are you fucking KIDDING ME?

[mickeym]

By way of Carys:

The House GOP's plan to redefine rape.

"This bill takes us back to a time when just saying 'no' wasn't enough to qualify as rape," says Steph Sterling, a lawyer and senior adviser to the National Women's Law Center. Laurie Levenson, a former assistant US attorney and expert on criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, notes that the new bill's authors are "using language that's not particularly clear, and some people are going to lose protection." Other types of rapes that would no longer be covered by the exemption include rapes in which the woman was drugged or given excessive amounts of alcohol, rapes of women with limited mental capacity, and many date rapes. "There are a lot of aspects of rape that are not included," Levenson says.

As for the incest exception, the bill would only allow federally funded abortions if the woman is under 18.

The bill hasn't been carefully constructed, Levenson notes. The term "forcible rape" is not defined in the federal criminal code, and the bill's authors don't offer their own definition. In some states, there is no legal definition of "forcible rape," making it unclear whether any abortions would be covered by the rape exemption in those jurisdictions.

I just--I don't even have the words to express how appalled I am by this. So, letters to my reps this weekend -- not that I think it's going to make any difference at ALL because they're both men and they're both republican -- but I gotta try.

I love how as we progress further ahead in terms of technology, we fall further backward in terms of civil rights, etc.

Comments

[de-nugis.livejournal.com]

Most of the time, for all that I've loved my time in Canada, I figure the US is home for all its faults and I'll end up back there.

Then there is stuff like this.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention, though. I've gotten too lazy about following the home domestic news.

[neros-violin.livejournal.com]

Most of the time, for all that I've loved my time in Canada, I figure the US is home for all its faults and I'll end up back there.

Same.

This is so beyond words that I am beyond words. Slippery slope times eighty billionty.

I want to cry.

[sanj.livejournal.com]

Are you f*cking kidding me.

[clumsygyrl.livejournal.com]

i'm physically ill. good god, i hate the world.

[rainbow.livejournal.com]

thank you for reposting *HUG*

[epeeblade]

Just wrote my rep, who, sadly, is the sponsor of this bill. Sorry :(

[fufaraw]

I. I can't even.

I mean, I was there the first time. I fought and marched and sat in and voted and rallied, the whole nine. I cheered every time we moved out of the shadow of religion and the notion of property and control by others. And with every step I felt more safe, more fully human.

I've watched this backsliding now for nearly 20 years--at first vaguely uneasy, then with growing alarm that nobody else seemed to notice the erosion happening right under our feet. By the time others did notice in numbers, the opposition had already gained greater, more vocal, and more activist numbers, and the fight was harder than it ever should have had to be.

We had it won. We didn't pay attention, and we didn't take care. And honestly? I'm too old and too tired to fight that fight again. The opposition has warped education and skewed public view and destroyed truth and accountability on every front they could.

If women wind up in purdah, living as chattel at the direction and pleasure of the men of the world, we have only ourselves to blame. We need to remember that men don't "let" women have equal pay. Men don't "let" women have a voice. Government doesn't "let" women have agency and control over their own bodies. It's ours, it's always been ours, but it's our job to take it, and to keep it.

Um. Sorry. Somebody burn that soapbox.

[roseganymede.livejournal.com]

How does this kind of legislation even begin? Like, who seriously wakes up and decides, "let's decide to redefine rape today"? I'm unsure and worried about whether or not this will translate into the courts as well...Not only will rape be defined this way for abortion but also for prosecution, I wonder? This is ri-fucking-diculous. I don't even.

[zillahseye.livejournal.com]

Totally aside from the abortion issue, I find it so scary how lawmakers don't see the other impacts of stuff they do. They're so fixed on one point they're trying to make that they don't care that redefining terms will influence other areas of the law.