My husband sent me an email yesterday headed “ultrasound bill-wow.” I opened it immediately because I was wondering why we got a bill for an ultrasound when nobody had one, but that isn’t what he meant.
He meant this bill in the Ohio legislature. From Plunderbund, an Ohio political site:
The House GOP wants Ohio to adopt the Irish law that led to the death of Savita Halappanavar. I’ll let others delve into the implication of forcing transvaginal ultrasounds on rape survivors, as this bill does. I’m going to look at the way that the Politicians Playing Doctor Act will lead to maternal deaths during miscarriage of a wanted pregnancy.
First, the bill increases the waiting period between all-options counseling and termination from 24 hours to 48 hours. Failure to abide by the 48 hour waiting period will now be a felony for the doctor,who can no longer get a waiver if the abortion is medically necessary, meaning when the mother’s health is at risk.
Instead, the House GOP creates a new classification: the “medical emergency” abortion. That is “a condition… that… so complicates the medical condition of the woman… that the death of the woman would result from the failure to immediately terminate the pregnancy.”
This is the law in Ireland. Abortion is legal to save the life of the mother, but it’s a felony if a doctor terminates to protect a woman’s health. To protect themselves from the state, doctors were afraid to treat the miscarriage of Ms. Halappanavar until the fetal heartbeat stopped. The heartbeat only stopped after the woman had already died of septicemia.
I think this is a legitimate issue, and I’ve raised it here before in terms of religious hospitals merging with non-profit and for-profit secular hospitals. We always argue “choice” in terms of a woman seeking an abortion to terminate a pregnancy. But as these laws get stricter and stricter, are we now in the realm where they apply to any woman seeking care for a medical emergency during a wanted pregnancy, too? I think we are, and it should be discussed. It’s called “miscarriage management” and it’s outside the way we think and talk about abortion.
You can read the bill at the link. The language and definition they hope to replace has a line through it, and the new, proposed law comes after the lined-thru portion.
Hunter Gathers
Boy, this ‘rebranded’ GOP is really getting down to the business of governing, isn’t it? Unfortunately, it looks like all that they’re willing to govern are women’s naughty bits. Because Freedom.
IowaOldLady
I say again, this is who they are. They can’t stop themselves even when their consultants tell them they’ll never win another national election. They don’t care. They have to be who they are.
Ruckus
I can not comprehend how any
maleanyone thinks a medical issue between a woman and their Dr. is any of their business. I. just. can. not.ETA. I know they think it is, I know they think their religion demands it, I know they are full of shit, but how can the state be involved in any way except to protect the woman from incompetent Dr?
Kay
@IowaOldLady:
I think it’s much more transactional than that, as far as the politicians, not the GOP base. They made these promises to get elected and now they’re checking off boxes.
aimai
I always bring this up in talking about these laws with other people. The right (and the left) have done a good job of making abortion rights be something that a lot of people think are used only by a small fraction of the population, used by choice, used as birth control. I’m not against any of those uses, by the way. But the truth of the matter is that a whole lot of women get pregnant and want to carry the pregnancy to term (or anticipate wanting to carry the pregnancy to term in their romantic periods) and yet may need emergency D and C’s or other termination services. Any woman who contemplates getting pregnancy–and any husband or boyfriend–should be fighting for the right to an abortion if necessary. Pregnancy is incredibly risky, especially for older women. There’s no way I would have risked getting pregnant if I hadn’t believed that I could access abortion services if something went wrong.
NickT
I’ll be interested to see just how many of our sudden influx of libertarian posters bother to show themselves on this thread. What the GOP are trying to do here is an abomination and a very clear violation of personal liberties as they have traditionally been understood. No bipartisan solutions or compromise on these issues for me – burn those Talibangelical scum down to the ground and then sow the site with salt.
pokeyblow
It’s a lack of empathy. Republicans just can’t imagine other people facing difficult situations and muddling through the best they can.
So They’ll be against abortion until their daughter (or side piece) needs one. They’ll announce their support for gay rights when their child comes out. And so on ad nauseam.
It would be nice if the GOP were composed of reasonable people possessing certain viewpoints. Unfortunately, it is as much a mentally-diseased class as anything else.
Kay
@efgoldman:
Kasich got asked about it at an event and he dodged. It’s complicated. There are divisions in the GOP. The legislators need the Tea Party but Kasich (I’m assuming, based on his Medicaid expansion advocacy) does not need the Tea Party to get re-elected. The Ohio economy is getting better and his poll numbers are rising. Even with that, I don’t think he would veto an abortion bill. All he would say about it was “I am pro-life”. Which is smart, because another GOP politician might have started opining on rape.
The Tea Party people here are mad at Kasich for Medicaid and Portman because he has a gay son.
They will go berserk if Medicaid goes thru. The whole “movement” here is opposition to Obamacare.
Kay
@efgoldman:
I was going to write about the Dem challenger to Kasich but I have not gathered enough information (gossip) yet :)
MattR
@Ruckus:
It is really not that difficult if you truly believe (or have made yourself believe) that there is a third life involved and worthy of protection beyond just the woman and her doctor. I don’t know how to debate the truly pro-life because there is no science that can disprove their belief about when life begins and as long as they believe the fetus is a life equal to all others then none of my arguments about the mother will convince them that the fetus’s life should be treated as secondary. OTOH, it seems that the majority of people opposed to abortion are not actually pro-life but instead are using that as an excuse to mask their desire to maintain control over poor women (who can’t be trusted to make good decisions)
EDIT: You can’t really argue with the last group either since they are not coming from an honest starting point, but at least you can try and highlight their hyposcrisy to the part of the public who is still on the fence.
pokeyblow
@MattR: Consider how many “pro-life” Americans are ok with the death penalty.
Kay
@efgoldman:
That would be great, but I don’t think so. When Kasich was first elected, the Republicans here were making predictions about his future presidency. That all ended with the union-busting, but remember he didn’t succeed in that. I think they’re just relieved and grateful that the economy got better and he scaled back his agenda. His sales tax plan bombed. It was the same idea conservatives are pushing in every state, the thing that got Jindal in trouble, where they raise taxes on working class people and lower taxes on rich people. “Broaden the base!”
Luna Sea
This is why state level elections are so important. State reps and senators sneak into office by being vague or simply omitting what they believe on these issues, and even when they do make it clear, it gets zero local coverage. Then they graduate to Congress, and still the larger population knows nothing about them — their base gets out the vote with little or no opposition. It’s only when they go on to statewide or national campaigns do they even begin to get covered. Todd Akin was quietly spreading his BS as a rep of a relatively small district, then decided to step up to senator and could no longer keep his idiocy to himself. We need to start learning about our local reps before they get that far, and running some decent opposition. It doesn’t matter if we win the white house if all of these horrendous laws keep passing on the state level. These religious creeps are winning, day by day, district by district and they’re passing laws that are quite simply outrageous. I’m so tired of this crap I could scream.
MattR
@pokeyblow: Consistency is definitely not a hallmark of the American people, but at the same time I can kinda rationalize the death penalty since those who are executed were adults who made their own decisions to do something illegal, unlike the poor innocent fetus. Of course this ignores the execution of the innocent – something which the vast majority of those pro-life forces never get all too worked up about (there are some churches and other groups that do maintain a consistent pro-life position), not to mention all the collateral death caused by our military actions in the Middle East.
@efgoldman: I started out with just “women” but I think that many of the anti-abortion forces are more concerned with the wrong women making those decisions. And those wrong women are predominantly poor and/or minorities. (ie. the inner city sluts who use abortion as birth control but not their neighbor who is a good girl but got caught in a bad situation)
burnspbesq
Fortunately, the courts are getting increasingly tired of this sort of bullpucky.
Recently, the Oklahoma (!) Supreme Court, in a per curiam opinion without bothering to have oral argument, upheld a lower court decision that invalidated a state law that would have made it illegal to administer RU-486 except in strict accordance with the FDA-approved labeling. Seems some dastardly docs have been administering it two weeks (!) later than the FDA says is safe.
Of course, the Oklahoma AG’s office petitioned for cert, but even with the current lineup, it’s reasonable to believe that the petition will be denied.
Ruckus
@MattR:
I’ve heard the arguments. I just don’t get how anyone with more than 2 brain cells to rub together finds them appealing.
Let’s say that they are right, and I am for sure not saying anything like that. If the state has a right to interfere and stop a woman from controlling her body what is to stop the state from now making all medical decisions for everyone? Yeah I get that half of us can’t get pregnant but once the law is there couldn’t it be used as the pattern to control everyone’s medical outcomes? Who lives and dies? The government no longer pays for nursing home care for the elderly. The government no longer has to pay for neonatal care(child already born, no need to worry about them /wingnut) And on and on. The wingnuts already hate the ACA because others get care and it was the idea of the black guy. It’s a twofer for them, ruin the black dudes showpiece legislation, and defund the government in the process.
I know, wingnuts never do long term, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.
scav
Fetuses are a handy “constituency” (to represent, aka use as marketing tool) as they can be trusted on not to voice a dissenting opinion in their own right against the pronouncements voiced by their betters. Wimminz and minorities et al have this nasty nasty habit of sometimes piping up against being used as cardboard campaign props.
Gravenstone
Surely it is mere coincidence that WI put forth something similar in their state leg just last week. ALEC are sure being busy little bastards after their brief attempt at lowering their profile (re. Castle Doctrine laws and the inconveniently publicized murder of Trayvon Martin).
IowaOldLady
@Kay: You know these guys better than I do, Kay, but I still think we’re in fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly territory. No one makes these guys do this stuff. They want to.
? Martin
Think of all the jobs that will be created manufacturing those ultrasound machines and monitoring the moment-to-moment health of the woman. And then the years of in-home care for the woman whose health was destroyed but managed to not die.
Why do you hate good Ohio jobs, Kay?
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus:
Well, there you go. That’s your explanation, right there.
Chris
@pokeyblow:
The entire ideology in five words – everything else stems from that. Well done.
MattR
@Ruckus:
In their view, the state is not interfering with what a woman does with her body. They are interfering with what she does with her fetus’s body. That is a clear line that differentiates it from the worries you describe.
Chris
@MattR:
Except that’s not what it’s about, as long as that took me to realize. You can’t honestly tell me that people who are dedicating themselves to do everything they can to stop contraception (which would prevent the dilemma from arising in the first place), to gut every social service that might help the baby after it’s born, and who insist that mothers should be forbidden from having abortions even if their children are already brain-dead or otherwise devoid of a chance at life, even if the mother’s life is at stake… are motivated by their belief in the sanctity of human life. It’s about control, pure and simple.
MattR
@Chris: No argument there which is why I differentiate bewteen the minority that is truly pro-life and majority who are using it as an excuse.
I wanted to add this bit to my last reply to Ruckus but FYWP
(EDIT: It is tough to square their belief that the fetus’s life is equal to the mother’s with their support for Stand Your Ground which argues that it is acceptable to end the life of another just because you feel threatened by them, even if that threat is not deadly or is completely imaginary)
Kay
@MattR:
I wonder about “equal to the mother” honestly. They always stress the “innocent” life. That may be to differentiate from the death penalty, though. I hope.
I hope “innocent” doesn’t trump “sinful pregnant person”. Obviously, not a lot of trust between me and them. I’m on full alert listening to them.
Chris
@MattR:
Oh, well, the inconsistency definitely gets even worse once you leave the realm of abortion/pregnancy related issues and look at the other issues that your stereotypical pro-lifers support.
Favorite case in point: you can’t tell me that the people who gave Ron Paul a standing ovation when he said that people who couldn’t get health insurance should just fucking die already have any kind of regard for the sanctity of human life.
Hal
I would love to say that even if this bill passed the Supreme Court would strike it down as unconstitutional, but you just can’t tell anymore with this 5-4 court. Here’s hoping one of the conservative justices retires soon.
NickT
@Chris:
Funny how there’s never a Friendly Libertarian around to stand up for women’s liberty, isn’t it?
? Martin
@pokeyblow:
I think it’s worse than that. There is no acknowledged notion of ‘all men are created equal’ in the GOP. Some groups of people are just lesser to others. Individuals can get out of their caste, by affirming their support for the caste worldview (GOP is okay with blacks that will blame the black community for things), so their empathy is limited only to their caste and only within the caste does equality apply. And that’s what they’ve erected. Abortion should be illegal for all of them, but we’ll ensure that we have enough back channels and escape routes to keep it for ourselves. Welfare is wrong for that caste, and we’ll use the savings to increase it to our caste. Repeat.
Villago Delenda Est
@MattR:
You have to realize that “Stand Your Ground” laws are interpreted in, um, interesting ways. If Trayvon Martin was ‘standing his ground” against George Zimmerman, and Zimmerman died, there wouldn’t have been any debate about locking Martin up and throwing away the key. Likewise, women who “stand their ground” with respect to men have by no means gotten away with anything.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay:
Well, the woman isn’t “innocent”, obviously. The filthy slut is pregnant, is she not?
MattR
@Kay: Sadly, I probably should have said they think the futus’s life is greater than or equal to the mother’s.
@Chris: @NickT: No doubt. Seems like libertarians have a similar breakdown betwen true believers in the cause (limited and local gov’t) and those who “support” the cause but are really just upset that the federal government is preventing them from doing what they want (or exploiting others).
scav
@MattR: It’s also hard to square with their automatic assumption that the life and rights of the fetus automatically trump the life and rights of the mother as much as they can get away with. if both lives and indivuals were of equal worth in their eyes and theory, outsomes could be expected more equitably between the two individuals with competing interests. Possibly extreme analogy it’s as though if your name begins with a vowel, you win all court cases you’re involved in.
All life is not valued equally by these people.
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman:
It wasn’t until the Southern Baptists got into this, and brought the various fundigelical offshoots along with them during the Reagan years that some momentum built up. And it was all cover for their real reason for being pissed off…their racially segregated “Christian Academies” were under fire from Jimmy Carter to lose any tax-exempt status they had, because Carter knew EXACTLY what was going on there, and Christianity had nothing at all to do with it.
MattR
@scav: Agreed. I think that is one of the best ways to determine if you are dealing with the true believers (who would actually see the woman’s life as equal) or those who are using the issue to control women.
? Martin
@Kay:
It’s not. It the caste marker. It’s the ‘I’ve invited this individual into the group of people worth protecting’. Mom is never invited, even if she was raped. Mom is still a slut, still guilty, still undeserving of protection, she is a broken soul and deserves what she gets.
Killing people is okay to them, so long as they’re out of the caste. Terri Schiavo was invited in, Savita Halappanavar was not. It’s all good. White Jesus trusts them to use this power for good.
? Martin
@NickT: BIG GOVERNMENT IS SPYING IN MY HOO-HA!
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
It was/is my point, I think for once I was trying to give the benefit of the doubt.
Won’t let that happen again.
Ruckus
@MattR:
True.
It really is the hypocrisy of their entire world view that gets to me. There is no logic, no empathy, no understanding of differences, really no thought about anything other than themselves and that they must be right because someone told them so.
It’s disgusting that people pass for adults and can’t see farther than the end of their own noses.
karen
What’s the next step? Throwing women into jail if they want to save their own lives?
pokeyblow
@? Martin: I agree.
There’s also a layer of insecurity, manifested in the insistent belief that whatever is good in a republican’s life has been earned and is deserved, and whatever is bad likely results from being victimized.
Of course, broadly speaking, the opposite holds for despised others. Inner-city poor deserve their miserable living conditions, and those who become successful through, say, affirmative action don’t deserve their success.
Handouts from the government are bad and character-harming, while handouts from daddy and his club friends are just fine.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Maybe I should have been clearer. The don’t do long term thinking. They do long term strategy for getting their stupidity and damage in place. Long term actual thinking? Not so much. They are more like cockroaches than sentient beings. They keep scurrying around, finding places to nest and infest. You can’t reason with them, you can’t even kill all of them, you can only make your house less appealing.
Kay
@? Martin:
It’s so crazy that we have this near-daily discussion of rape and abortion but we never discuss complications in pregnancy and abortion. There’s tons of medical info on it, but almost no mention in policy. These two tracks are going to intersect here shortly. They did in Ireland. Crash. Then huge debate.
MattR
@pokeyblow:
The prosperity gospel at work. Those who are wealthy and successful are that way because they are good people who are being rewarded by god for that goodness. So those who are poor must therefore be bad people, which makes them unworthy of government assistance.
pokeyblow
@MattR: Mitt Romney is distressed to know that 47% of Americans think they deserve food. And roomsfull of supporters will nod along during the tirade.
Lee
Texas is in special session trying to pass some of the most restrictive abortion bills in the country.
link
burnspbesq
@NickT:
If he/she/it shows up now, I’m holding you personally responsible.
Chris
@? Martin:
There’s a contradiction there that probably goes back to the founding of the nation, when a person could write “we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” all while owning slaves. They’ve labored long and hard to keep that ethic alive.
? Martin
@Chris:
Well, admittedly we all have, and continue to do. ENDA is controversial for Republicans, but it’s not like Democrats offered it up 20 years ago. Gay marriage it taking hold now, but 20 years ago most liberals didn’t support it. There’s a lot yet to do on the disabled, on gender identity, on immigrants, on people with HIV, on kids and teens, and we’re going to continue to acknowledge and struggle to recognize groups that we ALL previously dismissed. At some point we’re going to have to contend with rights for people with criminal records which pretty much nobody gives a thought to.
But liberals tend to accept these changes wholesale as they come. They don’t typically erect new proxies for old prejudices, like conservatives do attacking poverty as a proxy for minorities, as an example. So, I think it’s important to acknowledge that we’re all biased (? Everyone’s a little bit racist… ?) even as we establish a principle of equality. What matters is how true we remain to that, and I think the founders that wrote those words did remain true to them in spite of the biases that were still acceptable at the time.
Kay
@? Martin:
That issue could come into play in Ohio in 2014. There is a lot of chatter about putting a repeal of the constitutional amendment that bans SS marriage on the ballot.
The politics there are so complicated I wouldn’t even know where to start. Does it drive up GOP turnout OR does it exploit the split in the GOP?
Anyway, if they’re going to do it they better get going, because they need a lot of signatures.
jl
” doctors were afraid to treat the miscarriage of Ms. Halappanavar until the fetal heartbeat stopped. The heartbeat only stopped after the woman had already died of septicemia. ”
Heartbreaking and disgusting. Two deaths instead of one. The idiotic self-righteous loons who call themselves ‘pro-life’ should be ashamed and mortified. How is that outcome ‘pro-life’? They need to be crushed politically.
debbie
@efgoldman:
From what I’ve observed, the Ohio GOP isn’t so far removed from the Tea Party. Some of the stuff that comes out of Niehaus’s and Batchelder’s mouths would put Dick Armey to shame. I don’t think even the Tea Partiers like the Heartbeat Bill lobby.
ruemara
@NickT: Silly rabbit. Vaginas are obviously communal property and do not create a profit.
Kay
@debbie:
That’s funny, because I can discern absolutely no difference between the remaining Tea Party members here and the most virulent Moral Majority folks from 2004.
We only have 2 groups of Republicans. The religious ones and the others. Tea Party are squarely in the religious group.
It’s mostly a class thing. That’s how it breaks down. “Normal” Republicans here are better-off.
CaseyL
Deciding by legislative fiat what appropriate medical care should be – and going against accepted medical practice in doing so – is unlicensed practice of medicine, and should be grounds for sanction. But the wheels on that bus came off when laws were passed allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions because said prescriptions hurt their religious feelings.
Allowing religious fanatics to set public policy, and particularly health policy, is insane and infuriating.
PurpleGirl
@Kay: To these creeps, no matter how stories they’ve heard of women who had medical problems, nearly lost the fetus, or did, or who nearly died… pregnancy is STILL seen as natural and therefore medically healthy. After all, don’t those women field workers just squat down, drop the kid and keep working.
LosGatosCA
The religious right is convinced that the Old Testament god of vengeance has outsourced his judgment power to them. And when you are on a mission from your god, there’s really no counterpoint.
Conveniently, they also believe in New Testament Jesus’ love for them. So other people’s non-compliance brings horrific consequences dealt by the holier than thou’s while the holier than thou’s are the beneficiaries of Jesus’ mercy whenever it’s necessary.
The fact that they are just hypocritical hateful POS never crosses their small minds. I’m expecting them to be the most surprised people in Hell.
celiadexter
I’m getting angrier and angrier at this all-out Republican attack on women. Not all women, only heterosexually active women. Just wondering what all these guys are going to do when we finally get our act together collectively and tell them that since their agenda is to punish us for having sex, they won’t have us to punish any more. No more abortion or contraception issues to grandstand about either. And absolutely no more sex with men. Do we really need it badly enough to allow ourselves to be their punching bags? Too bad Lysistrata was fiction….
LosGatosCA
@celiadexter:
I’m not seeing the restrictions on the hate on women:
– poor women
– gay women
– working women
– minority women
– sexually active single women
– raped women
Check, check, check, check, check, check.
Not hating on rich, white, heterosexual, chaste, unraped women who stay at home taking their orders from their alpha male who dominates them in the Stepford style.
TS
@MattR:
This might be believable – if the same people were against capital punishment – but they are not. They are pro life when it suits them – and it suits them to demand evil women die rather than abort a fetus that probably has no chance of life.
As you note – they are pro life only when it suits their purpose. I prefer to call such people “anti-abortion” because logically, that is all they are.
TS
@LosGatosCA:
who can go anywhere, anytime, to get a safe aborrtion.
debbie
@Kay:
You could be right. I remember listening to a local NPR talk show with a woman who was some sort of Teabagger blogger out of Tennessee, and she said how much trouble she was having getting people to focus on the financial issues. She said as long as the Tea Party veered off to social issues, they would never get anywhere.
Though I still think the GOP is just as strong in the religiosity as the Tea Party, I think they are able to see how others react to their policies. The Tea Party remains oblivious.
Though how could anyone be so stupid as to bring up Right to Work again?
LosGatosCA
@TS:
Of course, because their circumstances will be difficult, very tragic and will lead to forgiveness by Jesus.
Dan Quayle tipped the hand on this decades ago.
The righteous and the rich live by different rules – if you are righteous AND rich you get to write those rules and determine to whom they apply.
It’s good to be the
king1%Kay
@debbie:
I think they check off boxes on labor issues. RTW? Check! “We tried!”
Remember how all the opposition to Issue Two came from out of state? The entire GOP campaign was run out of a PO box in Virginia. Ohio Republicans didn’t seem at all engaged.
My own personal theory is the math doesn’t work for them without 45% of the white labor vote. I think they have to keep their union- member voters WHILE placating national conservative groups. Tricky!
Kay
@debbie:
What do you think of FitzGerald?
NickT
@LosGatosCA:
One of the ironies here is that, given that Jesus remained a good Jewish boy until he died, he would almost certainly have endorsed the halacha position in these cases – which is that a abortion to save the life of the mother is permissible, since the potentially fatal fetus is classified as a rodef i.e. one pursuing the mother with intent to take her life.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
I’ve said this before, and when I first said it, I was kind of kidding, but it isn’t funny any more: Thes dudes are seriously creepy, and I wonder how many of them have raped women or molested children. I know that on its face that sounds nuts, but think about it. It seems like all they care about is women having sex: what kind of sex they’re having, how often they’re having it, whether they’re married when they have it, who’s having it with them, it goes on and on.
I don’t know these dudes, but from how they behave–and that’s all I have to go on–they look like people who have been brought up to believe that sex is dirty, nasty, somehow unholy, and, well, just a bad, bad, awful thing that only bad people–and especially bad girls, fallen women–do.
That kind of thinking can fuck you up hard. Because, let’s just say it, people like sex. Sex is fun. I do. It feels good. Most of us think about it a good hunk of the time while we’re awake, and–I would guess–surely not any less while we’re asleep. We like it, and if we aren’t getting any, we want some. If we are, we want more. If we can’t get it, most of us will take care of that ourselves.
And I don’t know how many ways that’ll warp somebody who’s been taught to loathe and fear sex. Look at what happens to women and girls who come to believe that something as natural and needed as eating is bad. How many ways can that fuck you up? Shit, it kills a lot of women. I don’t see how growing up that way about sex could be any better. And look at the guys–and most of them are guys: A lot of them are Christian fundamentalists, many of whom learn early how bad and dirty and sinful sex is.
Now, take that and throw in the sordid little detail that many Christian fundamentalists have a serious hangup about Eve. She was bad. She was dirty. She was sinful. She made poor, poor Adam eat that apple. I mean, he was just a helpless, blameless bystander, and yet, he got caught up in all the fallout of Eve’s evil ways. These people still blame women for all this, at least unconsciously. At least, that’s how I see it.
But it all makes sense. A week ago, somebody here (I think it was here) linked to a creepy story about what fundamentalists teach their married members about sex: Everything that goes wrong is the wife’s fault. If her loser of a husband cheats on her, it’s her fault because she wasn’t hot enough in bed or didn’t keep a nice enough house. If the man wants sex when she doesn’t, she should jsut give it to him anyway–and if he has to take it from her, well she should’ve just gone along with it without being a frigid bitch. If the guy doesn’t want sex much, it’s because she let herself get fat or she isn’t good enough in bed and she just needs to suck it up and live happily without sex. It goes on and on like that, and it’s hellish.
So what will that do to a kid? I can only guess it would warp him, but good. I wonder how many of these poor, twisted kids grew up with who knows what kind of neuroses or psychoses. How many grow up to rape somebody or molest somebody? I wonder what kind of shit a really dogged investigative reporter could dig up on some of these scumbags. All these repressed, sex-obsessed weirdos in state legislatures all over the country… And in Congress.
If I gambled, I’d bet money that there are rapists stalking those halls. They hate women, the nasty Jezebels. Women are nasty, dirty and bad. And when they have sex, they need to be punished. Now, we can’t stone them any more; that doesn’t go over well. We’d have trouble getting the unholy rabble of this country to even go along with putting scarlet women who sleep around in stocks, the sluts.
So, sadly, all we can do with these wanton harlots is to make damned sure that if they have the gall to slut around having sex…. Well, all we can do is make these foul and sultry women live with the consequences of their sin and wickedness. We must pray that they become great with child, and carry that child for nine full months, even if it kills them. Or should we say, with gleeful malice (or maybe that should be malicious glee) especially if it kills them. That’ll teach those nasty, dirty, awful women!
If there isn’t one among a throng of creeps like those who think this way who’s raped somebody, I’ll eat my hat. Or I would if I were wearing one.
Xenos
People do tend to deeply despise people they have victimized, whether it be racial minorities their ancestors helped exterminate, or religious groups they have persecuted, and so on. The bitterness in divorce cases arises, in many cases, from people justifying their own bad actions by allowing themselves to hate the other party. The idea that rape culture generates institutionalized sexism, instead of the other way around, is worth developing.
Amir Khalid
I don’t know if anyone is going to be reading this on a long-dead thread, but here’s an Irish Times story on the clinical review of Savita Halappanavar’s death. In calling for urgent amendments to the related Irish law and Constitutional provisions, it destroys any argument that those laws are something to emulate.
Proud Liberal Dem
@scav:
Fetuses can still “testify” in Ohio on crucial anti-abortion legislation however. *sigh*