House Republicans To Redefine Rape To Limit Coverage For Abortions

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Despite your dramatics, this is the old anti-federalist argument used by Jefferson, Patrick Henry, etc. And it has been going on since the first admistration took power under Geroge Washington. There is nothing new here and it has been argued over for a few hundred years:

Of course, the Founders weren't idiots, so that would be the safety, health and rights of its citizens. In this instance we are speaking directly to the issue of the health, safety and rights of women. The argument here is that the government does not have the right to spend money to protect the rights and health of women and I would like to keep it focused on that point. We don't need any flights of fantasy about "invading countries," or whatever else one can imagine because we have a specific constitutional issue before us, where the health and rights of its citizens intersect the constitutional power of its government and its ability to protect those rights.

In this instance, I am saying that government spending is an "enumerated power," which protects the rights and health of women, so I'm not taking this as a regional matter but one of a seperate class of citizen: women, because of their gender. Their gender is what makes them vulnerable to abuse of not only their basic rights to live as peaceful citizens [the right of not being raped], but also their unique ability to become PG, something the other gender has no fear of.

Please note:

The election of 1800 was Jefferson's, who then inacted the Louisiana Purchase without the direct Constitutional power to do so, despite his own argument against it.

For me it may also prove another point: That Hamilton was right. And I suspect Jefferson discovered this point once he had to actually govern the country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Welfare_clause
http://americanhistory.about.com/od/thomasjefferson/a/tj_lapurchase.htm

 

I'm surprised no one has addressed this directly, because it is just plain wrong. Let's look at the 10th Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Seems simple enough, right?

Not exactly.

The Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 124 (1941) that the 10th amendment "states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered." In other words, the 10th amendment didn't really change the document -- it neither granted nor limited state or federal authority. Using the 10th amendment to justify the repeal of Federal funding for abortion in the case of rape, incest, or danger to the life of the mother is akin to using Plessy v Ferguson to justify a repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It's outdated, outmoded, and is largely superseded by the due process clause of the 14th amendment, which holds that all rights enumerated to the people by the constitution cannot be abridged by the states, either.

 

Thanks for the definition, Ragusa (and Drew and CtR). Reading over the wikipedia page on this more, I see that the 10th amendment has successfully been used a few times to challenge federal power in recent times.

What's meant by this? Reading over there examples it seems that it's used when the States rule one way and then the Federal government rules another way, but I suspect I'm misreading it somewhere.

 

The 10th amendment has little weight or significance in this day and age. Th real power of the federal government stems from its powers to tax, spend, and regulate interstate commerce. This and the “necessary and proper” clause which authorizes the federal government to pass any laws “necessary and proper” to execute its constitutional powers leave very little regulation outside of the scope of the Federal government. If a federal law taxes, spends, or regulates interstate commerce, the 10th amendment is out.

The 10th amendment only comes into play when the Federal government compels the states to administer and enforce federal statutes. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was ruled in 1997 to violate the 10th amendment not because of the limitations it placed on firearms ownership but because it actually required the states to participate in the administration of a Federal program. Likewise, the portion of the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1985 that was struck down in 1992 was struck down because the federal government directly compelled the states to enforce a federal regulation. Had the federal government used the spending power* or the commerce power to encourage the states to adopt those regulations rather than directly compel the states to take ownership and liability, that portion of the law would not have been struck down.

* A good example of the spending power is the drinking age. The Federal government couldn't directly compel the states to raise the drinking age, so it instead tied raising the drinking age to receiving Federal Highway funds. There were a few hold-outs, but they didn't last long. After all, your economy loses nothing when you refuse to allow 18-21 year olds to drink. They aren't going to put the money they aren't spending on beer in their piggy bank. They're going to spend it (and stimulate the economy) somewhere else. Louisiana resisted the age change for quite some time, but even they eventually figured it out and relented.

 

Thanks Drew. Starting to make more sense. So in the example here of the Republicans wanting to change the definition of Rape, does such a change automatically apply to all states, or would it have to be adopted by them individually like with the drinking age example you mentioned?

 

It wouldn't apply to the states at all. It would merely affect how the federal government defines rape for the purpose of deciding whether federal funding can be used to cover an abortion. The new republican majority is indeed taking a **** on 30 years of precedent in a ham-handed attempt to score political points with the most extreme elements of their base, but the left is really blowing this out of proportion. It'll never pass the senate, it probably won't even pass the house, and it will make the new Republican majority look like a bunch of idiots. Even if it did pass and Obama somehow didn't veto it, there are plenty of advocacy organizations that would step in to fund abortions in such cases until 2012, when women come to the polls en masse to oust an out of control Republican majority so short sighted that it can't even recognize the political ramifications of telling women that the federal government thinks rape only "counts" when the force is overt. The democratic leadership shouldn't be wasting precioius resources fighting this bill -- they should be handing the House Republicans more rope. Let them have their vote and let them debate it on the senate floor, too, if they're foolish enough. Why waste time, money, and resources attacking the Republican leadership for a bill that will never pass if they're just going to hang themselves anyway?

 

You can complain about semantics all you want, but words make a difference, specifically in this case about expectations. If this were a consensus, something that everyone agreed with, then we'd all have reason to glare at the person stirring up trouble. Since it's only a comprimise, with which most are unhappy in some way or another, more trouble is expected, it's only a matter of when and how. I don't think anyone in the US really considered the abortion issue settled and done. Everyone knows it's still a political hot button.

The really convincing part is when women who have been in that situation say the same thing.

You're changing the argument here. First, no one's talking (yet) of banning abortions in such case, only not paying for them with taxpayer money. Second, you yourself conceed that either one is an option (a bad one, but an option nonetheless), thus not a medical necessity. And what's with throwing statutory rape in there? Do you really think there's any severe emotional trauma involved there? At least, any more than any other teen pregnancy?

You can yell and scream all day about how uncaring and hateful the pro-life movement is, but that doesn't make it true. If it were true, would so many pro-life groups offer post-abortion counseling? It's too late to save the baby, so obviously such a heartless group should just toss the woman out on the street, right? Since they don't care about the woman's mental health? I guess not.

Actually, the term 'post-abortion syndrome' was first coined by a psychologist. Numerous studies on the subject have come up inconclusive (meaning they can't say that there's a causal relationship, or that the patterns observed are due to chance). A few have suggested that the woman's previous mental status (including views on abortion) play the most significant role (which isn't surprising considering the topic). On the other hand, I don't know of any study related to the mental health impacts of bearing a rapist's child, and the psychologists I've talked to on the issue say that it wouldn't have any mental health impact of it's own (i.e. it could exacerbate a pre-existing condition, but not nearly as much as the rape itself). Your arguement doesn't seem to bear much scientific weight either.

 

NOG,
(a) The people who stir the pot and have abandoned the compromise have political motives. They don't care about solving problems and they don't care about the women in situations under which abortion currently receives federal funding.

(b) My argument is that "a team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reviewed 21 studies involving more than 150,000 women and found the high-quality studies showed no significant differences in long-term mental health between women who choose to abort a pregnancy and others." That psychologist who first coined the term 'post-abortion syndrome' appears to have done some sloppy work since "studies with the most flawed methodology consistently found negative mental health consequences of abortion", suggesting that "efforts to show [that 'post-abortion syndrome'] does occur, appear to be politically motivated". That's not me but the experts at Johns Hopkins University. You just happen to dislike their assessment.

(c) Eventually, to claim that this is not about a ban is disingenuous. What is proposed is a ban by another name and by other means. A ban always was and still is the end goal for the anti-abortionists. Cutting the related federal funding is the indirect approach to that goal. It has about the same effect as a ban since women who would rely on such funding then cannot afford it. It is about making access to abortion as difficult as possible, by imposing the cost on the women. Now, where women then may then turn to I don't dare to think about.

 

I could imagine several problems with such a study. For one, you'd have to have the people willingly participate in it. Since the victim's name is typically withheld from police reports, how would you know who could participate? I suppose you could put out radio ads and ask people to call in, but can you imagine that phone call? "Hey, um..., we heard you were raped, had the baby, and we're running a study trying to determine the mental stability of people in your situation. Interested in participating?" Sure, you could be a bit more tactful with the wording, but the point is there's no real nice way to ask them to participate.

Secondly, I'd imagine we're talking about a rather small group of people. While the total number of women raped annually in the US is large - it's estimated* to be about 300,000 women, I imagine the number of women who become pregnant as a result is relatively small.

* It's estimated because you cannot just add up all of the reported rapes in the 50 states every year and say that's the number, because rape is among the most unreported of crimes. There are a little over 150,000 rapes reported in the US every year, which, if we are to believe the estimate, means nearly 1 in 2 rapes go unreported - nearly 50%.

Of course, given that we don't have any hard figures on the number of women raped, it's espeically difficult to determine how many of them get pregnant. I've searched, and the best I could find was a 10 year old paper written by a doctor who just tried to figure it out by statistics. Given that he published his paper in "Christian Life Resources" I think it's safe to say that he is pro-life, and you can draw your own conclusion as to whether or not his estimate is too high or too low.

The Cliff Notes' version of the paper is as follows: He assumes 200,000 annual rapes, but because of the victim being too old or young to become pregnant, a woman only being able to conceive a child for 3 days per month, half of all rapists using condoms, half of all women either being naturally sterile, surgically sterile, or using the pill, and 1 in 7 men being either naturally or surgically sterile, works out to about 200 pregnancies resulting from rape each year. So even if we up that to the 300,000 number of esitamted rapes, we're still only at 300.

The author points out that it's not so easy to get pregnant. There have been numerous studies conducted about how long it takes a woman who is actively trying to get pregnant to actually become pregnant, and those studies show an average of 5-10 months.

While medical studies can be and have been conducted on a small numbers of people, that's typically only done for exceedingly rare medical conditions. Most proper medical studies have around 1,000 participants. So if we're doing a study on women who become pregnant as a result of rape, and try to determine the psychological affects of having the baby versus having an abortion - even if we're lucky and there's an exact 50-50 breakdown in the amount of women in each group, we would need every woman who became pregnant as a result of rape in the last 3+ years to volunteer to participate in the study.

This is a long-winded means of saying, that the reason we probably don't have hard numbers on the psychological affects is because the logistics of conducting such a study make it nearly impossible for an accurate study to be conducted.

EDIT: Whoops! Forgot to link to the paper.

 

Rags

I'm not a republican and think they are wrong on many issues.

But I don't feel against them on this issue-I may even be more extreme than they are.

Why?

Because a rape-forcible or not-wasn't done by the child whom I would argue (unless the mother's life was notably put at risk by carrying the child) is the most hurt by ways we can physically measure at this time.

I support life of the mother exceptions because the life of the mother is at stake but otherwise the life of the child is.

 

That's just it, pplr. If they were just aiming to stop federal funding for all abortions except in the case where the mother's life is in jeopardy, that would be an understandable position stemming from a respect for the sanctity of all (human) life. The republicans aren't pushing for that at all. Instead, they are trying to pick and choose which instances of rape warrant abortion funding and which ones do not. This isn't about respect for life at all. The republicans come off looking like a bunch of misogynists that think rape is traumatic enough to warrant a federally funded abortion when the victim is bleeding or bruised but not if she was drugged, threatened, or coerced. When you get down to it no other interpretation makes sense in this particular case. In moving to take some rapes off the list of exemptions for abortion funding, the Republicans are effectively telling those victims "some rapes are bad enough to warrant an abortion -- just not yours".. Many within the party recognize this, which is in large part why I can't honestly believe that the measure will pass even our Republican controlled house. A lot of extremists moved into Washington this last election, but there are still enough grown-ups left to scuttle the bill before it gets to the floor.

 

I see you're continuing your habit of gross assumptions about anyone who disagrees with you. You know this how, exactly? Have you psychically peered into their minds? Have they sat on your couch and poored out their deepest secrets over a bottle of scotch? Or do you simply believe it's impossible to care about the problems of the women, but care more about the lives of children.

What I dislike is that they single out 'long-term' mental health issues. Those are not the only type. It's like saying that being stabbed in the leg doesn't result in any 'long-term' physical health issues, and is therefore fine and dandy.

I understand. You're stretching the topic. I don't think that's entirely wrong, but it does merrit a bit of warning. Here I thought you were actually confusing this with an actual ban on the practice.

Since we're talking about mental health results, you'd probably enlist the help of psychologists that counsel rape victims. For scientific studies, relevant details of confidential cases are frequently published without identifying details (and with the patient's consent). Something like 'Ms. Y, a 38 year old caucasian woman of middle-class upbringing who became pregnant after a rape, was diagnosed with PTSD...' Things along these lines have been done before.

Quite small, yes, and that would pose a problem. It would probably take a large study (i.e. involving a large number of reporting psychologists) to identify any significant number of them.

And while I agree with all of it (and I've heard a few other things as well), it misses the point. Ragusa's argument is based on an assumed additional mental trauma to the woman on top of the rape.

Drew, I don't think it makes them look misoginystic. I think it makes them look foolish and idiotic (both at the same time). I don't see anything in there, though, that makes me think they hate women.

 

While I can't look into their heads, I can look into their law and their arguments. I am making a judgement based on that, their actions and their ideological views. That's well beyond gross assumptions. It is an informed view. If you don't like it, as you do, that tough for you, but it doesn't make it a gross assumption. You may want to revisit Drew's post:

Drew is very correct and points it out with clarity. There is no rational reason for their differentiation. If there is no rational reason there well may be an irrational one. Now what do they say? If they were simply pro life, they'd cut all funding for abortion. But instead they leave federal funding for abortion in case of violent rape on the table, and abandon it for other cases of rape. In doing so they effectively say that federal funding for an abortion isn't warranted because it is not rape unless she is bruised or bleeding.

The implication of their position, giving the sponsors of the bill the benefit of the assumption that their differentiation wasn't completely arbitrary, is that this expresses the sentiment that when she isn't bruised or bleeding it was likely consensual, because lack of evidence for resistance indicates consent. The law reflects that sentiment. Now that is a classical misogynistic position.

Actually, that is not my point.

And are you really disingenuous enough to call for "hard data" about rape victims conceivably having a problem with bearing the child of their rapist for nine months, and then to feed and pamper it into adulthood (or to at least produce a child for adoption)? Do you really need statistics to understand that?

So here is my point: Trauma isn't so much the point as far as I am concerned, and frequency of it happening is also quite irrelevant. Pregnancies and motherhood change the life of a woman forever. My point is simply that a woman after a rape should have the limited choice, as under present law, to decide whether she wants to have her life changed irrevocably, or even 'only' for the next nine months, by having to bear the child of her rapist - and she should have that choice even when she is not traumatised. Because it is hideously unjust and cynical to expect them to, to put it bluntly, bend over and take it some more - after all, life is sacred.

Now what about consent? Is that sacred, too? Considering that people go to jail for not accepting no as an answer it is. Now what? The rapist didn't ask for her consent about sex, much less about her consent to becoming pregnant. A pregnancy as a result of a rape is an extension of the rape, causally and for all practical purposes. The pro-lifers don't really care about that as well. It is all about the sanctity of life of the unborn to them. Now what about the mother?

In a sense, for both the rapist and the pro-lifers, the women are simply asked to play their part and to not make too great of a fuss in the meanwhile - or else - with the respective consequences: The rapist then overcomes resistance; the pro-lifers see her as a 'murderer for killing her baby' who should go to jail, after all, in their heart of hearts they want to see abortion to always be a crime again. In a sense, they both objectify her - the former as a sex object, the latter as a giver of life. And they both don't take no for an answer.

I'd rather give women the option to abort under the limited circumstances under which that is possible under present law, and as a medical procedure with a doctor performing it for the health and safety of the mother, rather than to see them go to some coat hanger expert. I see it that way because consent does matter, and because they got enough problems as they do.

 

Exactly which part of "some rapes are bad enough to warrant an abortion -- just not yours" doesn't strike you as misogynistic? This is exactly the thrust of the proposed law. I would have remained silent had the House Republican majority simply aimed to refuse abortion funding unless the pregnancy poses a threat to the mother's life. That is a position I both understand and respect even if I don't fully agree with it. The bill authors for whatever reason weren't willing to take that noble if misguided position. Instead, they left funding for rape victims on the table and chose to decide which types of rape were worthy of funding and which ones weren't. I see no substantive difference between drugging or blackmailing a woman for sex and simply forcing her, but apparently the sponsors of this bill do. How is that not a misogynistic position?

 

I agree there's something irrational behind this, but I don't agree that it's hate. That is your assumption. Personally, I suspect it's politics. A pro-life movement wouldn't move to ban all abortions if they knew they couldn't get it passed. Of course, I don't think this will get passed, but I think someone somehow thought it had a chance.

Again with the gross assumption. Yes, that's one reasonable line of logic, but hardly the only one. The fact that you jump to it and cling to it with a death-grip, though, doesn't surprise me.

It may not be your point, but you relied on the arguement here:

Having a problem, no. Having a mental health disorder, yes. Though, considering some of the posts in the Tuscon thread, I wouldn't be surprised if I were the only one.

I'm not arguing to ban these abortions (though only because the law still doesn't recognize a fetus as a human being). I'm arguing that I don't want to pay for it.

And again you get into the gross assumptions and mischaracterizations. The pro-livers don't care about the women? That's why so many pro-life organizations offer post-abortion counseling on top of everything else? That's why so many of them offer assistance after the child's birth? Because they don't care? Is it really impossible for you to imagine that someone may deeply care about more than one thing, but see one as more important than the other? I deeply care about my wife's happiness, but I care about her health more deeply, and if she were refusing a life-saving surgery because she was afraid of the pain, I'd encourage her with everything I had to take the surgery. It's not because I don't care about her happiness or the pain she may endure. It's because I care more about her life.

And in the same sense, a murderer is objectified and used by both the victim and the legal structure. That's a very moving argument, but it doesn't hold up to a critical analysis.

I'm sure you'd also rather see it a free and open procedure that any woman could have at any time. That, however, is moot.

The part where I don't assume that's what the writers were thinking. If one of them came out and said that, then I'd agree that he (or she, hypothetically) was a misogynistic b*****. Since it's only you putting those words in their mouths, though, I don't agree. It's stupid, but I won't characterize it more than that until I understand the reasons behind it.

 

NOG,
they do care only to the extent that the women do what they want them to do - give birth. Everything else is violently (sometimes literally) opposed.

They want the women do the "right thing", even if that has to include scaring the bejeezus out of them by invoking the [apparently phony] spectre of "post-abortion syndrome" (you'll get depression when you abort!) and when they cook their statistics to find it, it is either a noble lie, or the result of the idea that, since abortion is wrong, women must feel bad about it i.e. that there must be a "post-abortion syndrome". Counselling will reflect that. I have no doubt that the people who do that are very sincere and generally benign in their views, but these views are also quite narrow: They cannot take no for an answer and will never accept the decision of a woman to abort because to them abortion is always wrong.

That you do not want to pay for these abortions is one thing, you oppose abortion after all. To have these lawmakers introducing into their law differentiations about what sort of rape rape victims are covered and which aren't, based on what they feel is rape and what isn't - that is quite another thing.

To simplify: We have rape victims with bruises, and we have rape victims without bruises. They want to include one and exclude the other. Both groups are comparable - they're victims of rape. So why are they not treated equally? Because to the lawmakers that's it is not really rape when there are no bruises.

Now, it is not as if an abortion performed on a bruised rape victim is covered on grounds of her having bruises. It's covered because she has been raped. If it would have been because of the bruises, we'd be in a different category, abortion because of risk for the health of the mother i.e. medical necessity. To justify whether to pay for an abortion based on whether rape victims have bruises or not is unpersuasive, and it is unpersuasive because it is completely arbitrary.

It is that arbitrariness that adds insult to injury, and while it is not hate (besides, I never said that), one cannot escape the conclusion that the differentiation were apparently informed by the odious misogynistic sentiment that lack of evidence for resistance indicates consent. Why else deny abortion funding for rape victims without bruises? It is the only reason I can deduce from the differentiations made by the Republican lawmakers. Come up with a better interpretation and we can talk.

 

Isn't that a bit of a red herring though? Do you really have any expectation that because you are personally opposed to something the government shouldn't collect money from you to help pay for it? There are people that oppose Social Security - they still have to pay into it. There are people who were against the Iraq War - you don't get a tax break because of it. And you are pro-life, and against federal funding for abortion - but you still are going to have to pay up. You don't get to opt-out of paying just because you don't like something.

 

OK, I'll play. I want you to tell me exactly why it is OK to fund an abortion for a woman who was raped and beaten but not for a woman who was drugged and ****ed in her sleep. I want you to explain why one rape is more legitimate (and therefore worthy of funding than the other) without resorting to the misogynistic position that rape without being battered and bruised denotes consent. If you can do this, I will gladly recant my earlier statement that those Republican lawmakers, in taking the position that some rapes are worthy of funding for an abortion and some rapes are not, appear* misogynistic.

* It's worth pointing out that I never actually called them misogynistic in my initial statement. Look here:

See? Not only did I never explicitly call the representatives themselves misogynistic, but I also provided in that initial assertion the conditions needed to prove me wrong. Find an explanation for taking the position that some rapes warrant abortion funding while other rapes do not that does not involve de-legitimizing the seriousness of the crime in the cases in which funding is denied, and you have defeated the thrust of my argument. You have yet to proffer such an interpretation.

 

Aldeth, I would come at this from a "No Taxation Without Representation" perspective. What I myself feel is that as a taxpayer I should be able to feel free to express my opinion about how those tax dollars are spent, and through legal means try to influence how those dollars are spent. I am not saying that I get to just unilaterally opt out of a current policy or program (wouldn't that be sweet? I'd earmark all of my money for hospitals and roads, as would a number of my fellow Albertans, and there'd be $0 for luxuries until the basic infrastructure issues were dealt with. But I digress) but rather am saying that to say "I want a change in our laws and policies that better reflects how I would like funds distributed."

Drew, I know it's tempting to label all those stupid right wingers as mysoginists (oh, "looking like" mysogynists, sorry) and some of them may well be. Overall, though, I see that sort of thing as being as dishonest as saying that "abortionists want to kill babies because they hate life" or "abortion policies are aimed at wiping out the black race" or other such exaggerations. Here's another possible scenario (one that I admit has some legal / logical difficulties.) Here goes:

Tina is 14 years old. In her state, the age of consent is 15. She goes out and has some fun with her boyfriend, an 18 year old fellow named Ricky. She ends up pregnant. It's not stat rape because of the 5 year Romeo and Juliet clause. Tina made a choice. Ricky did not force himself on her by any means, physical, chemical, psychological or whatever. However, she wants an abortion.

Now before I continue, I'll weigh in that in a free and democratic society, it has been determined that abortion should be a legal option for girls in Tina's position. I don't have to be happy about that but I can deal with it because I am not a lunatic. However, just because something is legal doesn't mean that the government should pay for it.

OK, back to Tina. Her family is not wealthy and cannot afford the abortion. So, she claims that the father is actually a guy she met at the bar, and that he is 22 years old. She doesn't know his name or anything else about him. Poof! The pregnancy is now a result of a stat rape, and qualifies for government funding! No evidence whatsoever other than her word. And before anyone goes there, pointing out that it is possible for women to lie is not misogyny. ANYONE can lie, and that's been proved time and again.

People like me don't hate Tina. I don't think for one second the Republicans in this situation hate women. They just don't want people to be able to work a loophole in the system to get taxpayer funded abortions. Their approach to closing the loophole may be poor, no argument there from me, but it's not a sign that they hate women. If she wants to raise money somehow to fund the abortion, more power to her, but she should take responsibility for her own choices.

Now are there other loopholes in the law? Of course. Are there ones that probably need attention more than this one? Likely. But working to close a loophole is not a bad thing, and we all choose to engage with the issues that we feel are either the most important or the most easily resolved.

Bottom line, wanting to see some proof that a person qualifies for a taxpayer funded abortion is not an unreasonable idea.

 

LKD, you aren't seriously suggested that women can simply cry "rape!" to get an abortion, are you? Do you honestly believe that women would risk subjecting themselves to the criminal charges for falsely accusing someone of rape just to get a federally funded abortion? You admitted to "legal / logical difficulties" in your apocryphal story, but scenario is almost too absurd for words. We don't base public policy on apocryphal stories for a reason.