Jennifer Christie made national headlines in 2014 when she bravely decided to share her traumatic experience of being beaten and raped while on a business trip. In an emotional op-ed that elicited very strong reactions from pro-life and pro-choice advocates alike, Christie explained that she conceived a child during her rape and had chosen not to terminate the pregnancy.
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In the article, Christie recounted the touching moment she told her husband she was with child, and he embraced her literally and figuratively with open arms.
When I told him I was pregnant, he said with his voice calm and steady, ‘Okay. Okay… all right… this is all right.’ I asked him, ‘What do you MEAN this is all right?’ ‘I mean we can do this. We’ll get through this. It’ll be okay. And… I love babies. We’re going to have another baby. Sweetheart, this is a gift. This is something wonderful from something terrible. We can DO this.’
As Live Action reports, critics were quick to condemn Christie, calling her a “psycho” and a “whack-job,” while claiming her son was the “raper spawn of Satan.” People also accused her of lying about the rape in an effort to cover up an extramarital affair, but Christie and her family did their best to take all the negativity in stride.
“Had I decided to abort my baby and the entire article had been about exercising my right to terminate, would any of these people have taken issue?” she wrote at the time. “Would they have still called me an adulteress? No need to respond — that was rhetorical.”
Christie has been honest about the difficulties she has endured in the aftermath of her horrific experience—including surgeries and severe seizures from post-traumatic epilepsy from the beating—but she maintains that her life is far better with her son in it.
“We are infinitely richer for this child being in the world,” she wrote.
In the aftermath of the attack, police told Christie it was likely her rapist would never be caught, for “rape cases are a dime a dozen.” Three years later, however, Christie finally has a bit of closure.
Last year, Christie heard from the police that they were able to match the DNA collected from her rape kit to that of another case. The woman involved in the new case was tragically beaten, raped, and murdered by the deranged man. A few months later, a second match was found, and earlier this year, news came through that the case was now officially closed.
“When I received a third call earlier this month, I expected more of the same,” she explained in a recent interview. “And I couldn’t take it. I felt sick to my stomach. I had been devastated by this news. I felt so terribly for the women who had lost their lives and their families. I’d always just had this feeling that the man intended to kill me and while I was relieved and thrilled to be alive I felt just destroyed that other people had suffered. But this time they had good news for me. They told me my case was closed.”
Her rapist had been found dead—apparently killed by the brother of one of his victims. After so many years of heartache, Christie is relieved to know that her attacker can longer to harm to anyone else, and she feels blessed for the gift God gave her in the wake of such trauma and suffering.
“My son was never a rapist’s baby or the product of rape. He’s my child. He’s my husband’s child. He’s a child of God,” she said. “The way we’re conceived is not what determines our worth as a human being. This is my story, but it’s not a story about choice. It’s a story about innocent life which is all life, and that’s life that deserves protection.”
(H/T: Live Action)