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The 9 Worst Things Said About Women, Abortion, and Rape in 2013 How these ppl actually get elected, I'll never know....
Opponents of reproductive rights had a busy 2013. By the end of June, state lawmakers had passed 43 abortion restrictions into law—as many restrictions as were enacted in all of 2012, according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights think tank. By August, when many state legislatures had wrapped up their 2013 session, lawmakers hadintroduced more than 300 abortion restrictions, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Defending these restrictions inspired a string of public figures to make foot-in-mouth statements about women, their choices, and their bodies. Below, we've assembled the worst of these comments. Pregnancy from rape is too rare too justify rape exceptions to abortion bans. Franks made that statement in June, by way of explaining to the House Judiciary Committee why it wasn't necessary to amend the bill to include an exception for women who became pregnant by rape or incest. (In fact, women who are victims of rape frequently become pregnant.) But his comment generated so much backlash that, a few days later, Republicansquietly amended the bill to add an exception for rape and incest victims. Franks' bill passed the House but was never taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate. A spokesman for Franks told Talking Points Memo later that the congressman meant to say that abortions of pregnancies that resulted from rape were rare. Rape is like a car accident: It calls for "extra insurance." Some of these state laws, including one the Michigan Legislature passed this month, did not include exceptions allowing insurance to cover abortions in cases of rape or incest. This May, when asked why should women be forced to pay extra to cover their abortions in these cases, Barbara Listing, the president of Michigan Right to Life, explained, "It's simply, like, nobody plans to have an accident in a car accident, nobody plans to have their homes flooded. You have to buy extra insurance for those." Listing's statement generated a lot of outrage—but it didn't matter to Michigan legislators, who passed the ban anyway. Male fetuses masturbate at 15 weeks—proving the need for an abortion ban. Transvaginal ultrasounds are not intrusive because women get "vaginally pregnant." Many Indiana residents found the idea of forcing doctors to probe women for no good reason to be repugnant. But Indiana Right to Life legislative director Sue Swayze didn't see the problem. "I got pregnant vaginally," she said. "Something else could come in my vagina for a medical test that wouldn't be that intrusive to me. So I find that argument a little ridiculous." The Indiana Legislature removed the second ultrasound—but not the first—from the bill before it eventually became law in May. Moving across state lines while pregnant is "reprehensible." Miller briefly prevailed in May when a New York family court judge found McKenna's "appropriation of the child while in utero"—i.e., her decision to move while pregnant—to be"irresponsible, reprehensible," and just shy of abduction. The decision incensed women's rights advocates. A five-judge appeals panel reversed that decision in November, explaining, "putative fathers have neither the right nor the ability to restrict a pregnant woman from her constitutionally protected liberty." Rape is okay when the victim seems "older than her chronological age." Baugh later apologized for his remarks, although he did not apologize for his sentencing decision. And in his apology, he took pains to explain that he didn't think Rambold's crime wasthat bad: "I think that people have in mind that this was some violent, forcible, horrible rape…It was horrible enough as it is, just given her age, but it wasn't this forcible beat-up rape." Montana prosecutors are still fighting for a harsher sentence for Rambold—who finished servinghis 30 days this September. Pregnant women are just "little girls" who don't understand their own bodies. Rape exceptions to abortion bans are "little gotcha amendments." GOP Kansas Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce is among the latter group. This spring, his party advanced an omnibus abortion bill that would have defined life as beginning at conception. As Democrats proposed amendments, including exceptions for cases of rape and incest, to make the bill less draconian, Bruce said, "These amendments are little gotcha amendments. I'm getting a little irritated at it." Getting an abortion after being raped is criminal evidence tampering. Brown quickly clarified that the bill was only meant to give prosecutors a means to go afterrapists. But you'd be forgiven for fearing that the legislation could be used to target abortion providers or rape victims themselves. The bill defined tampering with evidence to include "procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime." The bill, introduced to a Legislature controlled by Democrats, was doomed from the start, moving Huffington Post's Kate Sheppard to call it "some world-class trolling."
http://www.motherjones.co...odies-2013
"The voter is less important than the man who provides money to the candidate," - Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens
Rudedog ![]() | |
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god help us all. these are so called 'leaders' who are making these remarks. i have no idea how such ignorant, mentally challenged people actually make it into office but god help us all they have power over the lives of others. maybe 2014 will usher in a new age of intelligence, compassion and righteous thinking. one can only hope [Edited 1/3/14 7:54am] | |
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I believe half these Congressmen are mentally challenged tbh... | |
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It's obvious, isn't it? There are plenty of voters who agree with them and their views, that's why they get voted in. | |
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