OT:When Will Republicans Stop Saying Dumb Things About Rape? (Hint: When They Stop Hating Women)

When Will Republicans Stop Saying Dumb Things About Rape? (Hint: When
They Stop Hating Women)

http://bit.ly/lZ4M2Q

No big surprise that it was in Kansas, which has struggled with the most
serious anti-choice terrorism in the country in the 21st century, where a
GOP state legislator named Pete DeGraaf compared being forcibly
impregnated by a rapist to getting a flat tire. DeGraaf was responding
to a pro-choice Republican legislator who raised the question of women
being unable to afford to terminate pregnancies caused by rape, and
DeGraaf responded by suggesting women should have prepared ahead of time
for rape by saying, “We do need to plan ahead, don’t we, in life?”,
adding, “I have a spare tire on my car.”

DeGraaf’s glib response to his pro-choice colleague demonstrated the
deeply misogynist underpinnings of anti-choice beliefs. Let us count the
various misogynist beliefs exposed by this comment, which is sadly quite
typical of the mindless sexism espoused by anti-choicers.

The belief that rape is no big deal. DeGraaf is far from the only anti-
choicer who has exhibited this callousness towards rape victims. In
fact, callousness towards rape victims that belies an underlying misogyny
is a regular feature of anti-choice rhetoric:

During the midterm campaign season, the GOP challenger for Harry Reid’s
seat, Sharron Angle, advised rape victims to avoid abortion, saying they
could turn “lemon situation into lemonade”.
Idaho state representative Brent Crane supported a ban on all abortions
after 20 weeks, saying that rape was the “hand of the Almighty” at work,
and that women forced to bear the children of rapists are “wonderful
examples’.
Indiana state legislator Eric Turner went with the women-are-liars
argument, arguing against rape exceptions for a post-20 week ban on the
grounds that women will wait around for 5 months to get an abortion and
then claim, falsely, to have been raped to get one.
South Dakota legislator Bill Napoli declared that a rape victim only
deserved an abortion if she were religious, virginal, beaten within an
inch of her life, and added that the rape should include anal rape for
good measure.
The belief that women are stupid children.

DeGraaf’s chuckling assumption that a woman who is raped and unable to
pay for an abortion has only herself to blame for lack of foresight
betrays a larger view of women as overgrown children who only get into
trouble because they don’t know any better. DeGraaf argues that women
wouldn’t buy entirely separate insurance just for abortion because
they’re stupid, but in fact, the expectation of a separate abortion
policy is what makes no sense. Insurance policies generally cover a
whole range of possible misfortunes. You don’t have to buy a separate
policy to cover burglaries and to cover fires; both are bundled into your
renter’s or homeowner’s insurance. Subsequently, women are reasonable to
expect that the same policies that cover you when you accidentally fall
down the stairs should cover you when you accidentally fall pregnant.
DeGraaf’s completely backwards reading of the situation---turning women’s
entirely reasonable expectations into evidence of their stupidity---
betrays a deeply held prejudice about women’s basic intelligence.

The idea that women are stupid drives many anti-choice initiatives. For
instance, laws requiring women to look at ultrasounds before getting
abortions carry the assumption that women are literally too stupid to
understand that abortion terminates pregnancy. In real life, of course,
women seek abortion because it terminates pregnancy, and aren’t going to
be surprised when the doctor says, “And there’s the embryo that we’ll be
removing so you won’t be having a baby.”

The belief that women aren’t really the same thing as people. Anti-
choicers have always worked to define health care that addresses only
women’s concerns as not being “real” health care, unlike men’s health
care. The most prominent example of this is the Hyde Amendment, which
excludes abortion from being covered by Medicaid on the claim that
pregnancy isn’t a medical condition and therefore terminating it doesn’t
count as medical care.

But pregnancy termination is far from the only female-only condition that
anti-choicers have worked to define as not-counting because it only
affects those born with female reproductive systems. A common argument,
floated by the Catholic bishops, is that because pregnancy is natural,
preventing it isn’t medical care. Anti-choicers such as Bill O’Reilly and
John McCain have even gone far enough to claim that treating erectile
dysfunction is medical care in a way that preventing pregnancy isn’t,
even though erectile dysfunction is also natural and has far fewer side
effects than pregnancy. The category of medical conditions that don’t
count because they only happen to women has expanded to incorporate
cervical cancer, as anti-choicers agitate against the HPV vaccine that
prevents the disease on the grounds that women who die of cervical cancer
brought it upon themselves by not abstaining from sex. Noticeably, the
“you brought it on yourself” argument doesn’t apply to diseases men can
get, such as smoking-induced lung cancer or gluttony-induced diabetes.
It’s only female-only conditions such as pregnancy and cervical cancer
where patients can have medical care revoked on the grounds of behavioral
choices.

Now that’s being expanded to conditions---such as rape-induced
pregnancy---where the patient’s injuries, by definition, are not her
fault. But, as DeGraaf’s metaphor made clear, anti-choicers don’t view
women’s medical conditions as actual medical conditions that occur to
real people. Women are treated like objects such as cars, and their
medical conditions are seen more like flat tires than health care
concerns.

The lesson of all should be that we cannot expect the anti-choice
movement to be content with restricting abortion. It’s a movement deeply
rooted in antagonism to women’s rights, and not just the right to
terminate unwanted pregnancies. Women’s right to be free from violence,
to have female-specific medical care treated like actual medical care,
and to be treated like full human adults with the right to make decisions
for ourselves? All of these hard-won rights are under assault. Abortion
is just the first battle in what could end up being a long war to reverse
the gains of feminism.

iReader

VicXnews<news@news.com> wrote:
When Will Republicans Stop Saying Dumb Things About Rape? (Hint: When
They Stop Hating Women)
http://bit.ly/lZ4M2Q
No big surprise that it was in Kansas, which has struggled with the most
serious anti-choice terrorism in the country in the 21st century, where a
GOP state legislator named Pete DeGraaf compared being forcibly
impregnated by a rapist to getting a flat tire. DeGraaf was responding
to a pro-choice Republican legislator who raised the question of women
being unable to afford to terminate pregnancies caused by rape, and
DeGraaf responded by suggesting women should have prepared ahead of time
for rape by saying, ßWe do need to plan ahead, donßt we, in life?ß,
adding, ßI have a spare tire on my car.ß
DeGraafßs glib response to his pro-choice colleague demonstrated the
deeply misogynist underpinnings of anti-choice beliefs. Let us count the
various misogynist beliefs exposed by this comment, which is sadly quite
typical of the mindless sexism espoused by anti-choicers.
The belief that rape is no big deal. DeGraaf is far from the only anti-
choicer who has exhibited this callousness towards rape victims.

ive said this before: degraaf should volunteer to be forcibly assraped on national tv to prove to all us lilly livered liberals just how "not a big deal" it is. binos for him is he doesnt have to worry about getting pregnant. maybe instead he can let his wife or daughter be raped by jared laughner. fox could do a special.

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