The vessel is nothing
by digby
“It’s beautiful beyotch”, whether you like it or not:
West Virginia Del. Brian Kurcaba (R) made the comments — which were first reported by Charleston Gazette staffer David Gutman — during a public hearing on Thursday. A health committee in the legislature was debating a proposed 20-week abortion ban. Kurcaba was explaining why he opposed a Democratic-sponsored amendment to add an exception for rape victims.
“Obviously rape is awful,” Kurcaba said. “What is beautiful is the child that could come from this.”
Kurbaca’s statement echoes other controversial comments from GOP politicians along the same lines. In 2012, Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said that abortion bills should not include rape exceptions because pregnancies resulting from rape are a “gift from God.” Mourdock lost his election, as did several other Republicans who waded into the issue of sexual assault and abortion access during their campaigns that year.
Since then, political consultants have attempted to train GOP lawmakers about how to more sensitively talk about rape. In 2013, the National Republican Congressional Committee sat down with candidates to coach them about what to avoid, especially in races against female opponents.
They believe this so it doesn’t matter if the Party “trains” them to talk about it more sensitively, their underlying attitudes will be the same. So I don’t really give a damn about their training.
Clearly, these people cannot imagine some people’s horror and pain at having to go through 9 months of pregnancy, childbirth and raise (or give up) a child that was conceived by violence and rape. They don’t have to imagine it because the human being that has to go through this is irrelevant in their thinking. A pregnant woman is not a person to these people, she is a vessel in which a person is gestating.
Obviously, some women will bear their rapists child and be fine with the decision. But I daresay that there are more than a few for whom it is a nightmare of epic proportions. Forcing them to do it is one of the cruelest acts I can imagine. They are virtually daring her not to be a madonna and love the child she’s bearing. If she fails it’s on her for not knowing what’s “beautiful” and what isn’t. One thing she’ll know for sure: it doesn’t matter what she wants or needs. She’s nothing.
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