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| He’s not crying for pregnant rape victims. |
Let’s take a brief break from the man boobz on the internet to look at the man (and some women) boobz in Congress, specifically the Republicans (and a handful of Democrats) who are trying to push through a truly odious bill, The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, designed to make it harder for women who have been raped to get abortions. Here’s how the SF Chronicle sums it up:
Current law allows federal funds (usually for Medicaid) to be spent on abortions only for women who have been raped or are the victims of incest. We think those restrictions are bad enough, but the new class of House Republicans want more. The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act would outlaw the use of federal funds for abortion except in the case of “forcible rape.” The incest exemption would only apply to minors.
“Forcible rape” doesn’t have a legal definition, but in general the idea is to exclude pregnancies that result from date rape, statutory rape or rapes that happen when women are physically incapacitated.
So if you’re drugged and raped, and you get pregnant, too bad. If your father rapes you, and you get pregnant, too bad. Those rapes apparently don’t count.
As Amanda Marcotte puts it, the bill’s sponsors apparently
believe the misogynist stereotype that all women, especially those who claim to be ill or victims of crimes, are lying whores until proven otherwise. Or just lying whores, regardless of the evidence they produce. And so, to make sure those lying whores don’t get their hands on those delicious, orgasm-inducing uterine scrapings, the bill has language in it that, in essence, assumes that 70% of rape victims weren’t really raped. The exception is only for “forcible rape”, which is vaguely defined, but in practice tends to mean that anything short of getting your ass beat down means you weren’t “really” raped. Even if you’re a 13-year-old who was impregnated by a 30-year-old. Also, if you happen to get pregnant by your abusive, rape-y father on your 18th birthday, you will get no funding to make sure you don’t give birth to your own brother.
In Salon, Sady Doyle puts the Republican push for the bill in a larger context, noting that the bill’s reference to “forcible rape”
brings us back to an ancient, long-outdated standard of rape law: “Utmost resistance.” By this standard, a rape verdict depended not on whether the victim consented, but on whether outsiders thought she resisted as hard as humanly possible. Survivors rarely measured up.
Meanwhile, Time magazine’s Amy Sullivan tried to figure out if there really were a lot of “false rape claims” being by made by wily money-hungry young pregnant women in an attempt to bilk the government out of money. The answer, of course, is no.
Eligibility rules … differ by state, but many states are like Tennessee, which requires a doctor to certify that “there is credible evidence to believe that the pregnancy is the result of rape” and to attach “documentation from a law enforcement agency indicating the patient has made a credible report as the victim of incest or rape” before Medicaid will consider issuing payment for an abortion procedure. …
So that scourge of false rape reports–or even, let’s say, “non-forcible” rapes? It doesn’t exist. I couldn’t find numbers more recent than 2001, but these shocked me. In that year, the total number of abortions covered by Medicaid was 56. That’s all abortions for cases in which the mother’s life was in danger, the pregnancy was a result of incest, or in the case of rape. Another 25 were covered by state Medicaid programs. Even assuming that every single one of those abortions was to end a pregnancy caused by rape, that’s 81 abortions paid for in part with taxpayer dollars. Nationwide. That’s roughly $32,000 total for first trimester procedures.
So, yeah, this is not exactly what is busting the budget. Indeed, I imagine there are many rape victims who choose to pay out of pocket for an abortion, even if they can’t really afford it, rather than going through the humiliation of trying to prove they’ve been raped to the satisfaction of government bureaucrats.
UPDATE: The Republicans have removed the “forcible rape” language from the bill. But there is still plenty about the bill to hate.
If you’re American, and want to do something about this bill, here’s one practical suggestion: There are a number of Democrats who have signed on to co-sponsor the bill. I suggest you contact them and let them know how you feel. You can find info on how to contact them on Pandagon.
Or you can contact your representative by clicking on the banner below:
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>I have never in my life heard of anyone aborting male fetuses for being male. Girls, yes. That's illegal in both China and India, and yet remains very common in both countries. Now they have way more men than women, and in China it's not unheard of to round up women in the countryside to kidnap them and take them somewhere to marry off to men elsewhere. But Jin-Yohan is worried about the undocumented and imaginary genocide of male fetuses in Sweden. On one hand we have a real crisis as the result of abortions based on fetal sex … on the other hand we have one imagined in Jin-Yohan's head. But no, let's not concern ourselves with the REAL and FEMALE fetuses getting aborted because of their sex. Let's concern ourselves with the imaginary male ones.
>@jupiter9:"How far can we take this?If you rape a woman and get her pregnant, then that pregnancy could result in a miraculous, wonderful baby and human being!Not only do you have a responsibility to stop women who were raped from getting abortions. You have a moral duty to impregnate as many women as possible, regardless of their desire to be pregnant or be a mother."I'm grateful to have an opponent as shrill as you are. It illustrates to the world just how utterly reasonable it is that abortion is a heinous and violent act that should be done away with in almost all cases. Keep on helping me.
> chocomintlipwax said… I have never in my life heard of anyone aborting male fetuses for being male. Girls, yes. That's illegal in both China and India, and yet remains very common in both countries. Abortion is legal in China and India regardless if the foetus is male or female – so what is your problem?You should be very happy about the legal situation regarding abortion in India and China, much better than in USA.Feminists consider a human foetus as tumor, as an internal ailment.And you are concerned about abortions in China?Why?Now they have way more men than women…in China… Is this a problem for feminists? I am not sure how to understand this comment.For mainland China the last estimate of 2010 shows 686 million males and 649 million females, this is about 5.4 percent or 37 million women missing out of the entire population.Still, presently are more women in China living than the entire population (males and females together) of USA, Japan, Philippines and Vietnam together…Don't be worried when listening to Fox News. All people living in Asia know, the Chinese will not die out soon. They even give money to make it possible for the Americans to pay the interests for their loans to manage their ballooning budget deficit.
>chocomintlipwax said… on the other hand we have one imagined in Jin-Yohan's head… Jin-Yohan – indeed, this is the first time I am called on in Arabic.In Arabian culture a 'JIN' is not necessarily bad, but might be bad, good, neutral and even benevolent in a certain situation when facing humans.
>John Dias, so do you agree that abortion is wrong in all cases? If so, then you own the "shrillness."Feminists simply want to have the choice to do with their bodies what they want. They generally do not define a zygote as a person. Out of that comes the pro-choice position that they don't have to follow anyone else's guidelines on whether they are allowed to have an abortion, at least before viability.Not only does prop 3 say "I won't pay for your abortion." It says, "you can't put your money in a health savings account and use it for an abortion." It says, "you can't select insurance coverage that includes abortion."Birth control fails. Circumstances change. You're basically saying that you cannot trust women to make their own decisions about their own bodies. That's absurd.
>Feminists consider a human foetus as tumor, as an internal ailment.This brings to my mind an exchange between RomanCandle and jupiter9 in this thread:RomanCandle >> "I doubt Roissy tortures cats, either. It's called hyperbole, and it's Roissy's bread and butter."jupiter9 >> "When feminists use hyperbole it's taken dead serious. How interesting when the tables are turned."So when men use hyperbole in hopes of better illustrating a point, it's stupid for it not to be understood as such. But if feminists use hyperbole in hopes of better illustrating a point…
>Pam: "So when men use hyperbole in hopes of better illustrating a point, it's stupid for it not to be understood as such. But if feminists use hyperbole in hopes of better illustrating a point…"
>Pam: "So when men use hyperbole in hopes of better illustrating a point, it's stupid for it not to be understood as such. But if feminists use hyperbole in hopes of better illustrating a point…" /golf clap
>It seems, jupiter9 and Pam are now running out of arguments, they complain about hyperboles…On one side, feminists are demanding abortion a few days before the tumor is ready for birth, and on the other side feminists are lining up begging men for sperm-donations to carry out artificial insemination.This is the macabre, cruel and strange world of feminism.
>Who's complaining about hyperboles? I'm not, and it doesn't look like jupiter9 is, either. Just pointing out the fact that men don't corner the market on their usage when trying to illustrate a point.So some feminists don't want to give birth or have children and some do. I'm willing to bet that there are some non-feminists who want to have children and some who don't. That's macabre, cruel and strange?What I find macabre, cruel and strange is that the (mainly) Republicans who don't want abortions funded out of their tax dollars (nor, for that matter, do they want their tax dollars spent on social programs, including support for children who were not aborted) don't seem to mind a huge chunk of their tax dollars feeding the war machine of American Imperialism. Goodness knows that children, including those not yet born, aren't slain due to war.
>@YohanSorry, but I wanted to pick at something Yohan said earlier in the comments that has been bothering me."Can you imagine, you are married, with wife and children, and some gangsters are attacking your wife and she gets pregnant because of that?How can this family be forced to accept this child among their other children? How can you be a father for this unwanted child?" I just have one question to ask, which I think is a very important one where a woman's choice is concerned.Mr. Yohan, in a hypothetical situation where the wife a MRA activist was raped and became pregnant, would you expect that woman to have an abortion at the request of her husband, even if she didn't want to?
>@atuinsailsVery reasonable question.As I said in my earlier postings in this thread, opinions about abortion are divided. It's not only about pro-life-MRAs and pro-choice-feminists.I can only speak for myself and family, we are from EU/Japan, nobody of us has a deep religious background, nobody is into USA-politics.In many EU-countries and some Asian countries the woman decides alone within 12 to 14 weeks after obligatory counselling and 3 days to reconsider her decision of requesting an abortion – and most people in Europe think, that's a good solution somewhere in the middle for all of us.The next choice for the wife is directly after birth, the woman can decide if she prefers adoption or not. If she decides for adoption, the child will be taken away immediately after birth, she will not even see it for one moment.About my own family members I know they will not wait, but go ahead with chemical abortion and other medical treatment immediately after the rape-crime to prevent pregnancy and STD-related infections.In case of rape our family will be more worried about STDs than about pregnancy/abortion.
>"About my own family members I know they will not wait, but go ahead with chemical abortion and other medical treatment immediately after the rape-crime to prevent pregnancy and STD-related infections."Even if the rapist is a family member or trusted friend? Even if it's date rape? Even if it's statutory rape?
>@jupiter9Why not?Yes, in any case of unwanted sexual contact all of my family members will look immediately for medical advice to prevent STD-related infections. That's for sure.About pregnancies in general, my 2 daughters and their husbands are not interested into pregnancy/own children anyway and my wife is too old for that.We have a family life and there are no secrets between us, we all know each other, health insurances will pay the most part of these medical fees anyway…Everybody of us has enough money to look up a private medical clinic, if they really want to keep something done in secret.There are plenty of ladies' clinics in all major Japanese cities with medical doctors, correcting everything which is outside of the Japanese health insurance cover, your nose, your ears, your X-feet, your teeth, skin problems and are also ready for abortion.—–About abortion as I said, that's not a big issue in Japan/China and in many EU-countries for MRAs like me who are not concerned about religion and are not living in USA. – The woman pays for it and it will be done, and how can I know if a woman is 3 months pregnant or not? About children in general, there are MILLIONS of poor children around in neighbouring countries near Japan, any age, any gender, any health condition – your choice if you like children and do not want to have your own ones, the question is only for how many children you want to take care.
>Yohan, many do not think as you do. Many think "date rape" is impossible for example, and only the stranger assaulting you from the bushes at night with a gun is really rape.