Legitimate rape: feature not bug
by digby
Jamil Smith at TNR makes an important observation about the latest assault on women’s rights — the push to make abortion illegal after 20 weeks along with a requirement that any exception for rape or incest be officially reported to the authorities.
We all know what this is about, of course, but Smith points out that it’s even more cynical than usual. They insist that women who are the victims of “legitimate rape” must make a report to the police but make no moves to make such a thing easier for victims of rape in general. As he says:
If you’re going to require that pregnant survivors of rape report that crime to law enforcement before getting a late-term abortion, should there not be accompanying legislative (or at the very least, rhetorical) efforts to make it safer for survivors to do so? How about increased federal support for sexual assault support groups and law enforcement initiatives to improve those rape-reporting statistics? There is nothing like that in the Republicans’ bill.
That’s intentional. Republican legislators don’t want to make it less difficult for survivors to report their rapes; they’re counting on it. The bill’s viability depends on that 68 percent number staying right where it is, or even going up, all in the service of preventing late-term abortions.
In a way it’s actually more honest. Many of these anti-abortion zealots truly believe that women and girls should be forced to give birth to their own brothers. They see nothing harmful in that to the person who’s being forced to do it because they don’t see the person who’s being forced to do it as a person. They are merely the “method” by which a fetus is brought to term. It literally does not matter what they think or feel. Once pregnant, by whatever means, they are no longer relevant to the conversation.
Smith’s piece contains a humorously revealing quote from Louis Gohmert, bless his sexist little heart:
“Some of our Republican female members …”
As Smith quipped: “yes, that’s the word he used for women, with a possessive”
.