Robert.
I came from the womb of a rape victim. My mother—I later learned—was a 20-year-old college student who was impregnated by a serial sex offender.
My mother wanted to abort me two months after my conception. Texas law effectively prevented her from doing that. The Right to Life folks got the most restrictive, publicly vigilante anti-abortion laws passed in the nation.
Moments after the name “Robert” was attached to my life I was turned over to the Texas foster care system—considered one of the worse, if not the worse, foster care systems in the nation.
It seems that Texas Legislators and the Christian-dominated Right to Life folks do not care much about the welfare of children once they receive the smack of life on their tiny ass. Child welfare, they believe, exists only in the womb.
There I was with a blistered red ass handed over to a “child protective” services person who started me on my horrific, atrocious journey through the state-sponsored foster care system. I was anally sodomized at age four and orally sodomized at age six as I passed from one home to another. Hundreds of nights I went to bed—the cold floor many times—hungry and scarred with the bruises and broken bones of physical abuse. My Right to Life became a hellhole existence, forced on me by Christians and politically motivated lawmakers.
When I turned 15 I escaped foster care and joined a street gang where I found immediate acceptance because I was a hard-hitting, ass-kicking, willing to shoot little motherfucker—all valuable life surviving skills bestowed upon me by the Texas foster care system.
The Christians would say I fell in “with the wrong crowd.” I say I fell in “with the right crowd,’ most of whom shared my same life experiences with either a foot (or something worse) in the ass or a fist upside the head. It’s actually easy to become mean in life, a natural freedom to do whatever you please—except get an abortion.
Then, at age 20, in the middle of a barroom brawl, I pulled out a 9mm and killed two men who were attacking my gang buddies. That was a natural response to a life crisis that my childhood experiences had instilled in me.
The district attorney, a long time Right to Life supporter, charged me with capital murder. He told my twelve- person jury—comprised of eight Right to Life folks—that I should be put to death by lethal injection because I posed a “future dangerousness” threat both in prison and to any possible return to society.
My attorney—an agnostic civil libertarian, no less—argued rather persuasively I thought that the State of Texas could not take my life because before birth it had given me a perpetual “Right to Life” contract by not allowing my abortion; that the contract was non-revocable. He argued that I had a right to a life sentence and the State of Texas had no right to a lethal injection death sentence.
But those Right to Life people on that jury did not agree with my attorney. They agreed I had breached my right to life contract when I killed those two men.
So, here I sit in a Huntsville prison death cell just an hour from execution because the State of Texas forced life on me; inserted me in a child care system that guaranteed a trip to either a prison or a death cell; and will now kill me because it made me what I am.
Yes, I am the fault of my own situation and bear some responsibility for my impending execution. But remember Right to Life folks, you made me who I am and you are responsible for what I became.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: There are literally hundreds of real Roberts on the nation’s death rows and hundreds of thousands more in its prison systems. Right to Life folks indeed love life in the womb, but they don’t give one plug nickel for life after it passes through the birth canal.