy on the woman, but I wonder what it would take for Mr. Mourdock to consider seriously the pain that others live with on a daily basis.

I guess “empathy” is something unconstitutional and socialist, if you remember the rightwing drooling freakout when Pres. Obama dared use the word. It certainly explains the present GOP attitudes toward women.

I know that some rape survivors do choose to keep a child due to their own beliefs (or through lack of choice) and I can imagine that it would be possible for such women to take comfort in the thought that this was “God’s gift” to turn a horrible experience into something positive. I would never take that belief from them. I just wish the religious right would do me the favor of giving my experience and beliefs the same respect I give theirs.

Seriously, read the whole thing, and consider sharing it as much as possible. It deserves to go viral, so perhaps just enough people who need to pay attention finally will.