This Mom Gave Birth at 12, after She was Raped, But She Says Her Daughter is "A Miracle"

Lisa Bourne : Dec 31, 2015
LifeSiteNews.com

"I'm proud of my mother. I want people to know that... Through love and hard work, together we've been able to turn something ugly into something wonderful."

(San Francisco, CA)—A San Francisco civil rights attorney who became a mother through rape at age 11 has spoken about the experience, saying that despite the trials of her situation, her daughter has only brought love. (File Photo via Pixabay)

Jora Trang gave birth at 12, and even though she had no understanding of the assault, or what was happening to her in its wake, she took to motherhood out of the gate.

"At the time, I had no idea that I could become pregnant from what had happened," she said. "I didn't even know what being pregnant was!"

Her pregnancy met with shame from her family, and even anger from her doctor. Her family insisted on presenting her daughter as theirs.

"Despite all that, my pregnancy was a beautiful experience," Trang said. "As my belly swelled, I had a feeling of self-awe. I felt really beautiful, because something amazing was going on inside my body. My daughter kicked a lot. I read to her in my tummy and played her classical music because I'd heard somewhere that it could make her smart."

"My daughter's birth was the most amazing experience of my life," she said in a piece from Cosmopolitan magazine, originally released in 2004 and recently republished. "The doctor handed her to me, and she was perfect. No words can describe the joy I felt at that moment."

Even though Trang's parents told her to forget about having given birth and move on, Trang remembered how she loved her daughter and monopolized her, ensuring she would be the one to develop a parental relationship with her.

"I stayed out of school for the first six months of her life to care for her," she recalled, "and it came naturally."

At 17, after years of pretending on the surface that her child was her sister, Trang left home and took her daughter, fearing for her child's safety with her father's post-traumatic stress resulting from his experience in the Vietnam war, showing up in the middle of a school day and telling her child's first-grade teacher, "I'm her mother and I'm taking her."

Years of hard work and obstacles followed, including...

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