Delisha Boyd is the product of a rape. She reckons her mother was violated repeatedly from the age of 13, two years before she gave birth. Ms Boyd, a black Democratic state representative from New Orleans, told her story publicly for the first time when she introduced a bill to carve out rape and incest exceptions from Louisiana’s abortion ban in May of last year. “I can tell you today, in my mid-50s, that my mother never recovered from it. She was dead by the time she was 28 years old,” she said. The bill was voted down.