Because shit like this keeps happening:
On Wednesday, House Representatives of the Indiana state considered a controversial anti-abortion bill, introduced by state Rep. Eric Turner (R), that would make abortions illegal in the state after 20 weeks. Representatives were also considering a bill amendment, proposed by Rep. Gail Riecken (D), that would make exceptions for “women who became pregnant due to rape or incest, or women for whom pregnancy threatens their life or could cause serious and irreversible physical harm.”
You know, pretty common sense exceptions.
There’s just one problem with the amendment, argued Turner, the original bill’s sponsor: Women would then have a “giant loophole” where they could simply lie about being a rape or incest victim and procure an abortion anyway.
The amendment was voted down 42 to 54 and the anti-abortion bill itself passed the House 72 to 23.
Fuck.
I really don’t know what else I can say about this sort of shit. I know I may not live there anymore, but I care about my friends and family – fuck, I care about strangers who are having their rights and fucking dignity ripped away by people like Eric Turner.
The only thing giving me hope for Indiana is that there are amazing people like Rep. Linda Lawson (D), a sex crimes investigator for six years, who managed to passionately defend the women of Indiana in a situation where I would have been speechless.
…
Fuck.
I do not know what to say either. :( More stuff like this I see, less faith I have in humanity in general. Because, let us be honest, someone is electing those asshats who do these atrocities. Best, and keep on blogging.
Hoosterics? (Hoosier +Hysterics)? Of course–the whole “Hysterics” is problematic–considering it’s based of of “hysteria”–>greek womb.. But something involving Hoosier seems appropriate..Otherwise–yes.. this is atrocious.. One can only hope that it will be struck down in the courts or that Mitch Daniels will somehow find the will to veto it..
I think the official term is “@%)* Neocons”.
As I said on Twitter, Indiana Indignation is a possible candidate for the rage you are feeling right now….This is such bullshit. Gah.
And people keep voting them in? *sigh*
I’m sure women would not lie about rape or incest as I’m sure there would likely be some provision requiring the filing of a police report or charges in order to do so. Eric Turner is an abomination to humanity.
There is something about watching that man for less than a minute that just makes my skin crawl. Maybe it was the fact he was attempting to sound intelligent, but was really just reveling in his ignorance and the ignorance of his supporters. He reminds me of a cartoon pig. And not a cute one, either. If you ever saw the animated version of Animal Farm… Yeah, he’s one of those pigs. >.>
All of these crazy stories have really killed any interest I had in visiting your fine country :(
I think this article brilliantly displays the difference between you and them. By liberally peppering it with ‘fucks’ it shows what they have failed to do:Give a fuck.
How about “Indianignation” for a term..
Just don’t go to Indiana. There are lots of other cool places–like Chicago.. :)
Wow, I guess it really is possible for a blogger to simultaneously care about big and important issues like this *and* smaller things like misplaced jokes on somebody else’s blog. Whodathunk.
But then I would still be right next to the crazy, is the water safe to drink -_o
… So even if there were some pregnant women lying about the rape/ incest (which I doubt), that would be worse than forcing the women who actually got raped to cary the baby and condemn the child to live with the fact that it’s the result of a disgusting crime and possibly to grow up unwanted? Our ministers are disgusting, but I would never even think they would be unethical and certainly not as much as here demonstrated. And how about the women whose life is threatened, I doubt they’ll fake that!
The two issues are variations on a theme. Whodathunk.
Yes… it is.. :)
This is abhorrent. Just… I don’t even have words.As a (still somewhat brainwashed) young teenager, I was totally against abortion in any situation, but even in high school I was beginning to question whether my position was really the right one. That the people in positions of power in this country are unable to understand that their policies are stomping all over women’s rights when a Catholic-raised and socialized 15-year-old can see it is appalling, and, to be honest, depressing.The more attention I pay to the national and world stages, the less faith I have in humanity, or at least in our ability to have a decent moral compass on a large, rather than personal, scale.
So glad that in just a few short years I won’t even be able to get pregnant anymore! But am horrified that this is the world that my 6 year old daughter is growing up in. I’m thinking of jumping the pond–in either direction…
Im happy to see a post like this now, after the previous one. Yeah, the tea-baggers have been going full throttle with their extremism after their wins in 2010, and womens right issues have definately been on their hit list. They are trying hard to get rid of laws mandating equal pay for women and abortion rights, as well as occasionally trying to pass really horrible things like redefinitions of rape. All we can do is try to make the liberal base enthusiastic again and try to elect more democrats again in 2012 – and really try hard to make the Dems actually STAND for things and represent real alternatives, not just be a GOP-lite option.
That’s where you are wrong though. They DO know the effect, and either they are voting for it to increase their voter cred with the fundagelical crowd, or they actually want to women to be second-class citizens with fewer rights than a fucking fetus. Both mindsets are equally abhorrent.
as I just said in my own blog, I could ALMOST understand if it was a fear of an increase of wrongful imprisonment due to false rape allegations. but the thing is a) this hasn’t even been mentioned as a concern at all.. it’s just about ‘not creating loopholes for those evil sex-lovin’ ladies… and B) They could just as easily avoid false allegations just as easily by NOT restricting to just cases of rape and incest, thus eliminating the need to lie about it.I’m also playing devil’s advocate with the idea that anyone actually WOULD lie just to get an abortion, which I personally think is unlikely, given the stigma involved in being a rape/incest victim, unless they were absolutely desperate.
Personally, I am tired of the “rape, incest, life of the mother” debate. I really wish pro-choice activists would quit pandering to the anti-choice crowd and instead step it up and simply say, “It is none of yours or anyone else’s damn business.”
Why not just cut to the chase and criminalize women?
To these idiots, though, abortion is a murder, and murder is worse than forcing a woman to have a baby.Consider this thought experiment. Suppose that the only way to perform an abortion was to pluck a five-year-old out of kindergarten and sacrifice him or her to the goddess of fertility. Would you permit these abortions? Would you carve out an exception for rape or incest?Of course, the analogy only makes sense if you think of a fetus as morally equivalent to a five-year-old. You and I know better, but these wingnuts do believe that (or perhaps they’ve simply rationalized underlying motivations with that belief). If you accept that faulty axiom, though, killing this amendment follows.
Not to make things worse, but there’s even more reason to despise Indiana:http://www.aclu.org/blog/repro…
Greetings from Mike Pence’s district. I can’t say I expected better of the people who were chosen by the people who chose Mike Pence. Bigotry sells.
Karen…women have been criminalized for ages at least by the 3 types of desert goat pluckers. This is the reason it is VERY important that secularists, atheist, and other people of intelligence get out and vote so the number of these ‘representatives of mentally impaired crazies’ can be kept to a minimum. Because the representatives are a reflection of the major voters.
Well, although it isn’t the best English usage, As a former resident of that state I often tell people that it is a good place to be from…
No they don’t.
Ugh. I don’t understand the way people deal with rape in this country. Why is there always *always* this weird accompanying “she’s probably lying” thing that people in the fracking government just have to include?? And then they say liberals are soft on criminals.
probably because they don’t consider rape a ‘real’ crime unless it’s committed by sketchy masked strangers in alleys against attractive, young, virginal white women.
Except they don’t…
Except that they don’t…(Fucking HELL)
Oh…my…fucking…fictitious…GODSince Jen’s recently assured other commenters that it’s Disqus rather than some of moderation that eats comments with links, and since about four attempts at this have been fucking eaten so far…….http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2…THERE ARE YOU HAPPY YOU OVERPROTECTIVE PIECE OF SHIT SOFTWARE???
America, land of the free. The free men.
I’d like to say that proven cases of false rape accusations do exist. But saying that a significant number of abortion seeking women would do that is just crazy.
Ugh, uncooperative software is the worst.What I don’t think the author of that post takes into account is that pro-lifers aren’t necessarily a homogenous group. I can see several different lines of reasoning leading to the banning of abortion (to clarify, I think all of these are flawed):1. Aborting a fetus is morally equivalent to murdering a child.2. People (or perhaps only women) who voluntarily have sex should not be permitted to evade the consequences of that decision.3. Conception is under the control of a higher power, which has its own purposes in allowing the pregnancy.4. Having sex outside of marriage/for non-reproductive purposes is morally wrong and we should not do anything to encourage it.Not all pro-lifers will accept all of these lines of reasoning. Some may believe all of them; others may believe a few; still others may only believe one. Also, these people will all hold opinions that have nothing to do with abortions: some will believe, for example, that the poor are responsible for their own poverty, which may color their perception of abortion-related issues.People who agree with any of these arguments will all want to ban many abortions, but will disagree about various special cases—for instance, the #2 and #3 believers would want to restrict contraception, while #1 and #4 should be supportive or at least neutral.Despite these disagreements, because they *do* agree about “normal” abortions—ones for pregnancies caused by voluntary sex, which seem to be 90% of all abortions at the very least[1]—it makes sense for all of them to form a coalition to ban those. It even makes sense for believers in one line of reasoning to dishonestly use others, which will further their overall goal.(Think this is dishonest? The anti-execution coalition is the same way. Some members think that killing is simply wrong, even when ordered by a court; others worry about the accuracy of the justice system, racial bias, or even the expense. That doesn’t stop all of them from cheering when a court orders executions to stop based on only one of those reasons. Incidentally, I’m mainly in the second of those groups.)If pro-lifers were a heterogenous coalition of people with a similar overall goal but different motivations and specific plans, you would expect to see an inconsistent implementation of pro-life goals. Some laws would include rape/incest/maternal health exceptions; others would not. Some groups would complain about contraception; others would not. Some people would bomb clinics; others would decry them.And it seems to me that that’s exactly the situation we have. Heterogenous pro-lifers are implementing inconsistent policies. All of them try to restrict “ordinary” abortions; it’s in the details and the related areas that they’re inconsistent.EDITED TO ADD: I should have mentioned that some, perhaps many, pro-lifers probably *do* have explicitly anti-woman beliefs motivating them. But “some” is not “all”. And in most cases, I think it’s best to remember Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”[1] I couldn’t find good numbers in a few minutes of Googling. The best data I could find was from a 1988 survey; it showed 7% were for maternal health, 1% were for rape or incest, and 6% were other/no response. However, they allowed multiple responses in that survey, so some respondents might have fallen into more than one category.
Regardless of if they do or not, I think we can probably all agree that this is not what the Republicans’ main concern is anyway. All along it’s been pretty clear in the States that are passing these kind of retrograde laws that the concern is A) making sure a fetus’ rights trump the rights of the woman carrying it and B) punishing women for their sexuality.
Oh, it’s a race! Can my right hand finish my dissertation before my left hand stabs my own eyeballs out? Let’s start the countdown, folks!
Eric Turner (R) is a fetid stinking pool of ejected goat semen. Another christian lying politician who is against gay marriage, the health care bill and women’s reproductive services. Women’s wombs and vaginas are his legislative playground because there is no finer authority on earth than this old white christian male (R) and his bible. He is for small government but he will ceaselessly monitor every single womb in the State of Indiana. Remember what Bill Mahrer said about what the (R) in Republican stands for? R is what the pirate says when he takes all your money and throws you to the sharks.
that guy is a CUNT no other word can describe him
Isn’t shortly after 20 weeks that it could possibly survive outside the womb? I feel like I’ve read that they had like 22 week old babies survive but I could be wrong. I’m of the opinion that viability should be the cut off for abortion, but maybe that’s just me. Now on the other hand, the idea that perfectly logical exceptions like rape, incest, and danger to baby or mom being ruled out because a woman could lie is just absurd. Sometimes people blow my mind. Like this whole desire to cut planned parenthood’s funding because they provide abortions when that is only a small percentage of the services they actually provide, much of which is about prevention. People suck.
Call him a douche if you want, but don’t call him a cunt as you’re just adding to the problem.So, is that it? Is it law now (or soon) in Indiana?
Pretty sure it still has to pass the Senate, so it’s not law yet. But possibly soon.
people don’t suck. Republicans suck.
Actually, I don’t understand both sides in this argument.On the one hand, if one really believes that abortion is murder, then there is no reason to make exceptions for rape or incest.On the other hand, 20 weeks? Give me a break. Any woman who decides in favour of an abortion (for whatever reason) can and should decide much earlier. 20 weeks is approaching the age at which a premature baby would be able to survive, albeit in an incubator. Where do you draw the line? I know someone who was born a full two months too early and survived with no problems and wasn’t even in a hospital. If you don’t draw the line somewhere well before the normal end of pregnancy, then you have the situation that it is OK to abort a baby in the 39th week but it’s not OK to kill it immediately after birth if it was born in the 38th week. (If you do think that is OK, then please say so explicitly.) Drawing the line at birth (abortion is OK at any time, infanticide is not) is even less well founded than the idea that a human being (with the rights that entails under the law) begins at the moment of conception, or when the first fission occurs.Yes, the Republicans and their ilk are stupid, yes, they don’t like sex, yes, they want the fear of raising a child cause a fear of sex and thus oppose abortion, birth control etc (otherwise there would be no reason for abstinence). On the other hand, the response has to be more intelligent than “go as far as possible to the other extreme”.
Agreed, but I am a firm believer that the most conclusive way to disprove an argument is to do so even while assuming the faulty primeses of that argument are actually correct so here goes… Assuming women claiming to be raped to obtain abortions were a likely occurrence, Eric Turner’s argument is essentially that it would be better to force woman who had actually been raped to bear their rapist’s child than to accept that some woman might surreptitiously obtain what is in most of the country a completely legal medical operation. Arguing whether or not woman would actually make such a claim just confuses the issue, because his argument is transparently disgusting on it’s face.
How about we refer to Eric Turner as the gender-neutral diseased-ridden genitals that members of neither sex, including transgendered and asexual people, would want to touch with a ten foot pole, even if they were into the whole touching other peoples genitals with a ten-foot pole. (For the record, if I had to choose a genital that Eric Turner was, it would be a dick. As in inconsiderately sticking himself into places where he has no right to be, making a mess of the whole situation, and then leaving contented. )
After the baby is born, whenever that occurs, there is no longer an issue of the mother’s bodily autonomy. Before the baby is born, at whatever stage of pregnancy, the mother should have the right to decide for herself how to balance the inevitable health risks she is facing (and no, the fetus does not have a say in this).Attempting to draw arbitrary lines at specific gestational dates has no factual or moral justification. Even “viability” is an elusive concept – at 24 weeks the outcomes break down something like this: 50% dead, 25% severely disabled, and under 3% showing no significant consequences.
No. Cunts are wonderful, beautiful things and there’s nothing shameful about them or having them. This guy is a shitweasel.Or just plain shit. Foul-smelling, disease-spreading, organic residue that’s pretty much not good for anything except fertilizing plants once you bury it. I like that.
I love when intelligent people who are comfortable with polysyllabic words get rolling with juvenile name-calling! The ensuing insults and their explanations are a thing of beauty!
There was a seminar on sexual assault by my school’s sexual assault awareness group, it was supposed to have the college democrats and college republicans there. I went to check it out as a member of the college democrats, and the first page of the slide show talked about how sexual assault is a non-partisan issue. Guess what?Not a single college republican showed up. While it’s possible there was a scheduling error, it’s shit like this, and the proposed bill to basically say that some rape isn’t actual rape only “forcible rape” is, that makes me think, no, no republicans don’t actually care as much as the democrats about people who’ve been victims of sexual assault. This is, quite very very sadly and regrettably, a partisan issue.
It is killing my interest in continuing to live here. So where can I go and not have to learn another language in retirement?