Have you ever had to convince a girl to get an abortion? Imagine how much tougher that would be if both of you were poor as shit and it was going to cost you six months to a year’s worth of disposable income. Yes, men definitely have a stake both in ending unwanted pregnancies and in getting the state to pay.
So you shrug at the outrage that is out there because you don’t see enough people outraged? Marches, protests and sit-ins demand an enormous amount of work, and it’s extremely questionable if they would get any attention at all these days, and to organize a full-blown freak-out every time pro-lifers champion some idiotic bill that might or might not pass seems like a sure-fire way to exhaust a movement in no time.
And btw, should someone chain himself there? I don’t know, maybe not, but if a group wants to maintain its rights and privileges, it should fight any violation, even marginal ones that will only effect the poorer members. But again it’s probably not my place to give unsolicited advice, since I’m not involved.
I don’t think anyone should chain themselves to the White House gate or mass protests at this time, since I think it would easily exhaust the movement. What I do think that Pro-Choice, feminist and women’s movements should be able to expect from allies and people sympathetic to their cause is that they don’t shrug at their effort when they don’t mass-mobilize up to your 70s mass-movement standards.
As fully explained up-thread, this is a bill that has no chance of becoming law. People are upset by it not because it will directly impact their lives, but because it embodies a principle that they find abhorrent.
Al’Quaida wants to blow us all up. Isn’t it possible to navigate the Scylla and Charybdis of believing that Al’Quaida’s views are terrible without chaining ourselves to a Federal landmark?
Yep, I went overboard. I was raging at the malicious stupidity of the proposed law and thinking to myself, where is the outrage, people! But unfortunately there isn’t enough time in life to react with active scorn at every attempted stupid or terrible act.
Common sense (briefly) reasserts itself in Congress: ‘Forcible rape’ cut from antiabortion bill after backlash from women’s groups
Good thing women weren’t opposing this.
You know, it’s not often that HuffPo seems to be right on the money to me (linked via a friend of mine):
Capeheart says that he’s waiting to hear back from anyone who can either set a definition of “forcible rape” or justify leaving out women impregnated against her will as a result of “being drugged, drunk, mentally disabled or date rape[d].” It’s likely to be a long wait: having denoted that section as “the scary part,” Capeheart has unwittingly suggested that the rest of the law is palatable. That’s probably the whole point of “the scary part” – it’s an “Overton Window” game of defining a new frontier in “extreme” in order to make the original “extreme” seem reasonable by comparison.
The biggest fear of everyone involved is that things will proceed the way they always do. There’s a widespread outcry. We get one concession – full rape exemptions. And then the bill moves forward, according to plan.
Georgia state rep doesn’t like the word ‘victim’.
Georgia Republican state Rep. Bobby Franklin (of gold-standard-wannabe fame) has introduced a bill to change the state’s criminal codes so that in “criminal law and criminal procedure” (read: in court), victims of rape, stalking, and family violence could only be referred to as “accusers” until the defendant has been convicted.
Burglary victims are still victims. Assault victims are still victims. Fraud victims are still victims. But if you have the misfortune to suffer a rape, or if you are beaten by a domestic partner, or if you are stalked, Rep. Franklin doesn’t think you’ve been victimized. He says you’re an accuser until the courts have determined otherwise.
Good news, everyone, the forcible rape issue is still up in this odious bill (and it’s bad in all parts, it should be voted down no matter what):
In February, Republicans drew widespread condemnation for their “forcible rape” proposal, which legal experts said would have excluded statutory rape victims and others from obtaining abortions through Medicaid. Amidst public outcry and a protest campaign by left-leaning groups, Republicans abandoned the language, which had been included in the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” a bill the GOP leadership numbered H.R. 3 to signify its high priority to the party. But while they’ve amended their legislation, which faces a floor vote in the House on Wednesday, Republicans haven’t stopped trying to narrow the already small exception under which federal funding for abortions is permissible. They’ve used a sly legislative maneuver to make sure that even though the language of the bill is different, the effect remains the same.
The backdoor reintroduction of the statutory rape change relies on the use of a committee report, a document that congressional committees produce outlining what they intend a piece of legislation to do. If there’s ever a court fight about the interpretation of a law—and when it comes to a subject as contentious as abortion rights, there almost always is—judges will look to the committee report as evidence of congressional intent, and use it to decide what the law actually means.
In this case, the committee report for H.R. 3 says that the bill will “not allow the Federal Government to subsidize abortions in cases of statutory rape.” The bill itself doesn’t say anything like that, but if a court decides that legislators intended to exclude statutory rape-related abortions from eligibility for Medicaid funding, then that will be the effect.
The bill itself: Text of H.R. 3 (112th): No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (Placed on Calendar in the Senate version) - GovTrack.us