GOP Candidate Opposes Abortion Exception In Cases Of ‘The Rape Thing’

 By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

John Koster, a Republican running for Congress in Washington, became the latest candidate to opine on abortion exceptions in cases of rape and incest over the weekend at a fundraiser with Rep. Tom Price (R-GA). Koster said he would support abortion only if the woman’s life was in danger, but would not extend the same right to women who are survivors of incest or “the rape thing,” as he casually termed it. To justify his opposition, Koster insisted that incest is rare and argued that abortion would only further hurt rape survivors:

Incest is so rare, I mean, it’s so rare. But the rape thing…you know, I know a woman who was raped and kept her child, gave it up for adoption, she doesn’t regret it. In fact, she’s a big pro-life proponent. But on the rape thing, it’s like, how does putting more violence onto a woman’s body and taking the life of an innocent child that’s the consequence of this crime, how does that make it better? You know what I mean?

Koster’s comments are similar to those of Senate candidate Richard Mourdock (R-IN), who recently said that rape pregnancies are “a gift from God,” and Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), who claimed women could not get pregnant from “legitimate rape.” In fact, Koster is very much in the Republican mainstream, as a growing number of Republican candidates call for tighter restrictions on the reproductive rights of rape victims.

Pennsylvania Bill Would Reduce Welfare Benefits For Women Who Cannot Prove They Were Raped

 By Tara Culp-Ressler/Think Progress

A Pennsylvania House bill seeks to limit the amount of TANF assistance that low-income women receive based on the amount of children they give birth to while covered under the program.
Despite the fact that low-income women who give birth to children would logically need increased assistance to care for their larger family, Pennsylvania lawmakers — State Reps. RoseMarie Swanger (R), Tom Caltagirone (D), Mark Gillen (R), Keith Gillespie (R), Adam Harris (R), and Mike Tobash (R) — don’t want their state’s welfare program to provide additional benefits for that newborn. If a woman gives birth to a child who was conceived from rape, she may seek an exception to this rule so that her welfare benefits aren’t slashed, but only if she can provide proof that she reported her sexual assault and her abuser’s identity to the police:

In determining the amount of assistance payments to a recipient family of benefits under the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) Program, the department shall revise the schedule of benefits to be paid to the recipient family by eliminating the increment in benefits under the program for which that family would otherwise be eligible as a result of the birth of a child conceived during the period in which the family is eligible for benefits under the TANF Program. [...]
Elimination of benefits under subsection (d) shall not apply to any child conceived as a result of rape or incest if the department: (1) receives a non-notarized, signed statement from the pregnant woman stating that she was a victim of rape or incest, as the case may be, and that she reported the crime, including the identity of the offender, if known, to a law enforcement agency having the requisite jurisdiction or, in the case of incest where a pregnant minor is the victim, to the county child protective service agency and stating the name of the law enforcement agency or child protective service agency to which the report was made and the date such report was made.

The language of the bill goes on to note that a sexual assault victim applying for an exemption will be required to sign a statement affirming she understands that “false reports to law enforcement authorities are punishable by law,” and stipulates that Pennsylvania will report any “evidence of false statements or fraud” to the correct department, all the way up to the Attorney General’s office.
Aside from punishing women who have children — particularly low-income women who may not have reliable access to affordable contraception — the proposed bill perpetrates a dangerous attitude toward survivors of sexual assault. Forcing women to prove the legitimacy of their sexual assault, and warning them about the serious consequences of “crying rape” to cheat the system, puts forth the misguided assumption that victims of sexual violence are not to be believed. Furthermore, countless women choose not to report their rapists to the police because they fear repercussions from their abusers, who could threaten their lives. An estimated 54 percent of sexual assaults are not reported to the authorities.
This is not the first type of legislation of its kind. Last month, New Mexico proposed a bill that would have required women seeking childcare assistance to prove they were “forcibly raped,” although Gov. Susana Martinez (R) has requested to remove that language.

New Mexico’s Republican Governor Wants Proof Of Forcible Rape

By Teeluck Sooknarine/ Addicting Info

New Mexico’s first Hispanic Governor, Susana Martinez, proves that Republicans knows no bounds when it comes to their evil war on women and women’s issues. It is a shame that a woman would be leading the charge against other women and forcing women to be at the mercy of their rapist in order to conform to proposed laws that are being pushed to the fore.
Jodi Jacobson of Rh Reality Check reports:

 ”Now, however, unless a woman who conceived and gave birth to a child as a result of rape can prove that she was “forcibly raped,” she will be denied assistance for childcare needed for work or education.

If adopted, this policy will have numerous implications. It establishes in state law a narrow definition of rape that can and will be applied in other areas of law and policy. It puts a heavy burden on women who have been raped and are now struggling economically to support a child or children to prove the *manner* in which they were raped, requiring that women who have left violent domestic partnerships, who were date-raped, who were impregnated as a result of incest, or through other “non-forcible” but nonetheless equally violent and denigrating means of sexual violation to first “re-engage” with their abusers to seek child support, putting control of their lives back into the hands of someone by whom they were violated in the most profound sense of the term, or to prove somehow they were victims of “forcible” rape or incest.

 Many women, for again what are clearly obvious reasons, can not or will not be able to seek or receive child support from their rapists or, due to the dynamics of rape and rape reporting, may not have adequate “proof” that the rape they endured was “forcible enough” to satisfy the state, and so will be completely disqualified from childcare assistance.”

Women’s groups are up in arms about this shameful treatment being meted out to them (women in general). It was bad enough when old white men were trying to control what women did, but now it is even worse considering a women who should know what difficulties disadvantaged women of all races go through after being raped initiated these ghastly attacks against her fellow females.

Rh Reality Check goes on to report:

“When are we going to stop looking for ways to minimize the violence against women? Rape by definition is already an act of power and control,” said K.C. Quirk, Executive Director of Crossroads for Women in Albuquerque, NM.”

In a statement, Strong Families, a coalition working to advance the rights of women and immigrants, said:

“The attempt to qualify differing levels of rape is especially egregious coming from the nation’s first Latina governor, a former tough prosecutor from southern New Mexico, and a prominent speaker at the Republican national convention. Leaders want to emphasize that rape is rape, period.”
“Rape is rape, let’s not move backward toward victim blaming… [A]s a single parent who once benefited from state-subsidized child care assistance, I am saddened at the state’s move to decrease access to a much-needed benefit for our women and families,” said Adriann Barboa, Field Director with Strong Families.

Shame on you Governor, Martinez–shame on you. Your ancestors are rolling over in their graves in shame. You have a rich heritage and you most of all know what your ancestors went through at the hands of those who abused them. There is a saying…’A person is the culmination of their ancestors’ efforts’.

A hearing on the proposed policy is set for October 1 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Will Romney Support Providing Abortion Coverage To Servicewomen Who Have Been Raped?

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Following Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) comments about “legitimate rape,” the Romney campaign issued a statement claiming that it will support abortion in cases of rape and incest. The policy undermined Paul Ryan’slongstanding opposition to abortion services and set Romney apart from the views of most Republican lawmakers.

Earlier this year, for instance, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) included an amendment to the Senate version of the 2013 defense authorization bill “to ensure that military insurance plans cover abortion services in cases of rape and incest, giving military women the same access to abortion care as civilians.” Currently, military insurance plans only offer abortion coverage if the woman’s life is in danger.

The amendment is critical — thousands of servicewomen were likely raped in 2010, potentiallyresulting in hundres of pregnancies — yet House Republicans this year opposed the measure, fearing that it would “be getting a foot in the door of taxpayer money being used for abortions.” Several Republicans in the Senate backed the Shaheen measure in committee, but the House version of the defense authorization bill didn’t include a similar provision. The Senate has yet to debate the amendment.

Yet given Romney’s articulated support for abortions in cases of rape and incest, the amendment offers him a unique opportunity to turn rhetoric into action and pressure his party to provide servicewomen with the same health care coverage as the civilian women who works in the Pentagon.

As a Shaheen spokesperson told ThinkProgress, “If you support allowing exceptions for abortion in cases of rape, you should support the Shaheen amendment.” The Romney campaign did no respond to requests for comment.

Republican fundraiser charged with kidnapping, raping multiple women

By David Edwards/Raw Story

A high-profile Republican fundraiser who co-chaired at least one event for presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been accused of kidnapping and raping several women that he met online and at church.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported that 37-year-old Gregory Peterson had been arrested on Wednesday and charged with 23 felonies and two misdemeanors. Charges included “nine counts of forcible sexual abuse, seven counts of rape, three counts of object rape, two counts of aggravated kidnapping, forcible sodomy, assault, burglary and sexual battery,” according to KSL. As of Thursday afternoon, we was still being held at the Salt Lake County jail on $750,000 bond.

Charging documents indicated that Peterson victimized a least four women, three of whom he met at an online dating site.

A fourth woman he met at a church function in 2011 agreed to go to a movie with him, but he allegedly forced her to go to his 3,000-square-foot cabin in Heber, Utah after telling her he had a gun. Peterson is accused of sexually assaulting the woman and hitting her when she didn’t follow his instructions.

He is also accused of threatening to report a woman he met online for having an expired visa. He then allegedly drove her to his cabin where she was raped and assaulted.

Peterson’s Facebook page showed a photo him meeting with Romney and indicated that he co-chaired at least one Romney fundraiser on Nov. 17, 2007, according to Talking Points Memo. ABC 4 obtained a photo of Peterson with his arm around a smiling Romney at another event.

Peterson owns Peterson Wealth Management and the online trading website Smartstocks.com. He also holds an MBA in Finance & Entrepreneurship from Brigham Young University.

Watch this video of Greg Peterson’s George W. Bush impersonation at BYU in 2010 via KSL.

Kansas Lawmaker Says Women Should Plan Ahead For Rape: ‘I Have A Spare Tire’

By Tanya Somanader 

The anti-choice tidal wave stemming from the 2010 elections has produced nearly 1,000 anti-choice billsthis year alone. When Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) took office last year, he called on the state legislature to create “a culture of life” and, in the last 15 minutes of their annual session, they delivered. The Republican majority passed a law to ban insurance companies from offering abortion coverage in their general health plans, except when a woman’s life is at risk.

However, one pro-choice Republican, state Rep. Barbara Bollier, feared that Republicans were cutting off “a way for women to cover the cost of terminating pregnancies” — particularly when they’re unintended. During the House debate, she “questioned whether women would buy abortion-only policies long before they have crisis or unwanted pregnancies or are rape victims.” But state Rep. Pete DeGraaf (R) was ready with a shocking retort. DeGraaf said women should plan ahead for situations such as rape because, after all, “I have a spare tire on my car“:

During the House’s debate, Rep. Pete DeGraaf, a Mulvane Republican who supports the bill, told [Bollier]: “We do need to plan ahead, don’t we, in life?”
Bollier asked him, “And so women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with a pregnancy?”
DeGraaf drew groans of protest from some House members when he responded, “I have spare tire on my car.”
“I also have life insurance,” he added. “I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for.”

DeGraaf’s belief that women should plan and prepare for their own rape is more than groan-worthy, it’s woefully out-of-touch. As Jezebel’s Margaret Hartmann notes, DeGraaf is basically telling sexual assault victims that “the state isn’t AAA” so a Kansas woman is responsible for the consequences of her attacker. And by comparing it to life insurance, DeGraaf goes further to insinuate that rape is as inevitable as death.

Unfortunately, this Boy Scout dismissal of rape and incest victims is as galling as it is common among the GOP. More and more Republican lawmakers are adopting the Sharron Angle “make lemonade” attitude towards pregnancies resulting from rape. This year, one Indiana lawmaker even suggested that women would fake their own rapes to secure an abortion procedure.

“There’s clearly a message here that women are dispensable,” said Kansas state Rep. Annie Kuether (D).”I’m sick and tired of being treated like a second-class citizen.”

Motor City Liberal: How about passing an law making sure conservative men and women can't reproduce?

Rep. Wasserman Schultz: Bill Redefining Rape To Prevent Abortions Is ‘A Violent Act Against Women’

By Tanya Somanader

House Republicans wasted no time in declaring their legislative priorities for the 112th Congress. The first: repeal health care for millions of Americans. The second: redefine rape. A day after repealing health care, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act, a bill that would not only permanently prohibit some federally funded health-care programs from covering abortions, but would change the language exempting rape and incest from rape to “forcible rape.”

By narrowing the Hyde Amendment language, Republicans would exclude the following situations from coverage: women who say no but do not physically fight off the perpetrator, women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped, and minors impregnated by adults. As the National Women’s Law Center’s Steph Sterling puts it, this new standard of force “takes us back to a time where just saying no was not enough.”

And yet, 172 Republicans — including sixteen women — and lone Democrat Rep. Daniel Lipinski (IL), chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus — readily support the new standard. Appalled at such a cavalier attack on women’s rights, one House member is not taking the change lightly. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) “fiercely denounced” her conservative colleagues for this “absolutely outrageous” dilution of victims’ rights. Enraged at the suggestion that “there is some kind of rape that would be okay,” Wasserman Schultz told The Raw Story that she considers the bill itself to be “a violent act against women”:

“It is absolutely outrageous,” Wasserman Schultz said in an exclusive interview late Monday afternoon. “I consider the proposal of this bill a violent act against women.”[...]

“It really is — to suggest that there is some kind of rape that would be okay to force a woman to carry the resulting pregnancy to term, and abandon the principle that has been long held, an exception that has been settled for 30 years, is to me a violent act against women in and of itself,” Wasserman Schultz said.

“Rape is when a woman is forced to have sex against her will, and that is whether she is conscious, unconscious, mentally stable, not mentally stable,” the four-term congresswoman added.[...]

Wasserman Schultz dismissed the effort as a nonstarter in the Democratic-led Senate and a guaranteed veto by President Barack Obama, but conceded that it may pass the GOP-controlled House. She called it “yet another example” of how the “extreme right-wing fringe of Republican Party has complete control over their agenda.”

Because the bill makes the Hyde Amendment (which currently requires renewal every year) permanent, supporters are ignoring the rape language change and say it “largely codifies what has already been in practice” since 1976. As TPM notes, the pro-life community, “which is usually more than willing to sound off on abortion and what needs to be done to stop it,” has been “radio silent.” Smith, the bill sponsor, who lauds the bill’s “comprehensive approach” in restricting victim’s rights, refused to address the issue of forcible rape.

While this is not the first time anti-abortion lawmakers have attempted to pass the forcible rape language, there is probably a good reason the pro-life network has stayed mum. An overwhelming number of Americans believe abortion should be a choice when a woman is the victim of rape or incest. In a poll taken 30 years after theRoe v. Wade decision, 81 percent of Americans believed abortion should be legal in cases of rape or incest. The visceral and comprehensive violence such attacks inflict on victims should be as well understood among lawmakers as it is among the public. But the GOP insists that, despite what common sense, compassion, and gender equity demand, just saying no is no longer enough.

UPDATEThe Washington Post issued a correction to point out that Lipinski is not the sole Democrat supporting the bill. As of today, Democratic Reps. Dan Boren (OK), Jerry Costello (IL), Mark Critz (PA), Joe Donnelly (IN), Mike McIntyre (NC), Collin Peterson (MN), Nick Rahall (WV), Mike Ross (AR), and Heath Shuler (NC) are also sponsors.