Well, abortion is okay in instances of "forcible" rape...

[cynatnite]

Federal funding is only allowed to pay for abortions in the case of rape, incest, and when the life of the mother is endangered. But a new bill with 173 co-sponsors would further limit federally funded exceptions, only allowing Medicaid to pay for abortions in the case of "forcible rape."

Forcible rape has no formal definition under federal law, Baumann notes, but legal experts and abortion advocates told him that the new wording would most likely prevent Medicaid from paying for abortions for victims of statutory rapes not involving the use of force. Baumann's sources also told him that the revised wording might also disallow funding of abortions in cases where perpetrators used date-rape drugs on their victims, or targeted mentally incapacitated women.

Some states have no definition of forcible rape on the books, calling into question whether any abortions would qualify for federalfunding in such jurisdictions. Incest victims would have to be younger than 18 in order to access Medicaid-funded abortions. The bill also denies tax credits to private insurance plans that pay for abortions.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110128/us_yblog_thelookout/house-abortion-bill-redefines-rape-incest-exceptions

So, if they can't get their way in the instances of rape let's redefine it so that it's not really rape. :grr:

This shit pisses me off!

[laconicsax]

1. K&R

[ShadowLiberal]

2. Absolutely disgusting, attack ads against those people just write themselves

I seriously hope that some 3rd party groups/campaigns get rape victims to speak against their vile attempt to 'redefine' rape.

[bluestateguy]

3. What exactly is "unforcible rape"?

What is that, like rape-lite?

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Maru Kitteh]

5. Women will need to display their torn vaginas and prove they didn't "ask for it" by

ending up in the wrong company
wearing the wrong clothing
flirting
wearing makeup
drinking anything
being pretty
consenting to kissing or petting but then saying 'no'
going out alone
being married to your rapist

[Warren DeMontague]

6. This is what happens when we don't trust people to make their own damn decisions about their bodies.

Women will have to stand in front of boards of "friendly authorities"- like, say, Priests- and explain why they should be permitted to have an abortion.

Because, you know, they can't be trusted to make their own decisions, certainly not if we don't agree with the decision they want to make.

[Volaris]

7. ALL rape is forcible

recognizing that fact is what separates a MAN from a petulant, desperate, little boy.
Rachel is right, the culture wars are alive and kicking', whether they tell us so or not.
And there are 173 OFFICIAL ass-hat misogynists in Congress.

[cynatnite]

8. It feels like they're trying to take our rights away. n/t

[ProgressiveProfessor]

10. I asked about this elsewhere and got an interesting reponse

The reason is that women wanting an abortion will claim an unreported rape to get one for free.

Don't shoot the messenger on this...I strongly support choice...

[cynatnite]

11. I'd probably ask how do they know this?

Also, even if it's unreported...so what? Maybe they have good reason for not reporting it...like being accused of lying and put through hell?

Whoever said that is a real idiot.

[MH1]

9. A despicable attempt. Also, rape is rape because coercion is involved

whether it be physical or psychological or merely assumed. (how many 9 year olds would fight back against a much larger adult?)

what constitutes 'forcible' if not the element of coercion?

This seems like a legally stupid law.

But the mere attempt at further restricting women's rights is despicable.

[bobbolink]

12. Completely hypocritical.... abortion is abortion is abortion.

If the argument is that abortion is murder of a human life, then it doesn't matter how that human life began, does it? Isn't it still "murder"?

As far as I'm concerned, letting women die because they can't get an abortion is also MURDER.

[Maru Kitteh]

13. Yup. Anyone who makes an exception for rape is clearly more concerned with punishing women than

saving "babies." Otherwise, why would you punish a poor widdle baby for having a bad "father?"

No - the purpose is to punish women. Always has been.

[dsc]

14. or they might be willing to compromise to stop tens of thousands of murders

by letting thousands continue.

[Maru Kitteh]

16. Oh, I see. Like little tiny sacrificial feti to please GOD. Hmm. No. That doesn't work either.

Totally intellectually inconsistent. If the zygote of some little careless campus bimbette is endowed by life from GOD - so is the helpless little blob nestled in the endometrial tissue of the rape victim. If it's about he little bits of goo - then they are ALL precious bits of creation. But it's obviously not - the evidence shows otherwise.


How can the preciousness of the "life" of the conceptus be figured on a sliding scale according the perceived whorishness/fault of the woman?

Punishment. It's the only answer.

[dsc]

17. No

To take one example. During WW2 Jewish Americans wanted the US to bomb both the concentration camps and the rail lines leading to them despite the fact that some Jews may well have perished in the bombing but the felt by sacrificing a few Jews they could save the rest. This would be a similar calculation. We can either pass no ban at all or exempt rape abortions from the ban. Way one we have a ton more abortions than way two.

[Maru Kitteh]

18. You fail to offer any explanation for why it's based on the percieved sluttiness/fault of the woman.

And the Jews/Nazi thing is a total fail too unless you assert that the general consensus of the Jewish Americans was that the Jews in the concentration camps "asked for it" and "got themselves in that situation."

[dsc]

19. that is only if one assumes your construction of deserving vs underserving

If provided with option A which saves 90,000 lives (or what ever the number is) and option B which saves 0 choosing A isn't unreasonable. If their assumption is that if they don't have a rape exception they can't pass the bill and that is the only reason they have the exception in the bill, then they are making the kind of calculation I am saying they are making and pretty much the same calculation Jewish Americans were making. Not being a mind reader, I don't know what calculations they are or aren't making but this is one option.

[Maru Kitteh]

22. You're trying way too hard. You can try to say water isn't wet till your face turns cyanotic and

your lips fall off. The fact is, water IS wet, and the rape/incest exclusion is packaged, bought and sold as acceptable because the woman is supposedly not at "fault." It doesn't exist without assigning blame upon women. blame ---> fault ---> punish

[demmiblue]

15. K&R

:mad:

[bemildred]

20. Abortion should be OK anytime the mother wants to end the pregnancy.

Any time at all, on a whim, for chuckles, you get me? Nobody needs to have an unwilling parent.

[sofa king]

21. There's a silver lining to this.

Karl Rove was always careful to steer his gangsters away from the abortion issue, because the demographics have long since drifted far away from the split issue that abortion once was.

Now, depending on how you look at it, abortion is a 75-25 issue, with only the knuckledraggers left to want it banned completely (see the first CBS poll on this page).

Of that 75 percent, though, a large proportion of Americans think that they want abortion to be legal, but with further restrictions.

Well, hey! Here's your shit sandwich, restrictionists!

All this is going to do is enrage those of us with a half a clue, while it totally dissatisfies those who want to further restrict abortion by offending them with this piece of shit bill. (The Bush Basement continues to be irrelevant, but this might even keep some of them home on election day.)

And the punch line? The Democrats get to reject it like Big Ben Wallace once it gets to the Senate. Yay! Democrats save America for the sane! We're heroes!

As I've been saying for the past two months (as you all call me a dreaming optimist), we'll be seeing dozens of 70-30 clay pigeons like these being launched. Not a damned one of them will get close to passing the Senate, much less having the honor of being vetoed by the President, and with every one of these stupid Republican bills, the Republican Party will ablate moderates like they're a meteorite being consumed in the atmosphere. By 2012, the Republicans will be hoping they can hold on to five of the ten Senate seats they have up for election, and they won't be able to pick up a single damned new one.