Dear Congresswoman Ellmers,

Thank you for your service to our great country.  Thank you for your concern for trafficking victims, in particular.  In your statements, you and Ms Wasserman-Schultz both identified yourselves as women, implying that you were looking out for your demographic by introducing H.R. 398, a bill to Educate and Equip Healthcare Professionals to Recognize Signs of Human Trafficking So They Can Intercede on Patients’ Behalf.  This is admirable.


Sex trafficking is a very prevalent problem and teaching people in health care how to identify it,
is definitely one of the ways to combat it and rescue victims. 

I can more fully identify with the demographic of trafficked women.  I was conceived by rape and that knowledge made me vulnerable to traffickers. I felt worth less than others because of the continued sexual abuse and neglect.  I was first sold on my 14th birthday. Standing in three inches of slush that topped my sneakers, I met with the man who groomed me all summer long.

H.R. 36, the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act specifically singled out trafficking victims, making them vulnerable to the abortion industry.  This further violation is abhorrent.  It would serve traffickers well, keeping their victims subdued and further subjecting them to constant degradation and often brutal rapes. Covering the crime of child sexual abuse is in direct opposition to your H.R. 398. 

H.R. 36 would ban the brutal practice of killing babies after 20 weeks gestation.  Even if one were to suggest that a rape victim is detrimentally impacted by the pregnancy, which is dubious at best, can you justify the affirmation that a rape victim’s baby is somehow less of a human being than a child conceived with wine and roses?  

Does the child’s existence warrant being hacked limb from limb and having her little head crushed or her heart being pierced and injected with potassium chloride to cause an excruciating heart attack or being burned, inside and out, with saline solution?  

When the women realize what they have participated in, what will you do?  As she is reaching adulthood and learns of the level of prenatal development; that her baby was fully formed and needed only weeks to grow before he or she could be delivered and given a chance for a fruitful life, are you willing to have her further torment on your conscience?  Or when she delivers that dead baby and the compounded trauma relegates her to a lifetime of PTSD, will you be able to ignore the effects on society?

The text of H.R. 36 reads, in part, (ii) the pregnancy is the result of rape, or the result of incest against a minor, if the rape has been reported at any time prior to the abortion to an appropriate law enforcement agency, or if the incest against a minor has been reported at any time prior to the abortion to an appropriate law enforcement agency or to a government agency legally authorized to act on reports of child abuse or neglect.

As a runaway, I was arrested numerous times, Child In Need of Service requests were made to the local authorities.  This is very common among trafficked children. There is a report of abuse or neglect by definition. I did get pregnant by a man who bought me as a house pet. He demanded I have an abortion and threatened my life, if I didn’t kill my baby.  This is also common among trafficking victims.  

I implore you to work to remove the rape and incest exceptions from H.R. 36.  If you believe, as I believe, that women and children who have been victims of rape should not be further victimized, then you will work against the exceptions in the bill.  You have already demonstrated the desire to protect your demographic.  Show your courage to be their advocate in this matter.

Respectfully Submitted,

Darlene Pawlik


Follow this kind of format for all of  your educational letters. 

Darlene Pawlik is a Savethe1 speaker, Chair of the Educational Trust for NH Right  to Life and long time homeschool mom.  She resides in New England and travels to speak about trafficking, coerced abortion, and discrimination of rape-conceived victims.

I really hate politics.  The whole idea of manipulating people to achieve a goal is nauseating to me.  Playing people like chess, politicians use misinformation and disinformation far too often.

Lest you think Pro-Life advocates are pure and undiluted, let’s look at HR36.

Congress put forth a bill in 2013 called the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (PCUCPA). The Act proposed to ban abortion after 20 weeks gestation because a substantial body of scientific evidence found children of this age have increased sensitivity to pain.  At the 11th hour, Eric Cantor put in an exception for rape and incest.  He spoke on center stage at the March For Life in Washington DC, shortly thereafter. Is this an example of the kind of politics of access we find among those calling themselves ProLife?

The bill had no chance of passing and even if by some circumstance it did, the President promised to veto it.  So, what was the message?  The message is that the major Pro-Life groups are in favor of abortion for rape or incest conceived babies. Is there a question here?

In 2015, the PCUCPA was reintroduced with the exceptions intact.  Instead of using it as a conversation starter, major Pro-Life groups immediately sent out emails to their constituents, with not a word of the flaws, that this is a chance to save babies from abortion.  The flaws: rape conceived babies feel pain too, it sets guidelines for approved killing of children in the womb prior to 20 weeks, it has provisions for the dismemberment and disposal of children, if carrying them to term might cause the mother harm.

Any real doctor could deliver a baby in the latter circumstance and if the baby were too young and died as a result, there has been no intentional murder.  This is not the language of the bill in question.  These major groups surely have lawyers. Even if we were to believe that no legal person read the bill for them, I cannot get past the clear ethical violations to our Pro-Life Principles.

I am of average intelligence.  The glaring flaws of this piece of eckhumm, legislation were immediately apparent to me.  And what of those emails sent by the major Pro-Life groups? What was their purpose?  In every case, there was an appeal to help fund the fight to get more legislation like this passed.  I really find it astonishing that this is the kind of legislation we would want passed, if we are working day after day to stop the horror of abortion in our country.

Disillusioned? Me too.  This bill will not save one baby.  However, when I sent a note to request that ProLife organizations demand the exceptions be removed, I got a mindless response stating and I quote, “This will save 18,000 babies.” Really?  That’s quite a claim. Was this misinformation or disinformation and if we believe that it could possibly be true, on what basis?

This is purely political manipulation.  The hundreds of thousands of people who will be in DC for the March for Life believe in their leaders.  They flock to initiatives and conferences and send their hard-earned money to work toward an America that doesn’t promote government-sanctioned and government-funded genocide.  The Pro-Life organizations do a lot of good work toward building a culture that respects life, unless like me, that little person was conceived by rape.

Let’s think about that for a moment.  Biologically speaking, if we simply ignore the mode of conception, prenatal development doesn’t differ depending on how that baby was initially formed.  My biological father is a monster, but should I deserve the death penalty for his crime?

We are talking about 20 weeks in this discussion.  There have been many stories of babies not much older, being born and going home to a happy life.  Are we really suggesting that at the point of development when science has determined a child can feel the most excruciating pain it should be ok to kill them at all?  This is the discussion we should be having.  This is what the major Pro-Life groups should keep in front of the American people.

What if the abortion vendors promised to anesthetize the babies before hacking their arms and legs off and crushing their sculls?  That would solve the dilemma of aborting pain capable children.  No. We are not Pro-Life because we don’t want people to experience pain.  We are Pro-Life because we believe people are of inestimable value; created in the image of God.

This discussion could be just as powerful to raise funds and way more powerful to influence the culture to respect life, if it were consistent.  How logical is it to say that some crisis pregnancies involve a baby worth saving and some do not?  It completely undermines the whole point.  If we believe that children are created in the image of God, then how can we postulate the concept that there would be exceptions?

Let’s continue the conversation.  Some may say I have no right to say a woman who has conceived a child by rape should carry to term.  I have been a nurse for more than 25 years.  So, I understand that the complications of abortion vs term pregnancy are grave.  I have five children.  I had no easy pregnancies.  My first child was conceived as a result of human sex trafficking in my teens.  I know how horrible rape is.  I know what it is like to be in a crisis pregnancy and I know that you can go through to the other side with honor and dignity.

Darlene Pawlik is a Savethe1 speaker and blogger, a woman conceived by a brutal rape and sold into sex trafficking.  She turned her life over to God. She is currently on the board of Savethe1, Chair of the NHRTL Educational Trust, a practicing nurse, a wife of almost 25 years and mother of five grown children and grandmother of two.

In my experience as a nurse, there have been so many times that others in the medical field ignore the dignity of the person to whom care is delivered. For a supervisor, walking in on a bed bath or other personal procedure is no deterrent to getting their job done. “It’s just a body, I’ve seen plenty of them.” they reason. In truth, it is not just a body. There is a person in that body; a person deserving of recognition and respect.

In the ProLife arena, the same holds true. Too many see only a body count. They see mere bodies being brutally murdered. They are people, endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these the Right to Life. If we are to be truly ProLife, we need to recognize and respect the fact that these are people we are trying to protect. There’s a person in that body.

To suggest that some of those people are worthy of protection and some are not, is completely illogical, unless you are forgetting that they are people and not just bodies. It is astonishing to me that so many in the House of Representatives are so disconnected to their own innate knowledge, so as to determine that only some babies are eligible for the right to life. They undermine their own credibility, becoming elitist for the sake of expediency.

If babies have been determined to feel pain at a particular stage of development and the goal is to protect them from being horrifically brutalized to their dismemberment and death, then how could it be that not all of the babies at that stage of development deserve protection? How could the mode of their conception be relevant? Why not their ethnicity or their economic status? The arbitrary conditions in the new Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act are illogical, immoral and should be rejected.

There is either a baby worth protecting, or there is not.

Why is it that legislators believe they can maintain credibility as a Pro-Life person when they are clearly elitists, deciding who deserves to be protected and who does not?  How do they rationalize the fact that a similarly developed baby should be torn limb from limb?  Is it that it is just a vote to them?

And what of the fact that a desperate woman, seeking abortion at 5 months is probably aware that she will kill her child. If she is so desperate, will she not lie and say she was raped?  Lila Rose and Live Action have produced numerous undercover videos exposing the lies of the abortion vendors.  Will they not encourage more lies to keep their business of killing babies profitable?  Can you really believe that?

The PCUCPA is terrible as it is written. Shameful.

I oppose the Government-sanctioned, government funded killing of our neighbors and I hope others who do will see the folly of this kind of legislation.

Respectfully submitted,

Darlene Pawlik,  Savethe1 Speaker and blogger, www.theDarlingPrincess.com, and Chair of NH Right to Life Educational Trust and NHRTL PAC a woman conceived by rape, abused, trafficked and restored by God to a life of purpose and grace. She has been married for almost 25 years, has five grown children and two grandchildren.