XPost: alt.politics.immigration, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   From: plutedpup@outlook.com   
      
   Tell your daughters not to get raped or they'll be raising the baby before   
   you know it!!   
      
      
    While rape and incest exceptions were once standard in anti-abortion laws,   
   along with exceptions for a pregnant woman’s health or life, they are   
   increasingly a thing of the past (health exceptions, too, are becoming much   
   narrower and less common). This comes despite recent polling showing that   
   the vast majority of Americans – 85%, according to Monmouth – support   
   exceptions for rape, incest and to protect the life of the pregnant woman.   
   As conservative states scramble to further criminalize abortion in the wake   
   of Roe being overturned, many Republicans seem absolutely giddy with   
   possibility, realizing that their control of a great many state   
   legislatures gives them wide latitude to impose whatever restrictions they   
   like.   
      
   And that means forcing rape and incest victims to carry pregnancies to   
   term.   
      
   The rhetoric from Republicans from multiple states is astonishing in its   
   outright cruelty.   
      
   In Virginia, GOP congressional candidate Yesli Vega, who also cited her   
   time as a police officer, gave credence to an absurd untruth – that a woman   
   who is raped may have a lower chance of getting pregnant. Axios published   
   audio recordings of her comments on Monday.   
      
   According to those published recordings, Vega said, “The left will say,   
   ‘What about in cases of rape or incest?’” and then claimed that, in her   
   years in law enforcement, she only saw one rape case in which a woman   
   became pregnant. (She did not seem to consider that she wouldn’t   
   necessarily know about a pregnancy a rape victim terminated. Particularly   
   given Vega’s open hostility to abortion rights – what victim would confide   
   in her?).   
   bash hutchinson split   
   video   
      
   Related video Bash asks GOP governor why he signed bill that would force   
   rape victims to carry babies to term   
      
   A woman at the event then asked a question premised on a bizarre and false   
   theory: “I’ve actually heard that it’s harder for a woman to get pregnant   
   if she’s been raped. Have you heard that?” To which Vega responded that she   
   didn’t know, but “it wouldn’t surprise me. Because it’s not something   
   that’s happening organically. You’re forcing it. The individual, the male,   
   is doing it as quickly – it’s not like, you know – and so I can see why   
   there is truth to that. It’s unfortunate.”   
      
   It should surprise her, because the idea is so plainly misogynistic and   
   unscientific that anyone who gives it any airtime at all is by definition   
   unfit to serve in any elected office – or as a law enforcement officer.   
      
   But Vega isn’t the only Republican whose views on rape are positively   
   medieval.   
      
   Last fall, Ohio US Senate candidate JD Vance called pregnancies from rape   
   merely “inconvenient” and emphasized that in matters relating to pregnancy   
   resulting from rape, “The question to me is really about the baby.”   
   (Apparently the woman matters very little, if at all.) Earlier this year,   
   Ohio Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt said that her state’s law criminalizing   
   abortion gave child rape victims the “opportunity” to “help that life be a   
   productive human being.”   
      
   That is, if a child victim makes it that far. Pregnancy and childbirth   
   complications are the leading killer of girls aged 15-19 worldwide,   
   according to the World Health Organization. And adolescent motherhood means   
   that girls are more likely to be in abusive relationships; that they wind   
   up poorer; that they and their children are less likely to reach their   
   educational potential; and that their children are less healthy and are   
   more likely to die in infancy.   
   People protest about abortion, Friday, June 24, 2022, outside the Supreme   
   Court in Washington.   
      
   Related article Opinion: The aftershocks of America's abortion earthquake   
   will be felt for decades   
      
   We know this: Women who are forced to carry pregnancies to term are more   
   likely to die than women who can get the safe, legal abortions they seek.   
   Laws criminalizing abortion are a death sentence for women – especially in   
   a country with the highest maternal mortality rates in the industrialized   
   world, and where maternal mortality is highest in the states with the   
   strictest anti-abortion laws.   
      
   Republicans know this, too. They seem to have decided it doesn’t matter.   
      
   On Saturday, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said that when it comes to her   
   state’s abortion criminalization law that does not allow exceptions for   
   rape survivors or children impregnated by a family member, “I just have   
   never believed that having a tragedy or tragic situation happened to   
   someone is a reason to have another tragedy occur.” And just this week, in   
   a stunningly callous interview with CNN’s Pamela Brown, Rep. Warren   
   Davidson of Ohio applauded his state’s strict anti-abortion law, which   
   outlaws abortion roughly six weeks after the first day of a woman’s last   
   menstrual period with few exceptions and without any exemption for rape or   
   incest.   
      
   “What happens when a twelve-year-old girl falls pregnant after being   
   raped?” Brown asked him. “Are you ok with her being forced to carry that   
   fetus to term?”   
      
   “You don’t know you were raped for two months?” Warren asked, as if women   
   and girls seeking abortions after rape are either liars, idiots or   
   irresponsible. “I think it’s a great law,” he said. “And it is a   
   compromise.” The “compromise,” apparently, is that most rape and incest   
   victims are forced to carry pregnancies to term. That, Warren reiterated,   
   didn’t bother him. “It’s hard to conceive of somebody who doesn’t know they   
   were raped for two months,” he said...   
      
      
   Dr. Shelly Tien, 40, changes into scrubs and puts her clothes in her   
   backpack in her office at Planned Parenthood in Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.,   
   March 14, 2022. Dr.Tien, who flew into Birmingham late the night before   
   from Jacksonville, Florida to perform abortions in Alabama, will fly back   
   home at the end of the day to Florida where she is a full-time abortion   
   doctor and and one of about 50 doctors in the United States who travels   
   across state lines to provide abortions in states with limited abortion   
   access.   
      
   Related article Opinion: Roe's reversal doesn't just hurt women -- it harms   
   us all   
      
   It’s not hard for me to conceive of, because I’ve met a girl in the exact   
   position Pamela Brown described. She was 12, raped by a family friend and   
   forced to carry the pregnancy to term because she lives in Honduras, where   
   abortion is illegal in nearly all cases (in the story I wrote about her, I   
   gave her the pseudonym “Sofia”). When I met her, she was heavily pregnant   
   and clutching a stuffed bunny – her primary confidante about a situation   
   she didn’t quite understand. The thing about children is that they trust   
   adults; and young children, like Sofia, don’t always know what sex is, or   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)