Indiana Republican: Women May Fake Rape To Get An Abortion
Meet Indiana state Representative Eric Turner, who opposes an exception for rape or incest to a bill he proposed that would ban abortion after the 20th week of pregnancy:
TURNER: With all do respect to Rep. Riecken, I understand what she’s trying to do. But as you know that when the federal health care bill was going through Congress there was a lot of discussion whether this would allow for abortion coverage and of course we were all told it would not. And the bill, my house bill 1210, would prevent that for any insurance company to provide abortion coverage under federal health care bill. This [amendment] would open that window and I would ask you to oppose this amendment.
I just want you to think about this, in my view, giant loophole that could be created where someone who could — now i want to be careful, I don’t want to disparage in any way someone who has gone through the experience of a rape or incest — but someone who is desirous of an abortion could simply say that they’ve been raped or there’s incest.
Every time I think that most of America’s stupid politicians are in Washington, I am reminded that there are statehouses around the country that are filled with people even dumber than the dumbest member of Congress.
This does seem to be the case. Of course, If true, it makes talk of letting the states handle policy in lieu of the Congress to be less appealing.
Think of the State houses as the “minor leagues” Doug. Only the best get to move up to the big league team.
OK Mr. Turner, we’re turn all cases over to you and you can be the final arbiter of whether someone was raped or not. You be the king, clearly you can judge better than the woman herself. Or not.
BTW, I don’t have any statistics in front of me, but I’m guessing very few abortions after the 20th week are done just as a crappy form of birth control. There might actually be a valid reason for some of them.
What am I missing? If abortion was outlawed except in cases of rape and incest, doesn’t it seem likely that some women who wished to have an abortion would rather claim they were raped than carry an unwanted fetus to full term?
As soon as you create a system to pay people Social Security disability benefits, you’re going to get people who claim to be disabled who are not. When you make medical marijuana legal, some people are going to claim medical need when their desire is purely recreational. When you create a financial regulatory system that’s tied in to the finance industry, you’re going to find people skirting the system and getting away with it.
This is a basic fact of life. Is your point that this phenomenon is so universal that it is a lousy reason to oppose a rape/incest exception? I would agree with that, but I still don’t think it’s so very dumb for the guy to bring up something which is clearly true.
What TGC said. I don’t think that they would finger innocent men, but claim that some man in some dark alley raped them so that they didn’t have to involuntary carry a fetus for nine months and then go through labor? Yeah. That would happen.
Yes of course because the only thing with less stigma than an abortion is rape. And certainy if I’ll lie about glaucoma to get some pot I’ll lie about incest to get an abortion.
Mind your own f’ing business and stop obsessing over other women’s uteruses.
I don’t stigmatize rape victims, and I would denounce anybody who did.
“…I don’t stigmatize rape victims…”
Never said you did.
What is being said here is that religious extremeist zealots want to be so in control of a womens body that even they admit a woman would willingly accept the stigma of rape in order to subvert that control. And that subversion cannot be allowed to happen. The religious nuts must have full control. There can be no loopholes in their complete domination over the bodies of others.
A quick Google search finds numerous examples of people making false claims of rape for far more frivolous reasons than avoiding an unwanted pregnancy.
cry for attention:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/16/heidi-jones-could-face-jail_n_798013.html
trying to make family feel guilty:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1046530/Woman-jailed-making-false-rape-claim-family-row-night-out.html
revenge:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1325556/Surrey-woman-jailed-false-rape-claim-boyfriend-fed-diazepam-sandwich.html
the (consensual) sex wasn’t good:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/false-rape-claim-over-bad-sex
So do you really think that nobody exists who would be willing to falsely claim rape when the stakes are much higher?
Again…I didn’t say that. I said that religious fanatics want total control over the uteruses of American women. And they will settle for nothing less.
Why would you think that they wouldn’t finger innocent men? Who else is going to get fingered if they make up a story about being raped? Guilty men who didn’t rape them? Whenever a woman files a false rape claim, there will be an investigation, often times involving hundreds of hours of police officers’ time that could be better used elsewhere. Those false accusations are leveled by women at men in almost 100% of all cases (I think I read of one or two cases where that wasn’t the case). In many cases, those accusations are leveled against some unknown black man fitting the description of any number of black men. In a good number of those cases, innocent men are actually arrested, jailed, tried, and sometimes convicted for crimes they didn’t commit, which often times leads to them being assaulted or even killed. But of course, that’s alright to some people because it’s all for the greater good.
If taxpayers are going to be forced to pay for the abortions of women who are raped, then those women better damn well be required to file an actual report, even if they can’t identify their “assailant” and go through the rape kit process. Once they’ve done so then they can get their taxpayer-funded abortion. If their allegations are later discovered to be false, then they should be charged with as many crimes as possible and given the strictest sentence possible (I’d love to see a law passed that would provide the same punishment for false accusers as the punishment that the falsely-accused would have faced). This loophole will certainly be exploited by unscrupulous women, but we can do our best to create disincentives to discourage women from doing so.
What stigma are you talking about? Female rape victims (and only female rape victims) are given all the deference in the world. They’re given free medical care, countless “victim” services, and are not only shielded by the entire media industry but are actually assumed to be telling the truth 100% of the time when they make an accusation. Hell, politicians have gone so far as to undermine the entire legal system so as to make it as easy as possible for a woman to accuse any man of rape. In Washington state, the burden of proof is actually on the defendant (read: man). Heck, even when women have been found to be lying they’re treated with kid gloves.
There is no stigma for female rape victims.
When those women are accusing innocent men (whether they accuse anonymous men or target specific men) of rape so that they can use taxpayers’ money to pay for an abortion, it’s everyone’s business. You lose your right to privacy when you’re using other people’s money.
Feel free to browse through the archives here at The False Rape Society and read about the countless reasons for why hundreds and thousands of women have filed false rape claims (many have to do with money and revenge) and the suffering of men at the hands of these criminals.