Psychiatrists have in the past erred in the direction of ascribing to childhood fantasy real cases of sexual assault upon children. Experience in the rape victim clinics and with patients in private psychoanalytic practice seem to indicate that reports of sexual assaults upon children are ignored or discounted at the expense of the psychologic well being of the child victim.

Freud's conflict about accepting the existence of father daughter incest in the childhoods of neurotic women is indicated by his confession that in two cases reported in Studies on Hysteria he had suppressed the fact that the female patients had been sexually molested by their fathers.

In 1895, Breuer and Freud published Studies on Hysteria (1895/1955) in which they first put forward the thesis that hysterical symptoms in women result from childhood sexual trauma. This explanation was at odds with the prevailing genetic explanation of psychological problems, and with the Victorian zeitgeist.

Some women have survived the effects of intergenerational incest, just as some have survived the effects of other forms of child abuse. Indeed, some victims may learn to transform these and a variety of childhood traumas into exceptional personality invulnerabilities during adulthood.

Cormier, Kennedy and Sangowicz (1962) state that incestuous fathers claimed that their daughters had provoked the sexual contacts, whereas the daughters claimed to have been coerced by their fathers. Gebhard, Gagnon, Pomeroy, and Christenson (1965) report that the matter of coercion was sidestepped in their interviews with convicted incest offenders because "the authoritarian position of the father makes the differentiation between threat, duress, acquiescence, and willingness almost impossible".

According to several investigators, they are asking for affection, attention, and caring. Peters (1976) concluded that the fathers were in a state of reduced ego control when they mistakenly interpreted their daughters' emotional needfulness as seductiveness. He urges professionals not to indict these children for their affection seeking behavior, for it was the adult who initiated the specifically sexual behavior.

The old saw that the male offers love to get sex and that the female gives sex to get love is applicable in these cases, for the father's power and the daughter's submissiveness, needfulness, and admiration of him constitute a major dynamic in the relationship. As Geiser (1979) explains:...

Sexism is also a major contributor to father daughter incest, a form of child abuse which will be eliminated only by radical changes in power relations between females and males and between children and adults. Over 90 percent of child victims of sexual abuse by adult relatives are female, and the vast majority of abusers are male even when the child victim is male.

Valid questions regarding follow through by agencies demand clear answers, for the postpartum period is an opportunity to put reverence for life preachings into practice. Do these agencies support the lives of the mother and fetus they rescue from abortion? Do they educate her for responsible sexuality by contraceptive education?

The relationship between child abuse and wanting a child highlights the crucial importance of competent counseling for women with unplanned pregnancies. These distraught women are often exposed to a brand of "counseling" by antichoice proponents that can only be described as incompetent and unethical.