The pair of Washington, D.C. whistle blowers both say they were pressured as young police cadets to abort their children to remain in the academy, and both women said they chose the police uniform.
Ingrid Duran of pro-life group D.C. Metro Life Alliance says Assistant Chief Chanel Dickerson and Officer Karen Arikpo were victims of coercion, and people should be held accountable for it.
“And it should also be against the law to force a woman to have an abortion,” Duran says, “that she had to choose her career over her child.”
In a story about the women by The Federalist, Dickerson was pushed to abort her child in 1988 and Arikpo was urged to do so in the 1987 recruit class.
Arikpo told a Fox News affiliate that the abortion left her unable to have children later in life.
“It’s so unfair,” she said. “And now I’ve never been able to have a kid. All these years, I’ve tried and I’ve never been able to have a baby.”
Both women have filed a class action lawsuit because of what they had to go through.
Duran tells American Family News she is doubtful the D.C. City Council would ever pass an ordinance protecting pregnant women. So it must somehow be legislated or dealt with in the courts.
“I would also like to see a society where women are not pitted against their children,” she says. “I don't understand why she can't have her career and also be a mother. When men have children, they don't expect them to step down.”
