They’re both things you have to plan for, you see.
I don’t even —
Last Friday, Kansas legislators approved a ban on insurance companies offering abortion coverage as part of their general health plans. The one exception: when a woman’s life is at risk.
DeGraaf, who is in his first term and who is an associate pastor, also called for banning coverage for abortions of rape pregnancies. (Women could get around this if they purchased separate, “abortion-only policies.”)
During the House discussion there was predictably some disagreement over whether excluding rape pregnancies from coverage was perhaps the sort of callous treatment a recently violated woman shouldn’t have to deal with. Here’s DeGraaf’s response to Rep. Barbara Bollier’s challenge, as reported by the McPherson Sentinel:
Rep. Pete DeGraaf, a Mulvane Republican who supports the bill, told her: “We do need to plan ahead, don’t we, in life?”
Bollier asked him, “And so women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with pregnancy?”
DeGraaf drew groans of protest from some House members when he responded, “I have a spare tire on my car.”
“I also have life insurance,” he added. “I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for.”
This was my exact written reaction when I read that nonsense:
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAA HIAEORGEWPABHIDPSBGDJNF’BDXVC
Exactly.
[cross-posted bfldsgwr3b]
burnspbesq
This is why there is a best-selling book called “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”
burnspbesq
And the ad at the top of my screen is for “Dress in Lolita.”
I’m outta here. I’m moving to the parallel universe where Hope Solo is straight and unattached, diabetics can eat all the brownies they want, and I can play the guitar like Tony Rice.
Spaghetti Lee
I sometimes wonder if it’s the GOP’s legitimate plan to be so outrageously awful that decent people can’t respond except with sputtering disbelief. That’s all I can do when I read stories like this.
different church-lady
He’s got a lot of things he’s planned ahead for.
I wonder if his career outside of politics is one of them.
Sue
Good lord. Don’t these idiots realize that men can be raped too? With sometimes deadly consequences?
How many men plan for that and how exactly do they do it?
Ija
I don’t understand this. How would you know ahead of time that a pregnancy will endanger your life, therefore allowing you to sidestep the ban?
Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
If assholes like this–and I count pretty much all sex-obsessed fundamentalists among them, whether Christian or Muslim–spent as much time trying to make themselves better people as they do telling other people how they should live, well, hell, I can’t even begin to fathom how much better off the world might be…
burnspbesq
@Ija:
No, you understand perfectly. It’s absurd and inherently contradictory. It’s “if we cant get Roe overturned, we’ll just chip away at it until it’s meaningless.”
suzanne
I hope someday when he gets shot and bleeds all over the sidewalk, no one stops to help. ‘Cayse if he’d really planned ahead, he would have been wearing Kevlar.
Villago Delenda Est
This reminds me a bit of Sen Jon Kyl (R-racist state between CA and NM) who commented that why should he care about women’s health issues?
Ija
@burnspbesq:
To be fair to these assholes, SCOTUS did open the door with Casey in terms of abortion restrictions. They are just doing what the Court says they can. I tend to think that challenging these laws at this point in time is unwise. I’m pretty sure there are 5 votes in SCOTUS to allow more severe abortion restrictions. Roberts might not sign on to overturn Roe altogether, (his whole “respecting precedent, but in name only” schtick), but I bet he’ll sign on to make Roe as toothless and meaningless as possible.
El Cid
Hey, it can be very difficult to get tires replaced. Especially if the tire shop waiting area is filled up by lots of other people getting work done, in which case it’s a million times worse than all the Congo war rapes times a billion.
TenguPhule
Good, so when a pregnant Rape victim kills him, no worries. We can plan the acquittal ahead of time too.
Church Lady
I’ve reached the point where nothing surprises me anymore. Heck, I have trouble even getting outraged. It all just seems so par for the course at this point. Crazy Republican says crazy thing. And dog bites man.
Joey Maloney
If there ever was a guy who deserved to get a flat tire on a weekly basis, IYKWIMAITYD, it’s this putz.
cthulhu
So is it the case that, based on the parenthetical Women could get around this if they purchased separate, “abortion-only policies all they are doing is making general health plans not cover abortion? And is d*ckwad’s point is that, a rational, forward-thinking and even conservative woman would benefit from such separate insurance coverage? So his message is not “No woman should get an abortion” but rather “All women should plan to have an abortion.” What an idiot.
While I get that they may think that any and all complexities they throw up will reduce abortion, I would think that such coverage could be easy provided by some enterprising small company for less than $10 a year. This would effectively negate this stupidity and make certain people facilitating access to abortion services rich in the process.
Joey Maloney
@cthulhu:
When you put it that way, I wonder how much paperwork is involved in starting an insurance company?
Pseudonym
I think it’s pretty clear what he’s saying: you know, the tire wouldn’t have gone flat if it hadn’t decided to wear those lacy panties in the first place.
Joseph Nobles
Who’s that comedian who talks about lying down in the aisle of embarassment when Mama was buying shoes for them in the grocery store? That’s what things like this make me feel like. “DeGraaf, why you tripping? You are messing this shit up for everybody.”
aimai
I went to his website, which was (as of yesterday) extremely easy to access and to leave a comment on and left him a polite but vicious comment. That is, no swearing.
Cthulu is right upthread–the remark he made is even more horrifying and illogical than it at first appears. Not only should women be the only one’s concerned with their pregnancies (we have no husbands, fathers, or sons with whom we might be sharing a home or family or health insurance plan) but the way he orders us to be “prepared” is by outlawing the easiest way to be prepared.
Casey is the root of all the evil and I agreee with whoever said upthread that it is quite likely that the current crew on the Supreme Court would simply overturn Roe entirely at this point.
aimai
burnspbesq
@aimai:
“Casey is the root of all the evil”
I see it differently. Casey was the necessary compromise that kept the core of Roe from being swept away.
kay
These statehouse debates are really illuminating. All over the country. This is how conservatives talk about women. Mind you, this is how they talk when they’re debating in a statehouse, where there’s a record. There’s real animosity towards women there, and it’s in their own words, over and over, in state after state.
Puts paid to all the patronizing, sentimental mommy and baby dreck that anti-abortion PR flacks pump out nationally. No hearts and flowers when the campaign is over, and they get down to making law.
These are some hard, nasty people.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Pseudonym:
i blame the rubber.
no seriously, of course it is heinous analogy. the separate abortion insurance is obviously the idea of someone who has never negotiated what is and isn’t covered by a health plan. both plans would try and bounce your complaint to the other provider. of course this limits even further the number of providers, and places that will offer abortion. and of course there is the “ho” stigma of carrying abortion insurance separately in the first place.
kay
@aimai:
He doesn’t really care, and he hasn’t thought it through.
Women should consider themselves lucky if any of these clowns read the bill, let alone actually drafted it. The Ohio bills were drafted by national anti-abortion groups. The national anti-abortion drafter actually moved here to push passage. I don’t know why she bothered. It’s not like she couldn’t have written Ohio law from her home in California, and gotten some local “elected representative” to sign off on whatever the hell she submitted.
iriedc
I’m thinking tire iron to the nuts can solve a few problems in one swing.
merrinc
@cthulhu:
That is a brilliant idea. I don’t even NEED abortion coverage because I had a tubal ligation after my 2nd child but I would pay $10 a year for it just so it would be available – and I bet there are enough like me to make it profitable.
Ija
@burnspbesq:
That was in the days before Souter was fully converted. I have always wondered if Casey came along a few years later, the results might have been different.
Citizen_X
If I were a horrible person, I would suggest that this asshole be constantly plagued with flat tires due to, ah, human intervention.
cthulhu
@merrinc: Thanks for the praise but there are a couple of issues to be considered. For the insurance itself, at that price, I am assuming that the rare major complications of an abortion would be covered by the person’s regular insurance. But if enough people like yourself paid in (and why not men as well), the fund could probably cover that as well. I suspect if it was a charity doing this, one would get around insurance regulations. Hmm, sounds like I have just described Planned Parenthood, ha.
The larger issue, though, is the push against abortion providers. The coverage won’t do any good if there is no place to use it.
muddy
But how prepared would he be if he had 2 flat tires?
Sincap
I have always wondered how “except in the case of rape” is supposed to work. Does that mean that a woman must provide a police report to prove she was raped?
Tata
Rep. Pete DeGraaf, a Mulvane Republican who supports the bill, told her: “We do need to plan ahead, don’t we, in life?”
Women: if you aren’t prepared to be raped, you’re not prepared in life.
aimai
I like this idea of having someone, perhaps even PP if that is possible, become an insurance clearinghouse for all women and families. If it is going to become impossible for me to count on having abortion coverage through my spouse’s family plan because it is quietly dumped from all private insurance what is to stop me from buying an “emergency abortion coverage” plan from some provider, like PP, for myself and my daughters? Even knowing that I’d probably never have to use it, or them either, I’d be willing to pony up some money every year–and isn’t the creation of a massive pool of customers who probably won’t need the coverage a good scenario for an insurance plan? If it were a standalone private insurance company and it set rates for abortions very low wouldn’t it essentially end one of the problems poor women are having in accessing abortions (therapeutic or otherwise) which is cost?
The number of women who could need an abortion is way higher than the number who do need one, every year. How is this not a potential opportunity for a non profit in this area–pace the problem of getting actual providers. But maybe we should be planning for full service abortion services just over the border from selected states with taxi/bus service included in the price of the abortion insurance.
aimai
SectarianSofa
@Citizen_X:
And how would we know that this was anthropogenic tire flattening? Tires go flat all the time. Maybe there are no humans involved. It’s just chance that this year is DeGraaf’s worst flat tire year on record.
jeff n. ziontz
This so called man equates the total violation of a human being with a flat tire has displayed his total empathy vacuum. To whom can he minister to, or represent politically with this gross sense of the ability to deal with life by buying insurance At best he is a mindless tool for insurance companies, at worst he is a woman hating sociopath. You pick, I cannot.