This shocked even me:
A Republican lawmaker in New Mexico introduced a bill on Wednesday that would legally require victims of rape to carry their pregnancies to term in order to use the fetus as evidence for a sexual assault trial.
House Bill 206, introduced by state Rep. Cathrynn Brown (R), would charge a rape victim who ended her pregnancy with a third-degree felony for “tampering with evidence.”
“Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime,” the bill says.
Third-degree felonies in New Mexico carry a sentence of up to three years in prison.
So the fetus fetishists have gone from tepidly accepting a rape exception for abortion to debating whether rapes are legitimate or not to now deciding to jail rape victims who have abortions.
Unabogie
I mean.
I just.
I got nothing.
Maude
@Unabogie:
You beat me to it. Can’t even say a word.
sparrow
wtf? Who votes for someone like that? How is this not repugnant to 99.999% of voters (the rest being rapists, I suppose?)
BGinCHI
Atwood is going to have to revise The Handmaid’s Tale soon if this shit keeps up.
Imagination fails.
Robin G.
As a general rule, when trying to determine a human being’s motivations, if you wind up at “purely a cold-hearted villain” it means you’ve lost a step somewhere. But damned if I can come up with anything else.
Do these people just like being evil? Is that seriously it?
Emma
@Maude: I could but my mother would wash my mouth out with soap. The stinging kind.
BGinCHI
@sparrow: Even the rapists would vote against that.
Lizzy L
head/desk
How can anyone, anyone, believe that this is a good idea?
japa21
It is disgusting to the nth degree. I love the line “with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime.” I suppose it gives the lawmaker an out of some sort but it is pretty lame.
Ruckus
The crazies are not going to get sane any time soon. They are illogical, irrational, venial, puritanical, assholes. It has taken them a while to get that stupid and dangerous and it’s going to take an intervention at the least to fix because they aren’t going to make the leap on their own.
Another Halocene Human
The second “n” stands for “no conscience”?
Violet
I have no words. Incomprehensible.
I wonder who will vote for it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The only question is exactly how, assuming she can, Susanna Martinez squashes this. Does she have enough/powerful enough allies in the state house to do it for her. I imagine paint on the walls of whatever room she was in when she hear about this is cracked and peeling.
El Caganer
It’s bad enough that there are elected sociopaths who propose this kind of legislation. It would be infinitely worse if a body of elected sociopaths actually passed it.
YellowJournalism
So if a twelve-year-old incest victim gets an abortion, would she be tried as an adult or a juvenile?
Damn this woman and any others who support this monstrosity to hell and back again.
Maude
@Emma:
It is so awful and I’m being polite.
ef
The Constitution is not for Thee
RobNYNY1957
Idiotic. Of course a tissue sample could be preserved for any forensic purpose. Bodies of murder victims are buried all the time without anyone going to jail for tampering with evidence.
Bokonon
My question is this: did Representative Brown draft this on her own, all on her own initiative? Or was this bill handed to her by one of the right-to-life groups?
I suspect that what is going on is that the right-to-lifers are market testing this idea, with the intention of introducing similar bills if the ensuring publicity goes their way (and the rank and file of their movement embrace it, instead of recoiling).
But one thing for certain – this moves the goalposts even further to the extremes. Sort of the way that the “personhood” ballot initives in Mississippi and Colorado previously moved the goalposts on defining a “person” as a fertilized human egg … and contraception as a form of abortion … and therefore conveniently making contraception something that could be criminalized. Plus, people rightfully pointed out that miscarriages might then have to be investigated as potential murder cases (like they are in some South American nations).
Same idea here.
Trinity
I just can’t.
Cannot.
Xantar
I hesitate to even raise the question, but I notice that the lawmaker introducing this bill is a woman. Does she not understand what she’s proposing to put other women through?
Maude
@Ruckus:
I had a re tweet from Army Times yesterday, a reporter who has be embedded with troops for about 10 years said women were already doing combat. I replied a thx, I didn’t know that.
? Martin
Doesn’t the law say that all evidence becomes property of the state? So, technically, isn’t she introducing legislation designed to enslave individuals to the state or local government? At the very least, the cost of maintaining that evidence should fall entirely on the state.
Ruckus
How can anyone be shocked by this? Pissed off for sure but shocked? Dumbfounded, I get that.
These are exactly the people we thought they were.
halteclere
@RobNYNY1957:
Beat me to it. How is a live baby any better evidence than a dead fetus?
Just another ploy to make women who have an abortion as miserable as possible.
Comrade Mary
I have a counter-proposal: any woman who believes that she is being raped has the right to cut off the man’s dick and keep it for evidence at the trial. (I think one of those vagina-dentata devices could be adapted nicely for this.) If the man is acquitted, the woman is not held liable for her oopsie.
Fair enough?
Suffern ACE
@Xantar: Yes. Yes, she does.
Women who have abortions are murders and they should go to jail. Next up, who need an abortion because of incest will be stoned at the gates. What part of no abortions, no exceptions is so hard to understand?
? Martin
@Xantar:
Based on her photo, I’m guessing that she’s post-menopausal. So, just another FU,IGM Republican.
Rosalita
and this coming from some seriously sorry excuse for a woman… despicable.
Field Guide
@japa21: Wait, a republican is admitting that rape exists, that it is a crime, and that is is possible to conceive as a result of rape?
That has to be some sort of progress, right?
Ben Cisco
That is just, well, all kinds of jacked up right there. Only a gibbering moron could possibly think this is a good idea.
Or a Republican, but that’s redundant.
And the fact that this shit sundae of a bill in couched in “law and order” language (as if they give a rat’s fart about convicting rapists) is just that extra bit of anthrax sprinkled on top.
Sociopaths, every single one of them.
scav
Doesn’t evidence belong to the state? Is she creating a class of state-owned humans? Certainly would seem the state is on the hook for the cost of maintaining its physical evidence for as long as needed. Do they mean to dump said evidence on the trash-heap once the court case is closed? They’re really going out of their way to prove thinking things out isn’t part of their skillset.
Robin G.
@Ruckus:
Even though I think most of us have by now dismissed the possibility of Peak Wingnut, it’s still shocking how well they manage to outdo themselves.
Cassidy
This is why I call for gun confiscation. It would be messy, but the problem would be gone.
Rosalita
@Comrade Mary:
oh come on, you know we can’t possibly THINK of legislating any part of a man’s body! but I love the idea…
Chris
Wow; in one day we’ve got the Catholic Church claiming that fetuses aren’t alive after all, and a Republican politician claiming that they’re “evidence” which presumably means they’re not alive either.
I suppose I should, on some level, be thanking them for the frank admission that it’s not about the fetus.
mdblanche
Republicans sympathize with rapists more than they do with rape victims. It’s just that simple.
Schlemizel
I was listening to Nice Polite Republican radio this morning & there was a thing on about the attempts to change thinking in India about rape. The old men seem to think that rape does not happen to ‘good girls’ and ladies of good families.
So there ya go gals! If ya didn’t wanna be raped do go outside with an unaccompanied va-jay-jay (I assume using the grown up word gets me mod’ed – nice work WP!).
In fact, if you really didn’t want to get raped why did you let yourself have one of those things any way? You must know they are just an unnecessary provocation to us real men. It would be better for you, honey, if you would just let your man (dad, husband, brothers) have that source of evil so you can’t hurt anyone else with it. Thats a good girl.
Ruckus
@Maude:
Go find yesterdays post if you haven’t and read the last 20 or so.
A world that lives only in the fucked up recesses of a conservative mind is not a place I want to have to live in. Reality is harsh enough for most of us. Making it worse for some sky pilot bullshit that gains no one anything except misery and suffering, that’s what is unspeakable.
JoyceH
So, wait. Then if there’s no pregnancy, a rape did not occur? That’s the only rationale under which this proposal makes sense.
Napoleon
@Comrade Mary:
I have no idea of what you are refering to but I think one of those cigar cutters would work just fine for such purposes.
http://wingtip.com/product/berti-cutlery/cigar-cutter-with-wood-base/30275?gclid=CMrB0vnmgbUCFcyf4AodaQcAYQ
Violet
How great would it be to be the person who was born only to be a piece of evidence. Maybe they can start naming the kids “Evidence”.
scav
@Schlemizel: Speaking of India and rape, let’s not omit conditions in DC Washington police failures on rape detailed in groundbreaking report
I’ll just head for the most parallel quote
Mandalay
I am not condoning the actions of this awful woman in any way, but there is an update to the story…
http://www.timesunion.com/news/crime/article/Uproar-in-NM-over-bill-on-abortion-by-rape-victims-4220778.php
I have no idea where the truth lies or what is that woman’s head and heart, but the story is no longer quite what it originally appeared to be.
J
@Ruckus: ‘venal’ rather than ‘venial’, but otherwise agreed.
This is too horrible, but it’s so insanely stupid that I began thinking of how to apply the general principle to other cases. Rules forbidding victims of assault to have their wounds treated until after the trial? No setting or broken bones? Bullets must remain in the body?
Ruckus
@Robin G.:
Whocouldaknowed.
My shock-o-meter must be broken. I expect nothing from conservatives except to get worse and worse. They have been doing this my entire life. Why would I expect different? I’m supposed to be shocked by the depths of their depravity? Like peak wingnut that depth has no end, no bottom. They are like cockroaches, without the cuteness.
cursorial
At this point, I shouldn’t even be surprised.
I’m curious about the language, though. The whole “facilitated / coerced” phrasing – is the intent here to be able to prosecute a doctor who performs an abortion on a rape victim, or a counselor that advises a victim to seek an abortion? I don’t know enough about legal language to tell.
Ruckus
@Rosalita:
I’ve got one of those male parts and I agree with this idea.
Mandalay
For some reason my previous post is stuck in moderation, but there is a significant update to the original story here:
http://www.timesunion.com/news/crime/article/Uproar-in-NM-over-bill-on-abortion-by-rape-victims-4220778.php
Schlemizel
@scav:
I can’t even cry any more, its just beyond parody.
mdblanche
@JoyceH: No. You see if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. Therefore if there is a pregnancy, it is evidence that a rape did not occur. Getting an abortion would be destroying exculpatory evidence in an attempt to frame the poor innocent man who just couldn’t help himself, she was dressed so provocatively.
Ruckus
@J:
Thanks.
You should have seen it before I allowed spell check to fix it.
Robin G.
@Mandalay: “Never intended to punish or criminalize rape victims” my ass.
ETA: Yes, it truly IS sad that people would “misrepresent what this bill does” by daring to QUOTE THE BILL.
donnah
I’ll bet Ohio tries it, too. gah.
Jay S
@Violet:
Exhibit A
bemused
@Schlemizel:
Did this pertain to the old men in India or old men here in the good ol’ USA?
PurpleGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s mentioned in various articles that the bill has no chance of passing because Democrats hold majorities of both state houses. I only hope that’s true.
geg6
@Xantar:
Just because she’s a woman does not exclude the possibility that she’s a misogynistic piece of shit.
I know plenty of those.
marianne19
I thought Republicans were going to stop talking about rape. They should have. This is awful.
dmsilev
So this would make her the Benedict Arnold of the War on Women?
Or maybe Tokyo Rose would be a better analogy.
Robin G.
@marianne19: I think this means Colbert’s chalkboard comes out again. Back to 0 Days since rape mentions.
scav
I’m beginning to wonder if Nigerian Princes don’t write a lot of bill proposals that a class of Repubs throw out there. Quality of logic, clarity of language . . The warning “Do not break the chain!” would explain their showing up instate after state after state. . .
Brachiator
Well, this does at least disprove the claim that only wingnut men want to try to control women.
lucslawyer
Let me get this straight…the gop is trying to attract people and at the same time its members are proposing stuff like this? Tone deaf does not even begin to describe this….
ruemara
Guns, even bazookas-No regulation on those. Woman’s uterus? Dangerous, must be controlled. I can’t tell you how much I’d like to slap this woman across the face. And yes, I do mean slap her. She’s a liar and a pig. Apologies to pigs.
Ash Can
Someone on LGF commented that what this bill would do is to ensure that no rape is ever reported again — rapists would be effectively scot-free let off the hook. (I use the conditional form because, as someone else there pointed out, Dems control the other house of the NM state leg and the gov is a Dem, so this bill thankfully going nowhere.)
@geg6:
There was a commenter around here last year sometime who described herself as a former conservative (and mind you, I use that word loosely since there is nothing conservative about these people). She posted some fascinating insights on how conservative women fool themselves into believing that RW leaders aren’t referring to them when they do and say shitty things to and about women, and that they don’t have to worry about their rights being taken away because nothing bad will ever happen to them (and if anything ever does, it’s their own fault). It’s complete denial and delusion. They build a house of cards for themselves and don’t think twice about living in it.
(And if that commenter is lurking here, hey, don’t be a stranger.)
Robin G.
@Ash Can:
If I had to choose between letting my rapist go and carrying my rapist’s baby, I’d choose the former. Not even gonna lie.
? Martin
@Mandalay: That’s a VERY significant update. Interesting how different the perspective becomes if the law was only intended to make it crime to coerce someone into getting an abortion with the intent of destroying evidence.
Mandalay
@Robin G.:
I do not condone what the original or revised legislation proposes at all. But it does seem highly relevant that she is admitting to a serious error in the wording of the original bill, and she insists that any legislation would apply only to the rapist, and never to the woman who was raped.
So everyone can continue to be outraged, but the original story in Cole’s post has changed significantly.
Robin G.
@Ash Can: Side note: When, exactly, did LGF go from being winger hangout to relatively moderate? What was the tipping point? It seems like I just turned around one day and then, whoa, LGF was kind of sane.
AliceBlue
What happens if the baby’s born before the trial? Do they put it in an envelope and stick it in the evidence room?
pseudonymous in nc
State legislators are fucked up dumbasses, film at 11.
@Robin G.:
Pretty much when Pamela Gellar went to a conference of European white supremacists operating under the banner of “concerned about Muslims”. Not that I give LGF any traffic: Charles has got a fair bit of penance left.
Cassidy
@Robin G.: It might have been the Mosque thing in New York.
cckids
@japa21: Not to gross everyone out, but anyone with any kind of logic, or even if you’ve seen CSI or Law & Order, you know that if the rape victim has an abortion, any tissue needed for “evidence” can be tested for DNA, or preserved, etc. The argument that she needs to carry it to term doesn’t make any sense.
Cluttered Mind
My guess is the endgame of this is more slut-shaming, all the way to the courts. I am certain that at some point if this abomination of a bill is allowed to become law, a woman who attempts to accuse her rapist in court will be subjected to a cross-examination (either by the rapist’s lawyer or by the media at large) where she gets accused of being a slut who wanted a baby and now wants money to raise it, and that’s why she’s accusing that fine upstanding (white) pillar of the community.
Robin G.
@Mandalay: Why on earth did the original bill say “shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion”, then? It wasn’t a matter of poorly phrasing something, or leaving words out; the first half of the sentence couldn’t have indicated anything except prosecuting the rape victim. I don’t see how that could have been a wording error. I think she meant exactly what that bill says but just didn’t expect there to be outrage, and now she’s trying to wriggle out of it by claiming it was all a big misunderstanding.
Calouste
Because as a victim, it is really to their advantage to destroy the most obvious evidence of the crime, is it?
Evil and stupid.
YellowJournalism
@Comrade Mary: Have you seen the movie Teeth? Perfect depiction of what you’re proposing.
Phoenix_rising
Couple of notes for y’all who aren’t veterans of the Land of Enchantment’s lawmaking process:
1) Our legislature meets for 60 days every other year, in odd years, for a freestyle session*: the 110
village idiotsmembers of this representative body we elect can propose whatever fool thing ALEC (or to be fair the ACLU) tells them to. They are mostly not lawyers, and cannot be expected to have written bills they file. That’s what lobbyists are for.2) Our solons are volunteers. Rep. Brown receives a per-diem (pronounced purr-dime) check, and a travel expense check, but her regular job is…something I can’t look up right now because you-all have broken the Lege’s web site. (We probably went with the low bid there, so I’m expecting a special assessment on my taxes to pay for all this bandwidth you’re using.)
3) NM is often the site of test balloons. There’s no way this is getting out of committee, but the RRWJs who wrote it will know a lot more about what parts of their stated intent–adding another crime on top of statutory rape if the victim gets an abortion–need to be rephrased to sneak past a GOP-held statehouse.
4) Since their real intent is to give county DAs a pretext to dig around in the files of health care providers who currently deliver safe, legal abortions, which increases their costs and makes women fear that their HIPAA rights will be abridged…it’s not enough for this bill to die. It needs to die with a silver stake through its heart. We must dance on its grave. Because anything less encourages them.
*Even years, we get 30 days of foolishness, directed by a proclamation from the Guv telling them which lobbyist’s draft bills they’re allowed to file, by subject. Plus a special session to hammer out the budget, typically.
Jay C
@Robin G.:
As I recall, it was a couple of years back: Charles made the mistake of FP’ing a post questioning the wisdom of lauding some Dutch or Belgian neo-Fascist just for being anti-Muslim as well. A non-trivial percentage of his commentariat handed his head to him as being a virtual jihadi-enabler, and the whole thing opened his eyes, I think, to the insanity prevalent on “his” side….
Roger Moore
@Cluttered Mind:
AFAIK, it’s generally only necessary for a woman to show paternity in order to force a child’s father to pay child support, not rape. And if she’s really that mercenary it would be very foolish to get the daddy convicted of rape, since he won’t be earning any money to pay in child support while he’s in jail. Not that logic necessarily has much effect on these things.
johnny aquitard
So they think they’ve finally found a way to throw women in prison who have abortions. Fucking shitbags.
I notice Brown is too old to get pregnant.
She had a choice about an unwanted pregnancy resulting from rape her entire reproductive life. And now she no longer has to worry about an unwanted pregnancy, she wants to deny that same choice to every other woman in her state.
Rapist’s baby for thee but not for me.
What a loathsome piece of shit. God I hate republicans.
Ridnik Chrome
@Ash Can:
So what is the point in introducing a bill like this? To move the Overton window? To piss off liberals? To out-wacko all the other Republicans? Or is there a Most Despicable Human Being In New Mexico contest going on, with cash prizes for the winners?
koalaholik
@Xantar: @Emma: Apparently being a Republican women removes any sense of comity with other women.
Phoenix_rising
@Ash Can: Yeah, apparently that sleight of hand that got this Governor elected worked on you too: Just because our Governor is a woman and Hispanic, that doesn’t make her a Democrat. And she’s the furthest thing from progressive that you can be without walking backwards everyplace you go.
bemused
Earlier this week Chris Matthews kept at an anti-choice woman to answer if women who have abortions should get jailed and she twisted and waffled trying not to go there.
@AliceBlue:
I almost hurt myself laughing.
Robin G.
@koalaholik: I think you’ve got it backwards; lacking any sense of comity with other women is why they become Republicans.
OmerosPeanut
God damnit, Repubs, The Handmaid’s Tale is not a “How To” guide.
Frankensteinbeck
@mdblanche:
This. They empathize with rapists, people who like to shoot first and ask questions later, and asshole businessmen. They blame the victim and think punishing the poor will make the poor better people. They’ve always been the party of abusers, but now they’re terrified that liberals finally outnumber them, and liberals are generally in favor of helping people, so… they loudly cheer hurting people as morally right.
Cris (without an H)
Cathrynn Brown is the representative from Carlsbad.
She’s obviously bats.
Monkeyfister
Guaranteed that the Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Missouri and Mississippi GOP contingents all just looked up, and said, “OOOoooohhhhh– GREAT IDEA!!!”
This whackaloon idea will end up getting passed in one of those idiotic states.
Cris (without an H)
I told you not to use Lifebuoy.
Laertes
It makes perfect sense, really. It’s just an extension of the same principle that informs the treatment of gunshot wounds. As we’re all aware, the surgeon’s top priority is the recovery of evidence with as little damage as possible. The patient’s health is obviously important as well, and the trauma surgeon will try to produce a favorable patient outcome to whatever extent the overriding priority of evidence recovery will permit.
scav
@Laertes: Wouldn’t preserving evidence of an intent to kill mean allowing the patient to die?
NCSteve
The thing I find most amazing is that they’re still finding ways to amaze me, still finding new ways to make me say “what in the fuck is wrong with those people?”
Villago Delenda Est
@Xantar:
The sluts need to be punished, they need to suffer.
mdblanche
@Ridnik Chrome: Why does a scorpion sting?
AliceBlue
@Monkeyfister:
My money’s on Kansas.
Sly
@Robin G.:
Johnson put up a post back in ’09 explaining why, though, personally, I think he’s full of shit.
LGF was mostly an outlet for the conservative enterprise of “exposing the loony left,” i.e. take something crazy that some nobody on the left said and treat it like a categorical belief of everyone more liberal than Joe Lieberman. One person out of a thousand submits an amateur anti-Bush campaign ad comparing Bush to Hitler to a contest run by MoveOn.og, which subsequently gets disqualified, becomes “MoveOn.org compares Bush to Hitler! When will Democrats condemn them? Never!”
The difference was the Johnson at least paid some attention to the crazy shit conservatives say, but always relegated it to what he saw as a fringe of quasi-fascists and religious nuts. According to Johnson, that gradually changed over 2009, culminating with the yelping over “the Ground Zero Mosque” and “ClimateGate;” it simply became impossible for him to ignore that the fringe was the center.
Which I think is bullshit, because LGF engaged in the same kind of stupid nonsense that other conservative blogs did throughout the ’08 election. Bill Ayers! Reverend Wright! Obama is an enemy of Israel and, if he gets his way, Iraq will be in the hands of Islamofascists!
Laertes
@scav:
Common sense, and a plain reading of the relevant statutes, would suggest as much, but it turns out it’s not so, and the reasons have to do with various controlling precedents.
It’s a pretty complicated thicket of precedents, but general outline is this: In almost all cases, the act of shooting someone is, on its face, evidence of intent to kill, and surgeons don’t have to let the patient die to enable such a finding. However, in cases in which the shooter is of a more privileged ethnicity than the victim, or a police officer, a GSW is instead evidence of the victim’s intent to kill.
Fred
By this logic someone who is shot should be forbiden to receive medical treatment because death would be evidence that the shooter intended to murder the victim.
NonyNony
@Robin G.:
Having watched the sausage making in a couple of state legislature at this point, I can tell you just about exactly how this went:
1) Genius lobbyist with some right-to-life group presents a bill to the legislator in question with phrasing in it that nutty right-to-life group thinks is going to give the government a pretext to root through abortion provider’s files via the idea that rapists are coercing their victims into getting abortions (which, sadly, does happen – especially when the rapist is family).
2) Genius legislator reads the bill and, not being someone who crafts laws professionally (and this is sarcasm here – most legislators have almost no experience writing laws) trusts the genius lobbyist’s summary of the bill.
3) Genius legislator proposes the bill and it actually gets read by someone with experience in this area. Like another lobbyist (sigh) working for a pro-choice group. They actually understand what the “genius” in step one wrote and figure out that it isn’t just a pretext to root through a doctor’s files, it actually criminalizes the rape victim coming forward. Reaction ensues.
4) Genius legislator can’t figure out what’s going on because she still doesn’t understand the legislation and is sure that she never meant to propose anything of the sort.
Happens. All. The. Time. The genius legislator in question probably STILL doesn’t realize what she was passed. (It’s an open question as to whether the genius lobbyist in step 1 was just an idiot or a lying idiot, though. If they weren’t an idiot they would have made the bill a lot more vague.)
yopd1
@J: That’s what I was thinking.
Ridnik Chrome
@mdblanche: Today’s Republicans: the Party of Kicking People Who Are Already Down…
NonyNony
@Sly:
The difference is that Charles Johnson didn’t make the connection through all of that that what was going on was racism. He thought it was just feces throwing.
It wasn’t until he saw people he considered to be on his side of the argument “palling around” with white supremacists that he suddenly made the connection that the “loony left” was actually in the right.
Johnson is one of those guys who was fairly liberal, then 9/11 happened and he lost his shit and bought into the whole “Islamic armies are going to come to conquer America” thing. I’m glad he finally pulled his head out of his ass to see exactly how stupid/dangerous that was.
Citizen Alan
In LGF’s defense, I think there’s something to Obama’s metaphor about the GOP suffering from a fever and that eventually it will break. When someone as reactionary as LGF was prior to 2009 (or as our esteemed host was pre-Schiavo) wakes up from his fever dreams and suddenly hears the mad ramblings of all the other people with whom he’s sharing the ward and runs screaming to our side, it only emphasizes how extremist and completely out of touch they are. I’m predicting Doug Mataconis will be the next one to suddenly wake up one day and realize he’s been on the side of fascist loons and he’ll instantly become a hardcore leftie.
Mnemosyne
@Robin G.:
Because there is a persistent wingnut myth that underage girls are constantly being forced into abortions against their will, usually by their abuser, and Planned Parenthood not only condones it, but assists the abusers in procuring the abortion.
It’s kind of like when Georgia decided to try and ban the government from implanting microchips in humans — a wingnut obsession turned into legislation. I’m guessing it never even occurred to this idiot that the law could apply to women who wanted abortions after being raped.
NotMax
Should be but a short wait for LaPierre to pick up on this and demand in the name of the NRA that bullets not be removed from shooting victims, as that would also be “tampering with evidence.”
Felinious Wench
@Cris (without an H):
Well played.
Donald G
@NonyNony:
And in the years since the 2008 campaign and Charles’s conversion, the right wingnuts have largely flounced or melted down and gotten themselves banned.
There are still a few token wingnuts, but they are very few and often treated with scorn.
The old LGF debate playbook —
1.) Scream “Moonbat! Moonbat! Moonbat!”
2.) If that doesn’t work, scream “Soros! Soros! Soros!”
3.) If that doesn’t work, scream “Antisemite! Antisemite! Antisemite!”
— doesn’t play anymore. Those who try to use it… formerly respected posters… are regarded as pathetic parodies of their former selves.
There’s a lot of new blood over there and it’s like night and day.
mdblanche
@Citizen Alan:
Either that or fry their brains and kill them.
Mandalay
Great post, and I think you have described what actually happened.
And while Brown is dumb as a box of rocks, she is not quite dumb enough to admit that she played no part in writing the legislation she proposed.
Jax6655
@? Martin:
Fuck you.
scav
@mdblanche: “Either that or fry their brains and kill them.”
If lack of brain functioning was enough to kill them, they’d already be toast.
Freedom fries more like, given the likelihood of couch potatoedom.
Mandalay
@Robin G.:
See post #102. So “the person who wrote the bill meant exactly what that bill says”, but that person was not the legislator who proposed it.
dance around in your bones
I haven’t read any comments on this thread yet, so forgive me if I echo similar sentiments, but:
I just really wish some of these men who are trying to pass this type of legislation were able to get pregnant (whether via rape or not) so they could get a bit of insight into the process.
It’s hard enough being pregnant with a baby you WANT and pushing it out over multiple hours of pain and labor (YES, it’s LABOR!) – if you WANT the baby it’s all worth it in the end – but just imagine the pain involved in a forced unwanted sexual assault and the subsequent pain and labor with a baby that would remind you every day of that unwanted sexual/physical assault.
Fucking clueless, those dudes. I wish them all a watermelon sized bowel movement that takes them 24 hours to pass after multiple waves of pain just so they can get some kind of a clue.
(P.S. Tweety just said ‘fricking’ on the TV machine! Ha!)
ETA:Just noticed that said legislator is a woman, more shame on her.
Baud
The Republican platform is that every woman should be required by law to carry the fetus to term. This proposed bill is actually a lot narrower.
Robin G.
@NonyNony: That sounds both likely and depressing.
Mandalay
@NotMax:
Ha! A poster on another board is thinking along similar lines…
Which reinforces the point that the proposed legislation was solely concerned with the unborn child, and the rape victim (male or female) was irrelevant.
And I thought that every sperm was sacred.
scav
Know what her day job is? Brown is an attorney who sits on the state Legislature’s Judiciary Committee
Even the liberal Faux News points this out.
kerFuFFler
Since this bill has zero chance of passing I’m glad it was proposed just to remind voters how much of a war on women there actually is.
Truly, it is a spectacularly stupid proposal since even people who disapprove of most abortions tend to want exceptions for rape victims. When this legislation goes down in flames we must keep the memory of it alive until at least the next election cycle.
Robin G.
@Mandalay: Here’s a legislative reform I’d like to see passed: Before voting, all representatives must pass a 10 question quiz on the bill in question. Fail, no vote.
Hell, these people all seem to be in favor of citizenship tests anyway…
Mandalay
@Robin G.:
I like it, but unfortunately that would never happen.
But why not require all legislators to state any third parties involved in drafting legislation as part of the draft bill? Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and all that…
sparrow
@Jax6655: sensitive much?
Gravenstone
Consider my gob officially smacked.
MattR
My own two cents is that the “with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime” conclusion to the bill jumped out at me and made me believe the intent was what the Representative clarified even before I read the clarification.
Don K
Oh for fucks sake.
That is all.
Southern Beale
I don’t understand the premise of this legislation. Tissue from an abortion has DNA, doesn’t it? It can just as easily be used as evidence in a rape trial as a newborn baby. And wtf? So we wait nine months to prosecute rapes now?
I don’t even get the concept here. Fucking stupid Republicans.
PurpleGirl
@MattR: Have you ever heard of a pregnancy being used as proof of rape? You don’t need evidence of a pregnancy to prove rape… you need the presence of semen, you need the woman talking about force or whatever happened to her. I’ve never heard of a pregnancy being used as proof of rape.
ETA: It looks to me like a weird way to just further restrict abortion rights.
Ruckus
@Southern Beale:
I don’t even get the concept here. Fucking stupid Republicans.
Sounds to me like you get the concept very well. -Fucking Stupid Republicans-
Of course you left out a few of the necessary additional descriptions.
Tonal Crow
Noooo, Republicans, don’t throw us in the rape patch again! We’ll die die die in there fer sure!
El Cid
They have an unyielding religious belief that evidence is sacred?
Mandalay
@Southern Beale:
The alleged premise of the revised legislation – as opposed to what was posted on the FP – is that if a rape victim becomes pregnant as a result of incest then it would be a crime for the rapist to cause the rape victim to get an abortion.
What seems lost on the Republican legislator pushing this drivel is that the revised bill would be almost as bad as the apparent intent of the original legislation, though in a different way.
I think we should make it a crime for any politician to draft legislation that tells women what they can and cannot do with their own body. Let’s go for a minimum of 30 years without the possibility of parole.
Mandalay
OT: Apparently the word i/ n/ c/ e/ s/ t/ gives WP the vapors, and causes your post to go into moderation.
FYWP.
MattR
@PurpleGirl: I don’t follow rape trials all that closely, but it doesn’t seem too farfetched that they would use DNA from either a baby or an aborted fetus as evidence that the father had sex with the mother. If it is a molestation type situtation, it might be difficult to gather semen or other physical evidence or get testimony from the victim.
@Mandalay: Thanks for the warning. I was about to use that word in my reply.
jonas
By this logic, every child carried to term in New Mexico should be confiscated by the court until the birth mother can prove it *wasn’t* conceived via rape. Hey, you never know when evidence could be tampered with, right? How do we know that some woman’s story that “my husband and I lovingly conceived this baby together” isn’t a clever ruse to cover up a sexual assault or incest scandal?
SiubhanDuinne
But here’s the thing about Cathrynnnnn Brownnnnn: she’s all bipartisan-y and everything. For extra crunchy goodness, note the Cokie and Sam reference.
(h/t Charles P. Pierce)
Patricia Kayden
My blood is boiling. Unbelievable.
But there is no GOP war on women. Remember?
Laertes
Waitaminute.
“…a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration…”
There is no such thing. It’s a well-understood phenomenon that rape cannot lead to pregnancy because an unwilling woman’s body has ways of shutting it down.
Any pregnancy then implies consent…which means that abortion is an attempt to manufacture evidence of rape, not conceal it.
This rabbit hole keeps getting deeper.
Mnemosyne
@Southern Beale:
The premise is that Planned Parenthood spends all of its time doing forced abortions on underage abuse victims, which “activists” like Lila Rose spend a lot of their time trying to prove without a whole lot of luck.
I’m pretty sure that making it a crime to coerce someone into having an abortion would sufficiently cover the situation that the legislator claims she was trying to prevent, but then it might hit nice middle-class parents who don’t want their little Madison to hang onto her mistake, and we can’t have that happen.
sm*t cl*de
I love the line “with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime.”
A good precedent for criminalising any medical treatment after alleged assault. Think how much money this will save at ER departments.
But not a war on women; only on those women who don’t want to be incubators.
dance around in your bones
@Mandalay:
It has ever been thus. Also, words that describe games of chance or the places they are played in, the word for male genitalia (not female genitalia, oddly) and way in the distant past the word for what we all wear on our feet AND a system of government called soc.ialism.
Those last two have been fixxored (at least on THIS SITE). Please do not mention Cory Boo.ker o.O
Word Press Spam words
Hoocodanode?
PurpleGirl
@MattR: For the last few decades, the routine on treating a rape is to take the victim to the hospital to have a rape kit exam. It will look for semen, hairs, physical signs like bruises, scratches, etc. To make a woman wait 9 months to have a child is unconscionable. It’s cruel and inhumane. And most rapes don’t result in pregnancy to begin with. They don’t need a pregnancy/child to prove rape.
Besides, suppose the woman is married and pregnant by her husband when she’s raped? Does that mean she wasn’t raped because the DNA is her husband’s? Think about the repercussions of such a requirement.
dexwood
She’s backed off from her bill, said she’s sorry her intent “didn’t come through”, and, to be fair, SE NM is more like Texas in many ways than it is NM. She’s still an idiot and will no doubt remain so.
Ella in New Mexico
First of all, this won’t make it out of committee. Period. It’s ugly, and even though many New Mexicans personally oppose abortion, we want it legal and few would think this kind of law was anything other than intrusive and cruel.
Second of all, this bitch is from the dimwit part of the state that is so isolated, hot and bereft of educated people she got elected. The whole east side of our state is full of white Texicans and Bible thumpers and I wish they’d just go home and stop ruining it for the rest of us.
Thirdly, I think the idea she was handed this legislation by lobbyists who were using it as a trial balloon rings eerily true, and I am hoping someone in our state’s “news media”–which is pretty scarce pickings—does an investigative report on this. Our citizens will put up with our own crazies, but carpetbaggers? Not so much.
Also, too, just to set the record straight for some of you who stated otherwise above:
Susana Martinez is a frigging Republican.
Both of our houses of the legislature are Democratic.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
I think it is more perverse than that. A lot of these people sincerely believe that a woman should bring an unwanted pregnancy to term under all circumstances, and they would force this on their own wives and daughters as well as on the poor. It is not all about economics or class war.
They want to bring back the good old days of shame, embarrassment and sin. When my family moved to California, I was shown on a tour an establishment where good bourgeois burghers from the East Coast and Midwest would send their knocked up little darlings, where they could have their babies in secret, and wallow in their shame, before they returned home wrapped in sin and denial.
I mean, for Deity’s sake, you had someone like the devout Catholic actress Loretta Young, whose secret shame was that she had Clark Gable’s love child. In her last years, Young still called her child “a walking mortal sin”.
That’s some powerful twisted guilt crackers. And that’s where these fundamentalists want everyone to go again.
Patricia Kayden
@pseudonymous in nc: Your last sentence intrigues me. I discovered LGF after Johnson changed. I love it. Very hard for me to believe that Johnson was a hardcore Winger. He’s so liberal now.
PurpleGirl
@dexwood: Her intent came through loud and clear — restrict abortions, end the rape (and/or ince*t) exception.
Yes, she’s an idiot and will remain so. As Mnemosyne said above, it’s possible to craft anti-coercion law with different language.
dexwood
@PurpleGirl: Oh, I agree with you. She’s sorry she got caught waving her true colors.
Mnemosyne
@PurpleGirl:
It’s that, but they’re also convinced that a 14-year-old who was forcibly impregnated by her stepfather would totally bring that child to term if only she wasn’t coerced into getting an abortion to cover up his crime.
I’m not sure what freakish fantasy world they live in where every teenage sexual abuse victim is desperate to have a baby with her abuser, but that’s where they’re located.
ETA: Corrected, because I’m sure there are some abuse victims who do want to keep the children who result from that abuse, but my guess is that they’re much, much rarer than the state of New Mexico would have you believe.
J R in W Va
@mdblanche:
Shouldn’t that be in the other order, kill them and fry their brains? Cause I think frying their brains before we kill them is cruel and unusual punishment.
/snark
Sly
@NonyNony:
Ah, the Dennis Miller Effect. “You know, I used to believe in environmental regulations, progressive taxation, and legalized abortion, but 9/11 changed everything.”
arithmoquine
A fetus is a person, except when it’s evidence.
MattR
@PurpleGirl:
That is generally not possible when the rape is daddy diddling his daughter or other similar circumstances. The point is not to force her to carry a baby to term but to prevent daddy from forcing her to have an abortion to hide the evidence of his wrongdoing. She is perfectly free to have an abortion of her own volition just like every other woman.
Debbie(Aussie)
(R)= American Taliban
@VividBlueDotty
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Just a crazy idea, but she should get someone to propose an amendment requiring that once said child is born, if the father is imprisoned for rape that the state is financially responsible for the child support.
Jax6655
@sparrow:
Not sure of your gender but when a man (Martin) refers to a woman as being post menopausal or having PMS it’s insulting and sexist. Esp. not ok in a supposedly progressive blog.
scav
@Jax6655: However, the post menopausal bit can be relevant in that she’s happily legislating behavior for women now that she doesn’t share in the risk. That status might be telling to the point at hand. Any PMS stuff is more assuredly a simple bit of insult.
rajH
This really infuriated me, until I actually read the damn bill:
the very first sentence of the bill says that it’s about persons who “commit criminal sexual penetration or incest” AND who “procure an abortion”, meaning that rules out a female rape victim, since she isn’t the one who committed the criminal sexual penetration. Note the logical conjunction “AND” above, for those here that can’t follow propositional logic.
Also, if you don’t feel like believing in logic, the bill makes it extra clear, in section 1B: “In no circumstance
shall the mother of the fetus be charged under this subsection.”
In other words, the interpretation in huffpost is a fabrication.
John, I’m expecting you to issue a clarification or retraction of this post.
Del
@Jax6655: Is the author of this bill post-menopause and no longer in danger of being affected by it? Is she practicing one more form of IGMFY Republicanism?
The fact that this woman “wrote” this bill brings her ability to suffer its consequences into the debate. You may not think it’s a valid question, I do. If I or my wife ever get pregnant it’ll be because we were raped, full stop. So I’m siding with the guys. This Reps ability to conceive is an entirely valid question to bring up in this discussion.
kabiddle
@rajH:
rajH: As Frank said, this is the crux of the biscuit:
“(2) A licensed health professional authorized to prescribe drugs who is a clinical nurse specialist, certified nurse-midwife, or certified nurse practitioner is subject to both of the following:
(a) A schedule II controlled substance may be prescribed only for a patient with a terminal condition, as defined in section 2133.01 of the Revised Code, only if the nurse’s collaborating physician initially prescribed the substance for the patient, and only in an amount that does not exceed the amount necessary for the patient’s use in a single, twenty-four-hour period.
(b) shall not personally furnish to patients any schedule II controlled substance”
Unless I’m reading this wrong, Brown’s HB 206 holds the “nurse” criminally responsible for offering and then dispensing Plan B as a morning after pill during the conduction of a rape kit.
I don’t know about you rajH, but I’ve been there as a rape victim as well as a victim advocate. In most areas of the country a “collaborating physician” is not available for prescribing at 3am or at any other time of day. Hospitals and criminal professionals routinely punt this responsibility to “clinical nurse specialist(s), certified nurse-midwife(s), or certified nurse practitioner(s)” who VOLUNTEER their time at places like the YWCA, Planned Parenthood, or other domestic and criminal abuse shelters.
Even when the woman is so battered that she has to be in the emergency room for the rape kit to be processed, the hospital calls in the VOLUNTEER nurse and advocate in order that they don’t have to be responsible or testify if in fact the crime makes it to the court stage.
There are stupid people everywhere, but NEVER has a victim, in my experience, been forced to to take Plan B or any other medication that might prevent the actual transmission of any VD. Victims are counseled, up front, before the rape kit is even administered, that every step of the way is about her or him and THEIR choice — not mommy’s, not daddy’s, not boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s.
You are technically correct, rajH, in that the victim will not be held responsible for the termination of “evidence”. But if “Susan” is confused, hurt, ashamed, battered in the immediate aftermath of her assault and refuses any or all part of the evidence collecting and possible remedy, and then friend “Joe” takes her to an abortion clinic later on once she has been able to process the whole fucking nightmare, then “Joe” and the physician who perform the dilation and curettage are now liable for witholding and destroying “evidence” of the crime.
This is the back-door bullshit these people like Brown, who write badly-written bills, try to ram through with a “what me?” look on their face when forced to go public and face the music of their assholeness. I could go on but won’t.
Read the goddamn bill.