Pardon me, but where do I report an attempted gang-legislation by Todd Akin, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan?
Congressman Akin (R-Missouri) who is still a candidate for the Senate, despite his much-discussed gaffe earlier this week, can’t seem to stanch the flow of denouncements he’s received from the top of the GOP on down. What troubles me is the utter silence of GOP and Conservative women. The only ones we’ve heard from are those from the left (and middle of the road) that we would normally expect to take a stand.
Akins comments, lest you’ve been asleep for three days, center around his belief that a woman ‘rarely gets pregnant from a legitimate rape... a woman's body has a way of shutting all that down.’ The few knuckle-draggers and troglodytes who have perpetuated this preposterous theory have long since been discredited and Akin presents not a single credible medical source for his opinion. His statement been roundly criticized by medical experts all day long.
Ah, but that word ‘legitimate’. It harkens back to Paul Ryan’s proposed health care bill, which is edging toward defining exactly what rape is, as if anyone thinks ‘rape’ needs any further definition. His term (forcible rape) tells us he aims to slip that wording through the back door of the legislation, thereby narrowing the circumstances under which a rape victim could legally seek an abortion. After all, if there’s no rape, there goes one of the major exceptions to the abortion rule, right? ‘Except in cases of rape, incest and to save the life of the mother’ is language that has even been supported by mainstream conservatives for a long time. For a party that claims to want less government, the GOP sure has an intense curiosity about (and need to control) what goes on in other peoples’ bedrooms and bodies.
Allow me to pose just few hypothetical questions for Mr. Ryan, if I may. Who, exactly, is going to verify ‘rape’ when a girl or woman claims it’s happened to her? Is she going to be grilled mercilessly, as in days of yore, when the victim was often blamed for somehow bringing the assault upon herself? Will she have to wait several weeks for a special dispensation, during which the unwanted embryo is growing inside her? Will she have to prove that she had nothing to drink prior to the assault, or that she wasn’t dressed ‘provocatively’ and that she didn’t accept any romantic advances from her assailant prior to the rape? Will she perhaps be asked if she’d ever had consensual sex with her assailant prior to the assault, thereby forfeiting any future right to deny him sex? Might a victim of incest be returned to an abusive household with the admonition to stop lying about her family? Mr. Ryan, are you going to provide for her mental health treatment after your legislation has forced her to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term? Are you going to comfort her family when she throws herself off a bridge out of desperation?
I'm afraid your new definition of a ‘forcible rape’ may only include a scenario where a complete stranger jumps out of the bushes and beats his victim senseless before violating her body and her spirit.
As proven in the case of Jaycee Duggard*, our already shoddy government overseers of released sex offenders often fail to find and rescue sexual assault victims held captive right under their noses. What makes you think a government department will do a better job of separating the ‘legitimate’ rape cases from the false ones?
That’s not all, Mr. Ryan. I want to know who is going to administer your ‘human life protection’ clause that defines ‘life’ as beginning at conception. What’s next? Will I now have to file a report to a government department every time I miss a period, so that someone can decide how long I need to be quarantined until it’s been determined that I am or am not pregnant? If I’m forced to give birth to a child I don’t want and can’t afford, are you going to bear the financial burden of raising it? Are these questions you are prepared to answer on camera? Until you are, Mr. Ryan, banish the hope that the women of this country will let you anywhere near the highest office of this country. It’s just not going to happen.
Now let’s address your budget, Mr. Ryan. You advocate cutting benefits for jobless and underprivileged Americans, perpetuating the tax breaks for billionaires and raising military spending to astronomical heights, yet according to the experts you offer virtually no explanation of how you intend to pay for any of it.
You also oppose Obama’s Affordable Healthcare Act, which was upheld by a conservative Supreme Court Justice. If your preposterous 'budget' doesn’t allow for even the most basic healthcare safety net, and you also want to change Medicare to a voucher system… how do you propose to oversee the reproductive lives of millions of American women? Oh, and I completely forgot about job creation… Apparently, so did you.
*Jaycee Lee Duggard was kidnapped, held captive and sexually assaulted for 14 years by Phillip Garrido and his wife. During her captivity, she gave birth to two children by Garrido, whose house was inspected several times by parole officials. They not only failed to find and rescue Jaycee and her two daughters, they completely missed the outdoor ‘camp’ in a fenced backyard where she was forced to live.
