“Please Just Shut Up”: Phil Gingrey’s Valuable Expert Validation That Many Rape Victims Are Actually Liars
From the “They Just Can’t Help Themselves” file, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s intrepid Jim Galloway informs us that U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA), an OB-GYN, went out of his way in a local speaking appearance to express sympathy for the “legitimate rape” comments of his former colleague Todd Akin:
And in Missouri, Todd Akin … was asked by a local news source about rape and he said, “Look, in a legitimate rape situation” — and what he meant by legitimate rape was just look, someone can say I was raped: a scared-to-death 15-year-old that becomes impregnated by her boyfriend and then has to tell her parents, that’s pretty tough and might on some occasion say, “Hey, I was raped.” That’s what he meant when he said legitimate rape versus non-legitimate rape. I don’t find anything so horrible about that. But then he went on and said that in a situation of rape, of a legitimate rape, a woman’s body has a way of shutting down so the pregnancy would not occur. He’s partly right on that….
And I’ve delivered lots of babies, and I know about these things. It is true. We tell infertile couples all the time that are having trouble conceiving because of the woman not ovulating, “Just relax. Drink a glass of wine. And don’t be so tense and uptight because all that adrenaline can cause you not to ovulate.” So he was partially right wasn’t he? But the fact that a woman may have already ovulated 12 hours before she is raped, you’re not going to prevent a pregnancy there by a woman’s body shutting anything down because the horse has already left the barn, so to speak. And yet the media took that and tore it apart.
Well, thanks, Phil, for that valuable expert validation of the perspective that many rape victims are actually liars and thus we shouldn’t be reluctant to force them to carry pregnancies they claim are the product of rape to term.
Now please just shut up.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 11, 2013
“A Shameful Political System”: When Did Violence Against Women Become A Partisan Issue?
While the world rang in a new year and the U.S. teetered on the edge of a fiscal cliff, House Republicans boldly stood in the way of legislation that would have gone toward helping thousands of victims in need.
Not only did the GOP leadership flub the $60 billion relief effort that was intended for Hurricane Sandy victims (although their blocking that bill was quite incredulous in itself), they also managed to obstruct the Violence Against Women Act–a bill first introduced in 1994 that provides funds to prevent, investigate and prosecute violent crimes against women.
VAWA is typically thought to be one of those “easy” legislative measures. Every few years, a vote comes up to reauthorize the bill and every few years it passes with little, if any, opposition.
Why wouldn’t it? The key aspects of the bill are intended to serve and protect victims of rape and domestic abuse–hardly a partisan issue, right?
In addition to its original purpose, the bill was recently revised to include protections for gay and lesbian victims of domestic abuse and crimes against American Indians and immigrant women. Three groups that are especially vulnerable and all too often overlooked.
So when the vote came up to reauthorize the bill, which included the new aforementioned measures, it came as a surprise to many that the Republican-led House refused to sign off on it. Especially after the Senate already approved the bill in a 68 to 31 vote.
Instead, the House introduced and passed their own watered-down version, eliciting a veto threat from the White House.
“The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 4970, a bill that would undermine the core principles of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA),” the White House wrote in a press release. “H.R. 4970 rolls back existing law and removes long-standing protections for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault — crimes that predominately affect women.
“If the President is presented with H.R. 4970, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”
Thursday, the 113th Congress was sworn into office. There is hope that the fresh new faces of this Congress–many of them women and several LGBT–will work toward getting VAWA back up and running.
The fact, however, that the 112th Congress stood idly by and allowed the measure to expire in the first place, that speaks volumes for the current state of our political system.
By: Lana Schupbach, MSNBC, January 3, 2013
“Reproductive Autonomy Is A Privilege”: Why The Culture War Is Crushing Mitt Romney
Watching the GOP lately, I am reminded of an ominous prediction Gerald Ford made almost nine years before he passed away. The former Republican president, who was unabashedly pro-abortion rights, said that if the party kept going down the ultra-conservative line on issues like abortion, it would not be able to elect another Republican president.
“The American people are basically middle-of-the-road moderates,” he told The New York Times.
Here in 2012, Ford’s words are coming back to haunt Mitt Romney. Although this is supposed to be a “jobs” election, the GOP has a side agenda that has nothing to do with the economy: Transforming modern-day American society into the 1950’s TV show Mad Men.
People-pleasing Romney already has to convince American voters that while he’s not worried about the 47 percent, his tax-cuts-for-the-rich economic plan will somehow improve all of America. But the GOP is also asking Romney to win a culture war, and they’ve armed poor Mitt with a water gun.
Take abortion, for example. Once upon a time, Romney was a politically shrewd, pro-abortion-rights Republican who strongly endorsed upholding Roe v. Wade. But to become the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, Romney has had to exert Olympian effort to prove how much he loves fertilized eggs — and the anti-abortion-rights shouting on the Right hasn’t made his task any easier.
We have Paul Ryan (I’ll give fertilized eggs the legal and constitutional privileges of personhood!), Rick Santorum (I’ll throw abortion doctors in jail!) and Todd Akin (I am granting women magical powers to make sure their eggs are only fertilized during consensual sex!). And of course, there is the GOP platform, which wants to outlaw abortion even in cases of rape and incest. Is it any wonder Romney is confused?
Aside from the GOP’s apparent lack of cohesion on the issue, the party’s crackdown on contraception also has no place in a jobs election. But to keep up with the social conservatives in his party, Romney loudly opposes requiring employers to cover contraception, and advocates for stripping federal and some state funds from Planned Parenthood.
In other words, Romney is trying to convince American women that reproductive autonomy is a privilege, not a right.
Is this a good way to get American women — 99 percent of whom use contraception during their reproductive years — fired up about the Romney-Ryan health care plan? Given that a recent CNN poll found that Obama is leading among women voters by 12 percentage points, the answer appears to be no.
Gay marriage is the other issue where the GOP is going above and beyond to support a social agenda that hurts Romney’s electability. A Gallup poll this year found that at least half of Americans support legalizing same-sex marriage — a position that President Obama has also taken.
So now, Romney is standing with the fast-depleting 48 percent on the other side of the fence. And sure, some of those Americans undoubtedly support the GOP’s idea that gay marriage shouldn’t be legal, but same-sex couples should get “respect and dignity.” But they aren’t the ones Romney is standing with. Instead he supports anti-gay-rights activists like Sharon Kass, who sends reporters (like me) lengthy emails with provocative statements like: “Being black or female is morally neutral. Having the homosexual disorder is not… while some heterosexual parents have psychological disorders of some type, all homosexual parents have a psychological disorder.”
It’s hard to expect more from Romney than for him to affirm that gay marriage should be left up to the states, and then dropping it. But Romney is actually making it a central campaign issue, tacitly supporting people like Kass and alienating half of America by being on the wrong side of history.
If Romney were running solely on the jobs platform, as he likes to claim he is, we would be in a different election: A recent Rasmussen poll found that 54 percent of Americans trust Romney more on the economy — and that poll was conducted almost a week after Mother Jones published the 47 percent video. And in Wednesday night’s debate, Romney made Obama’s grasp on economic issues look tenuous, at best (even though Romney was also making up facts.)
But at the end of the day, it’s unlikely America will put up with the fringe social values the GOP has loaded on its presidential candidate’s back. And whether or not Romney personally supports these deeply conservative positions is almost beside the point — his knees are shaking and his legs are crumpling to the floor. Just as Ford predicted they would.
By: Dana Liebelson, The Week, October 5, 2012
“Re-defining Presidential Politics”: Voting Women Is Key For Complete Gender Equality
The fight for women’s equality will stand still unless women vote. This election year is especially important as Congress will vote on issues key to women’s economic security and health. Today, on Women’s Equality Day, we all can take a step toward complete gender equality by encouraging our young women to vote on Nov. 6.
Since the height of the women’s rights movement, the percentage of eligible women who vote in presidential elections has declined. According to the Center for American Women and Politics, while 72% of eligible women voted in the 1964 presidential election, only 60% voted in 2008. This apparent complacency among young women with a right that our forebears fought so desperately to earn must be addressed.
Universities and colleges across the country are launching voter initiatives that speak to the young community. TurboVote is an online registration tool that sends email and text message reminders to students with the goal of registering record numbers of students in this presidential election year, a time seeing significantly lower youth enthusiasm than four years ago.
College campuses are a bright spot in the work toward women’s equality. Today, women have surpassed men in pursuit of higher education, graduating in greater numbers and with more degrees than their male counterparts. Another great higher education initiative is Vision 2020, a national campaign launched at Drexel University with the goal of achieving gender equality by 2020, the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
When I was a young college instructor, such a goal would have been unimaginable. My department chair told me I would never be granted tenure. Apparently, I had embarrassed my male colleagues by publishing more papers than they had written collectively.
As a president of a Big Ten university and a former U.S. secretary of health and human services, I cannot help but feel proud looking back at overcoming such blatant discrimination. But I also cannot help feeling concerned about the many places in the country still dominated by males – whether it be corporate boardrooms, chambers of commerce or even our nation’s capital. I am proud of the strides we have made as a country, but we have a ways to go.
Women’s equality is a problem not just for women but for all Americans. The best policies are made when there is genuine diversity of thought involved in the process, which includes the distinct voice of women.
Today, as our country celebrates the legacy of those who fought hard for justice, opportunity and prosperity, let us recommit ourselves to the goal of gender equality in our country. And by voting this November, the nation will have no choice but to hear us. Ninety-two years after the passage of the 19th Amendment, we may finally see women redefine presidential politics.
By: Donna Shalala, President, University of Miami, JSOnline, August 24, 2012
“Akin Unmasks The Pro-Life Movement”: “Slutty Women Will Do Anything To Avoid Facing The Consequences Of Their Actions”
The myth that women can’t get pregnant from rape stems from basic assumptions anti-choicers make about women.
If you’re going to slander the estimated 32,000 women a year who become pregnant after being raped, it’s probably not wise to do it on a Sunday, when it will lead the next week’s news coverage. Republican nominee for Missouri Senate Todd Akin chose not to follow this bit of wisdom, instead declaring in a television interview yesterday that women can’t get pregnant from rape.
“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
For people who don’t follow the anti-choice movement closely, this statement might be a stunner for the simple reason that it makes no biological sense; a rapist’s sperm swims as well as a non-rapist’s. But for those of us who do, it’s no surprise. The myth that “real” rapes don’t result in pregnancy is widespread among anti-choicers—and not just the fringe (Akin, for instance, used to be on the board of Missouri Right to Life). You can see a variation of this myth at the anti-choice website Abortion Facts:
To get pregnant and stay pregnant, a woman’s body must produce a very sophisticated mix of hormones. Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain which is easily influenced by emotions. There’s no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy.
Akin’s comment should serve as a reminder that despite its sentimentality surrounding the fetus, the anti-choice movement is motivated by misogyny and ignorance about human sexuality. In this case, what underlies the rape-doesn’t-get-you-pregnant myth is the notion that sex is shameful and that slutty women will do anything—even send an innocent man to jail to kill a baby—in order to avoid facing the consequences of their actions.
You can see this logic play out broadly in discussions about rape as well as abortion. The most common defense in rape cases is that the victim consented to sex and only “cried rape” in order to seem less promiscuous. The claim, of course, is nonsensical. Why would a woman trying to put a one-night stand behind her invite grilling by detectives and defense attorneys? Why would someone so concerned about maintaining the illusion of purity subject her sex life to examination by a crowd of jurors? That the myth persists nonetheless goes a long way to explaining why we have such low rape conviction rates. When it comes to abortion, anti-choice activists accuse women going into abortion clinics of taking the easy way out, as if raising an unwanted child is the rightful price of having sex.
While most everyone can see the absurdity of Akin’s comments, fewer pick up on the deeper problem of “rape exceptions” to abortion bans. When journalists and politicians refer to banning abortions except in the case of rape, they are assuming that there’s a way to construct abortion policy that allows women who “deserve” abortions to get them while preventing those dirty girls who consented to sex from having them. This is simply not the case.
We know from research that even with a rape exception, most rape victims who seek an abortion will be denied. Take Medicaid, for instance, which will not cover an abortion unless the patient is a rape victim. Research by Ibis Reproductive Health, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving women’s access to reproductive services, has shown that only 37 percent of women who qualified for rape exceptions got the necessary funding for their abortions. Between the onerous paperwork demands to demonstrate that one is, to use Akin’s term, a “legitimate” rape victim and bureaucrats who are understandably anxious about making exceptions even when they’re called for, doctors and patients simply found it impossible to get the funding they need.
In this light, what’s surprising is not that an anti-choice politician accused pregnant rape victims of lying to cover their shame, but that anti-choice politicians manage to avoid saying similar things with regularity. Unfortunately, we live in a political climate where statements like Akin’s will likely be dismissed as a gaffe instead of serving as an opportunity to discuss what motivates such myths. Such is the nature of our shallow, scandal-driven media: It points our heads in the direction of deeper truths, but moves to the next story before we can take the time to see them.
By: Amanda Marcotte, The American Prospect, August 20, 2012
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