Hadley Duvall’s Boundless Courage
When Roe v. Wade was overturned in June of 2022, the summer before my junior year of college, I realized it was up to me to decide what to do with that anger and hurt I was feeling. It was a harsh reminder that my abuse might’ve been over, but my story wasn’t.
Instead of just pulling away and being angry at the world, I shared my personal story of abuse in a post on Facebook to my family and friends. I said, “I was repeatedly raped by my stepfather as a child and became pregnant when I was 12. At the time, I had the choice to get an abortion—I never had to go through with my decision, but I would have. If you think something like this can’t happen to you or your family, it can—and I’m proof.”
I attended a Christian college in Midway, Kentucky and am from a very conservative family and community, so when I wrote the post, I was definitely nervous. It was something I hadn’t really talked about a lot; so much of my family knew me during the time my abuse was happening, especially during the pregnancy [and my subsequent miscarriage] and had no idea what was going on. That wasn’t their fault, but it made it a lot harder to discuss.
After I posted, I didn’t look at Facebook for a while. I stayed off my phone. I was just like, “It’s already out there. It's going to go in whatever direction it goes in. There's nothing I can do about it now.” But once I checked the post, I saw that it had been shared and shared and shared. So many people commented on it or reached out to tell me that the post changed their outlook on abortion access, and I was blown away. That also gave me hope that it would help other people speak up about their abuse.
I used the uproar surrounding my story to continue to talk about it. I went public with it beyond my Facebook following in a couple of interviews and also attended some pro-choice marches. I realized that if you look back in history, you don’t see a lot of interviews or speeches where women openly say the words abortion or rape. It’s so important to let women and girls who have been assaulted to know: You didn’t do anything wrong. What do you have to be quiet for? Whose peace are you keeping other than everybody’s around you?
The next year, in 2023, Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, was up for reelection. His team contacted me and said, “We’ve seen your story. We know who you are. You’re strong, you’re amazing. Would you want to tell your story for of our reelection campaign?” It was four-minute phone conversation, and I was like, “Absolutely.” I didn’t think, “Hold on, let me call my mom real quick” or “Hold on, let me go make sure this isn’t going to cause any drama in my family,” because for so long I had been quiet for everybody else. I had kept the calm for everybody, and it was my turn.
I started working with the governor and shot a few ad campaigns and appeared at some rallies with him. That was how I got my feet wet in politics. I came from a split family when it came to their political ideologies, so it wasn’t something that was talked about a lot in my household and it wasn’t something that I had been educated on a whole lot outside of school. I was a little bit terrified, and I was really leaning on Governor Beshear and his team; they guided me. Anything I needed, they were there. It gave me a lot of confidence that Governor Beshear was willing to say, “I am running in a ruby-red state, and I’m already a Democrat. I’m already trying to beat some odds, and I’m going to run on something very controversial.” And he did that loudly and proudly.
This year, when Biden was still the Democratic nominee for president, the Biden-Harris campaign team reached out to me. I was really excited because I knew that Kamala, specifically, has always championed reproductive rights. They asked me to do an ad, and this time I had some family members warn me not to do it. They said I was going to open myself up to a lot of hate and open the door for a lot of people to be in my business. I said, “So let them. There’s nothing that they will find that I haven’t already spoken about.” As much as I love my family and I don’t hold anything against them, I got me through my trauma. I got me through those nights. I thought, if there is an opportunity for someone to get on a presidential platform and speak to the nation about what survivors of sexual assault go through, if not me, then who?
I turned off all of that noise around me and said, “These people see me. I am from little old Kentucky. I made a Facebook post, barely had a social-media following, and these people who have power saw me and reached out to me. Now it’s my turn.” And that’s really what I stand on. That's really what keeps me going. That’s my platform—and who can I bring up here with me to do the same?
Once Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president, I was so excited to work with her campaign. She knows that abortion access is an issue that needs to be solved and that people’s lives are actually depending on it. There is no time for hate. It’s time for action and plans, and that’s what Kamala is trying to put into place. She gave me my biggest platform yet when she invited me to tell my story onstage at the Democratic National Convention.
Survivors don’t stay quiet because we want to. We have internal battles of when to speak out. We get angry with ourselves, like, “Why can’t we do this? It’s not, “Oh, I kept it a secret just so I didn’t have to deal with the legal process.” It’s way deeper than that. So every time I speak, it’s a little bit more of hearing myself, seeing myself, and also making other people hear and see me too.
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