As part of new language on an abortion rights law, the word "forcible" was added before the word "rape" to indicate the kind of rape-resulting-in-pregnancy that's acceptable for federally funded abortions.
Now, as of today, it appears that the republicans who set up this language have retracted their wording and have reset the language to just say "rape" without the "forcible. So that's a step in the right direction. Right?
Here's the thing though: it's rape. It's forcible. Adding that extra word is ignorant and insulting at best. Suggesting that date-rape is not forcible, that drugged women who are unconscious shouldn't be considered victims of a fierce crime, or that married women never suffer the indignity of this kind of violence at the hands of their husbands... it is outrageous. Used to be that it wasn't up to the victim to proclaim the crime anyway; it was up to standers-by and third parties to decide if the victim really really put up as strong a fight as possible. Turns out, if the victim lived... odds were grim that a crime would have been proclaimed.
Rape and abortion are two entirely independent issues and must remain so. There doesn't even have to be a penis involved for a rape to be a rape. Biggoted, professionally narrowminded hate-mongers are encouraging our leaders and policy makers to choose to push the country toward a taliban-style governance. This must not happen.
I don't care where you fall on abortion rights. If you think that it's murder, then it's murder. Rape or no. Incest or no. One or zero. It's binary. Murder is either murder or it isn't. If terminating a pregnancy is "okay" under certain circumstances and should be legalized for certain circumstances then it should be legal in all circumstances. Sure, it's hard to sit through the stories (made up or not) of people who "just don't want to right now" and end up getting pregnancies terminated, like, all the time... but it's just as hard to sit through stories (made up or not) about people who incessantly scream violent abuses at their kids (or spouses, or pets, or employees, or...). We can't make something illegal because it makes us uncomfortable when people make life choices different from our own. That's not what the United States is all about. Sure, it was founded by people who had very different ideas about the world than what we currently believe, but that doesn't mean that we need to live their lives. We need to make our lives adhere to our current situations. Our present day world demands that we acknowledge certain unpleasant realities. There's no comfort to be found by ignoring them.
Calling one kind of rape "bad" and another "not really so bad after all" is just outright bullcrap.
It's manipulative pandering to a greed-addled population of overstuffed, oversexualized, hyper-coddled bureauocrats who have no real grip on what it's like to live as a real, every day American citizens - much less a North American citizen.
While I'm glad that the language has been corrected, that it was even an issue at all just blows my mind. And I am reminded, finally, that my starry-eyed naiveté must ultimately give way to the soul-crushing burden of bitter sadness that people really aren't as capable of goodness as I want them to be.
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