A few months after Jessica Stallings’ 13th birthday, her uncle raped her for the first time. He was 20 years old, and he lived with Stallings and her mother in their Alabama home. He kept raping her, she claimed in court documents, and by the time she was 19, she had three children from the encounters. They married briefly when she was 20, and she filed for divorce a few months later.

Today Stallings is in her early 30s, but she hasn’t been able to fully escape her rough childhood: After their divorce, a court granted him visitation rights so he could regularly see the kids—forcing her to repeatedly face the man she says tormented her.

Each year, between 7,750 and 12,500 children are conceived from rape nationwide, according to Justice Department estimates, which are likely low because many attacks are not reported. Family custody lawyers say rapists sometimes push for parental rights to try to dissuade mothers from pressing for criminal charges, or after being asked to pay child support. Most states have laws on the books to allow courts to terminate or restrict rapists’ parental rights under certain conditions. Alabama, where Stallings still lives, had long been an outlier: Until recently, it was one of just two states (along with Minnesota) that never passed such a law.

“If we’re going to ban abortions, we need laws in place for rape victims.”
But in the past several weeks, after lawmakers in the state outlawed abortion in cases of rape or incest, the issue has received renewed attention. “If we’re going to ban abortions, we need laws in place for rape victims,” Stallings, who supports the ban, told AL.com, a local news outlet. “We’re not encouraging them to go through with their pregnancies if we’re telling them they have to be constantly bound to their rapist because they conceived.”

Last week, the Alabama Legislature approved “Jessi’s Law,” a bill that would let courts in the state terminate the parental rights of some rapists. Gov. Kay Ivey had until Wednesday to veto the bill and didn’t, which means it is now law.

The Alabama law only applies to cases where the abuser has been convicted of first-degree rape or incest that resulted in the conception of a child. Lawmakers have argued in the past that this requirement serves as a safeguard, to ensure men are not falsely accused and stripped of their parental rights without a guilty verdict in court. But family custody attorneys argue this will limit who will be protected by the law, since so many rapes are unreported or underprosecuted. Out of every 1,000 sexual assaults, on average only nine are referred to prosecutors, and only five lead to a felony conviction, according to a study by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

“I understand a lot of rapes don’t get reported,” then-Rep. Jack Williams, an Alabama Republican who tried to sponsor a similar law last year, said at the time. “But the consensus of folks, as I was working, was that [if] we would limit it to convictions it would have strong support. I didn’t have the same level of support, male or female [legislators], with just a rape accusation.”