"Obviously rape is awful…" says Delegate Brian Kurcaba, R-Monongalia. "What is beautiful is the child is that could come from this."
— David Gutman (@davidlgutman) February 6, 2015
Sadly, these stories are going to become more common coming out of WV with the teahadist wave of wingnuts that were elected in the fall of 2014:
A Republican state lawmaker said Thursday that women who become pregnant from sexual assault should not be exempt from an anti-abortion measure, because childbirth resulting from rape is “beautiful.”
“Obviously rape is awful,” West Virginia Del. Brian Kurcaba (R) said during a committee hearing on a new abortion restriction, according to David Gutman, a Charleston Gazette reporter. “What is beautiful is the child that could come from this.”
Kurcaba, a financial adviser, was elected to the House of Delegates in November.
He represents Morgantown and thus WVU.
burnspbesq
It’s tempting to say “this can’t possibly be real,” but it undoubtedly is.
Good fcuking grief.
SiubhanDuinne
I should be used to these kinds of statements by now, I suppose. But they shock and amaze and horrify me every time. Just unbelievable.
As for his constituency, did the entire student body at WVU stay home on Election Day?
yodecat
These people are damaged. They’re crazy. So what else is new?
22over7
Yeah, they’re beautiful as long as they’re not related to, or living near, him or any of his family. These hypocritical men make me sick. “But really, ladies, rape isn’t so bad, right? You might get a wonderful prize!”
Villago Delenda Est
This guy’s name is misspelled. It should be ” Khupacabra”
sparrow
Empathy obviously does not exist for these people. This guy is mentally sick. That’s the only way I can comprehend it.
Punchy
Im sure the knife wounds, bound-wrist scars, and torn ladyparts are just as wonderful as well.
Violet
At least the totalitarian forced birthers are consistent. The rest of them that claim to be against abortion but allow exceptions for this or that are just arguing about where to draw the line. And that line is always drawn at slut.
Chris T.
I read that as “R-Outer Mongolia” at first.
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet: The slut must ALWAYS be punished.
TaMara (BHF)
So I have to wonder if this guy’s wife were the rape victim, would he still consider the resulting child a “beautiful gift”? Especially if the rapist sues (and probably wins in BY GOD WV) for visitation rights.
Hunter Gathers
Is that what we call two-bit hustlers these days, financial advisers?
jl
@sparrow:
” Empathy obviously does not exist for these people. ”
That’s a little unfair to Khupacabra. Ask him if he would be willing to pay for raising one these children. I’m sure he’d say yes. I just know it. I’m sure he’d go to great effort to establish programs to ensure that the results of tragic rapes were not a long term financial strain on the mothers, and that the kids had a stable upbringing. I just know it.
/snark
The Dangerman
@Violet:
That’s my read, too; the pro-life crowd that would allow abortions for rape, etc., are the monsters in my book for supporting such an obvious inconsistency.
jl
@Hunter Gathers: You don’t want unqualified hustlers and scam artists running around the country, would you?
Hunter Gathers
@jl:
You mean people with MBA’s?
JordanRules
@TaMara (BHF): The lack of empathy and decency is too much…coupled with control issues and I just hesitate to even think about how that kind of thinking would translate into a parental unit. Sad to imagine it happens too. Sigh.
satby
@jl: Nope, nope, nope. To establish programs like those would deprive a neonate of the character building experience of poverty and a mother with PTSD; and worst of all it would require financial contributions in the probable form of taxes. Can’t have that.
TaMara (BHF)
@JordanRules: A long, long, time ago, my favorite high school history teacher asked us what we thought should happen in case of rape/pregnancy scenario. It wasn’t an anti-abortion/pro-abortion type of discussion. But he really wanted us to think. And he put forth several scenarios. None with easy answers.
What he was trying to do, and I think successfully so, was to teach us to not just make a rash decision, but to use reason and empathy to see all sides and understand nothing is black and white. And understand that for some things, a person makes the best choice for them and you need to respect that.
He approached many tough subjects like that…he wanted us to think, not to just regurgitate answers. Still one of my most favorite teachers.
I always think of him when I hear these assholes speak. He would have turned them inside out if they were in his class.
Ben
But the Sheriff is Near, so therefore John’s fellow Mountaineers love him, since he belongs to the party that opposes the Near Sheriff
Suzanne
Tell that evil shithead to read this.
“In working on my book, I went to Rwanda in 2004 to interview women who had borne children of rape conceived during the genocide. At the end of my interviews, I asked interviewees whether they had any questions for me, in hopes that the reversal would help them to feel less disenfranchised in the microcosmic world of our interview. The questions tended to be the same: How long are you spending in the country? How many people are you interviewing? When will your research be published? Who will read these stories? Why are you interested in me? At the end of my final interview, I asked the woman I was interviewing whether she had any questions. She paused shyly for a moment. “Well,” she said, a little hesitantly. “You work in this field of psychology.” I nodded. She took a deep breath. “Can you tell me how to love my daughter more?” she asked. “I want to love her so much, and I try my best, but when I look at her I see what happened to me and it interferes.” A tear rolled down her cheek, but her tone turned almost fierce, challenging. “Can you tell me how to love my daughter more?” she repeated.
Perhaps Todd Akin has an answer for her.”
opiejeanne
@Suzanne: Wow.
And I still have the capacity to be shocked by these statements, because by now you’d think they would learn that there will be a big backlash for saying stuff like this.
The Raven on the Hill
How many women voted for this rape apologist, I wonder? Why do any women vote for rape apologists?
Major Major Major Major
@TaMara (BHF): we had a whole system like that in high school. Each class had to have like a role play/research-style “what would you do in situation x?” as a big part of it. One teacher was especially brutal: “you’re a 15-year-old pregnant girl in Norman, OK. Your parents don’t know. Go. 10 pages.”
Ben
@Suzanne:
I don’t have a link, but there’s also a horrifying story from Bosnia I read about a mother who gave birth to a baby conceived in a wartime rape–I would share what happened next, but it’s horrifying.
Bokonon
The sad thing? A lot of people will respond with some cynical head-shake like “haw, haw, all politicians are idiots”.
And then those same people will go and vote for an idiot like this in the next election.
I’ve been involved in politics. I’ve worked for politicians. There are good ones and bad ones. They are not all crooks and idiots. But cynical attitudes (and rank partisanship) let the idiots and fools and radicals into office in the first place, and then permit them stay there.
Violet
@JordanRules: According to his website he has three children. Also:
And this is lovely:
He’s learned to appreciate them? He had to learn to do that? Which “walk of life” did he have to learn to appreciate the most?
pseudonymous in nc
Change the usual “state representative is idiot, film at 11” to “state representative is horrific, film at 11.”
Bokonon
@The Raven on the Hill: You would be surprised how many. They have all kinds of rationales. What is most common is some sort of single issue, driving ideological issue (usually – being anti-abortion). And when their politician goes full metal crazy, what you then see is excuse-making, plus sort of aggressive ju-jitsu that reverses the problem and throws it back you. People’s position on the misdeed becomes a question of motive – and they take the position the politician they are supporting is either a good person that is being persecuted or misunderstood, or they claim the other side is worse.
When you start out from a position of fixed belief …
LesGS
@TaMara (BHF): That would be a really interesting question to ask him. “So, Mr. Kurcaba, are you saying, if your wife were raped and made pregnant, you would joyfully raise the resulting baby? Should the child’s biological father have visiting rights?”
(I wonder if his wife would agree…)
Suzanne
@Ben: I read that story. It was horrifying.
grandpa john
Jim Wright at Stone Kettle Station has the obvious answer, you can’t reason with unreasonable people and it is a waste of time to try to do so. He has an excellent essay on this at his popular essays tab
Avery Greynold
There is precedence in his thinking. Mary was impregnated without consent and we got Jesus. And she may have been dressing slutty, so you can’t blame the G-man.
Mandalay
Kurcaba’s opposition to abortion in the case of rape conflicts with one of his “core beliefs” on his website:
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
I think you’re wrong about that. He would say that abortion is murder and therefor fits into the category of criminal activity and/or child abuse. It’s perfectly logically consistent.
SatanicPanic
@TaMara (BHF): I wonder if he were raped if he could find a silver lining in that.
Mandalay
@Roger Moore:
That may be his personal view, but it is not the law. A more promising approach for consistency would be to argue that rape is criminal activity and therefore the government should intrude.
Of course it’s a bit unfortunate that the government will intrude on behalf of the rapist rather then the victim, but at least Kurcaba’s core beliefs are upheld.
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet:
He’s a Jeebofascist. This much is obvious.
David Koch
I thought they were against mandates
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
Yes, but he’s a legislator, so it’s his job to write the law. That’s the fundamental point, here. The law disagrees with his personal views, so he’s trying to change it to align with them.
moderateindy
Obviously rape is awful, you know “Legitimate” rape, that is, not the other kinds.
The American Taliban, always against all government interference, except of course when they aren’t. Their core belief is to have everyone be free……….. to live exactly the way they deem proper.
mai naem mobile
Douchebag also apparently introduced a voter id law in the state house. Bet hes trying to stop colored folks and college kids from voting.
Morzer
Once again the GOP makes what should be utterly repugnant part of their twisted new normal.
NotMax
Guessing his high school drama club never performed The Bad Seed.
eric
If you have to qualify a sentence by acknowledging that rape is a horrible thing, that should be your cue to just shut the fuck up about everything.
Gretchen
@TaMara (BHF): @TaMara (BHF): @TaMara (BHF): he thinks his wife and daughters would never be raped because they don’t dress or act like sluts. So he’ll never have to hand the kid over to the rapist for visitation every Saturday. It’s just those sluts this happens to.
NotMax
@Ben
Remember well reading harrowing tales of the shunning of and barely subsistence level childhood of the many, many kids fathered there by U.S. servicemen in Viet Nam.
sm*t cl*de
Normally financial advisers are people who very generously sell their investment nous to you rather than become rich by following it themselves. In the case of a Republican congresscreature, it is more likely a euphemism for “unindicted conman”.
Morzer
@sm*t cl*de:
Much like the noble souls who pass up their chances to become billionaires or amazingly well endowed sexually in order to write The Book Of The One Weird Trick that will enable you to do so.
sm*t cl*de
Shirley you jest. Support for single mothers would undercut the sacred institution of Mawwiage, and encourage alternatives to Mawwiage, when we know that Mawwiage is the path out of poverty and the necessary underpinnings of every child’s happiness. It’s as if you wanted the poors to breed and be insulated from the consequences.
Bobby B.
Sounds like Patricia Heaton’s Twitter. It’ll make you marvel she has hit TV show.
seaboogie
And if (when they are post-puberty) one of his lovely blonde daughters were to be raped and impregnated by a black man, I’m sure he’d find that child “beautiful”. Yep, pretty much sure of that.
Morzer
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Case_Of_Purvi_Patel
TriassicSands
Often, if not usually, the representatives of districts that include large state universities are Democrats, even in red states. Has this district been gerrymandered Republican, or are WVU students a lot more conservative than the average college student population elsewhere? Or were they too busy to vote on election day?
What could be more beautiful than a woman being forced to give birth to the child of a rapist who impregnated her during an unspeakable act of criminal brutality?
AxelFoley
@The Raven on the Hill:
Why do women, or anybody for that matter, vote against their own best interests?
EconWatcher
I think I read somewhere that the Catholic Church in Germany and Eastern Europe quietly softened its stance on abortion right after the end of World War II because of the number of pregnancies caused by mass rapes from marauding Red Army soldiers. Even if you think abortion is ending an innocent human life, the idea of forcing a woman to carry her rapist’s baby to term is so horrific that no civilized person could countenance it.
raven
@EconWatcher: Have you ever seen Two Women with Sophia Loren?
Zinsky
Any time one of these Neandrethals makes an idiotic, heartless statement like this, progressive’s first response should be, “Well, can we raise your taxes to pay for the pre-natal care, delivery and child-rearing costs?” Watch the vermin scurry for the corners because if there is one thing these cretins hate worse than abortion and that is paying taxes!
Isobel
I wonder if Todd Akin had made his comments now if he would still have been elected. These comments have become so commonplace for these forced-birthing republicans, it’s almost as though 2012 got us used to them, so know they don’t seem quite as shocking.
I’ve been living overseas since 2010, and I remember the world-wide shock that Akin’s comments generated at the time, but since then I have not noticed the same level of surprise. The attitude has almost become, “Americans, what can you do?”
Brutusettu
@sparrow:
If they think non-spontaneous abortion is murder, then they won’t let a little rape, rape pregnancy, rape delivery, and rapist’ babies get in the way of stopping “murder”.
Another Holocene Human
Google “Purvi Patel” but keep a barf bag handy.
Another Holocene Human
@raven: Two Women is based on a work of fiction. Many Goumiers were executed without trial. The wiki article is light on documentation and skepticism.
Other allied troops didn’t commit rapes?
Allied troops didn’t commit systemic rapes when they vanquished Axis areas?
Axis troops didn’t commit rape?
Axis troops didn’t commit systemic rapes?
There is a racial context here that makes the Goumiers an easy scapegoat. I’m sure many French and German women were raped by Americans during the waning days of the war without any recourse, but because of the Goumiers’ status as ‘colonial’, non-European troops … much as white America would execute a Black guy, any Black guy, if a white woman was allegedly raped by one, but white guys rape white women with impunity every day.
No way did the Goumiers beat the Soviet rape record in Berlin alone. Spare me the outrage.
Another Holocene Human
@EconWatcher: The RCC was no doubt treading lightly in Soviet controlled zones as they were being organized quite rapidly under communist lines and their activities and rackets were about to become tightly circumscribed under the new regime. Communism came in with immediate changes to women’s status in Central Europe, later dictators in Romania notwithstanding.
Another Holocene Human
@AxelFoley: Women who vote GOP are like men who vote GOP, it’s the very cosseted bubble dwellers who will never suffer for voting GOP ever (but of course, who do not constitute a majority) and the spite voters. Spite voters are stuck on stupid, that’s who they are.
This isn’t to say they don’t overlap, as I’ve met my share of “comfortable” people who have their lizard brain set on FOX-Limbaugh-Tantaros 24/7 Threat Level Brown/Furrin Menace aa-OOOO-gah aa-OOOO-gah
As a damnyankee I can’t figure out what’s the point of being richer than God if you have no culture and you can’t enjoy it. Liek yer so skeered of sockalists yer too ah-skeered to travel to Yurrip. Now that’s just sorry. I don’t care who you are.
raven
@Another Holocene Human: Oh well excusssse the fuck out of me.
Another Holocene Human
@Morzer: Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
Seminars.
And the grift goes on.
Another Holocene Human
@Bokonon:
Yup.
Another Holocene Human
@Hunter Gathers: I can’t figure out if MBA is a degree or a cult.
I always thought of it as some correspondence or night school thing grown people with jobs did if they wanted a promotion. But then these children started getting MBAs.
Penus
@Violet: Exactly. As awful as it is to make a woman have her rapist’s child, at least those people can legitimately say it’s about the sanctity of life. The existing system makes it clear it’s about punishing women for having sex.
Elizabelle
Not funny, but there was a Law & Order SVU rerun last night about this situation. Young woman raped by professional colleague, who defends himself at her rape trial. And wins. She kept the baby. He sues for visitation, and since he was acquitted of rape … (one juror reports it was 11 to 1 to convict, but they had a believer in legitimate rape on the jury).
I wondered if show was filmed shortly after the Todd Akin flameout, because they had testimony from a politician/physician about legitimate rape and the woman’s body shutting down implantation during times of great stress … it seemed taken straight from the news (and parodies of same).
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est:
I wonder if the WVU college community could defeat this guy. In Virginia, we’ve had registrars in college towns trying (unsuccessfully) to force students off the voting rolls. They want them voting in their parents’ districts.
See, it’s the money that votes.
kindness
Time for Second Amendment solutions perhaps?
cathy
Fox news should get on this story right away. Fox seems to think we want to know all about the intricate details of the burning death of the jordanian pilot. Watching and hearing about the death will convince (?) the rest of us that this is a bad thing(??) hmmm i don’t have to see this to know its bad.
Why doesnt Fox show a video and describe on TV about a woman being raped so REPUBLICAN congressman can see that rape is a bad thing, and the outcome is not a ‘silver lining’. or a gift from god?
Sloegin
Simple matter of framing: Republicans who support this measure want rapists to be rewarded.