Justin's Political Corner
The head of a pro-life group in Michigan made a controversial comparison on Wednesday, arguing that women in the state should be forced to pay extra for health insurance that covers abortions, even in cases of rape or incest.
“It’s simply, like, nobody plans to have an accident in a car accident, nobody plans to have their homes flooded. You have to buy extra insurance for those,” Barbara Listing, president of Right to Life of Michigan, told reporters on Wednesday when asked about the exceptions.
(Watch WILX-TV’s coverage of Listing’s comments above, clipped by Progress Michigan.)
Listing’s group is leading a ballot committee, No Taxes for Abortion, that is seeking to require health insurance companies to extend coverage of elective abortion procedures, including after incidents of incest or rape, via optional riders, rather than as a part of standard coverage plans.
The campaign was approved by the Michigan Board of State Canvassers on Wednesday. If supporters are able to collect 258,088 valid voter signatures, the proposal would go before the legislature or appear as a ballot initiative in 2014, allowing it to become law without Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) signature. Snyder vetoed a similar proposal passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature last year.
Pro-choice advocates view the effort as a legislative overreach and took umbrage with Listing’s comments.
“This is something where we really have a small number of people in the legislature trying to determine what the private marketplace can offer,” Meghan Groen, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Michigan, told WILX-TV on Wednesday.
After calling Listing’s comparison “appalling,” Jessica Tramontana of Progress Michigan said, “Rape is not anywhere near … a flood or a car accident, because rape is not an accident. Nobody can anticipate being the victim of a crime.”
TW: Sexual abuseElizabeth Smart became a household name after she was kidnapped from her home in Salt Lake City, UT at the age of 14 and held in captivity for nine months. She was forced into a polygamous marriage, tethered to a metal cable, and raped daily until she was rescued from her captors nine months later. Smart was recovered while she and her kidnappers were walking down a suburban street, leading many Americans who followed her story on the national news to wonder:Why didn’t she just run away as soon as she was brought outside?Speaking to an audience at Johns Hopkins about issues of human trafficking and sexual violence, Smart recently offered an answer to that question. She explained that some human trafficking victims don’t run away because they feel worthless after being raped, particularly if they have been raised in conservative cultures that push abstinence-only education and emphasize sexual purity:
Smart said she “felt so dirty and so filthy” after she was raped by her captor, and she understands why someone wouldn’t run “because of that alone.”
Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.
“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you know longer have worth, you know longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”
Now in her mid-twenties, Smart runs a foundation to help educate children about sexual crimes. She now believes that children should grow up learning that “you will always have value and nothing can change that.”
Social psychologists and sexual abuse counselors agree that comprehensive sex education can help prevent sexual crimes. Teaching children about their bodies gives them the tools to describe acts of abuse without feeling as embarrassed or uncomfortable, and it also helps elevate their self-confidence and sense of bodily autonomy. A shame-based approach to genitalia and sexuality, on the other hand, sends kids the message that they can’t discuss or ask questions about any of those issues.
When I went through abstinence only education they did an activity where they put different activity from holding hands to intercourse around the room and asked everyone how far they would go, and how far their parents would be okay with them going. I refused to do the exercise because I thought it was inappropriate and my parents trusted me to be safe and make decisions for myself. Now that I look back on that I can’t imagine how traumatic that could have been to someone who had been sexually abused. We need to keep this in mind when discussing sex education.
Teaching sexual health and education in a shaming way sends terrible messages to our children and students. And those feelings of shame do not go away even if someone has waited to have sex until their wedding night. You can’t undo years or decades of sex-negative education with a marriage license and a ring.
Those feelings of shame do not help the children who have been sexually abused, like the article above points out, either.
When I was in middle school, I was forced to sit on a blanket in front of my health class. The teacher then had a boy in the class sit next to me to represent us having sex (the added level of humiliation and creepiness that added is beside the point). Then she added another student and another and ended the lesson by demonstrating how many people we could spread diseases to if we had sex with more than one person. I remember her specifically pointing out that even if you wait to have sex until you get engaged, your fiance could die and then no one will want to marry you because you’re “damaged goods” and “dirty”. I remember thinking that if that were true, it would still be the case if you had sex after you were married and were widowed.
But, by far, the message I took away from our sex ed lesson in health class was that I was already damaged goods because I was molested. I had “let” that happen to me and that if someone DID fall in love with me, they were a better person because they were willing to be with someone who is “damaged”.
The sex-negative dialogue is hard to undo and work past. I’m still working through it.
Love,
Rabble
ST. LOUIS (KSDK) - Could Todd Akin be the new comeback kid?
The 65-year-old former congressman says don’t rule him out. Nearly six months after losing the Senate race he continues to be attacked from all sides of the political spectrum. But the greatest barbs are thrown by fellow Republicans.
In an exclusive interview with KSDK-TV, the former Missouri congressman said, “I’m not going to try to get even with anybody. If you start to blame everyone else for something that happened you didn’t like, it will destroy you. It will eat you alive.”
After 12 years representing Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District, this infamous quote, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” derailed his campaign and his reputation.
Would he take those six seconds back?
Akin said, “Oh, of course I would! I’ve relived them too many times. But that is not reality.”
In the past, Akin said he regrets those remarks but does he believe they are true? Does he believe in his heart that the female body can stop a pregnancy in the case of a rape?
Akin said, “No, no and I apologized for that. All of us are fallible, we make mistakes, and we say things the wrong way. I really lived that moment many, many times.”
KSDK asked, “Do you regret it?”
“Of course. You think what would it have been like if I hadn’t done that.”
Within a few days, after the “legitimate rape” quote went viral, mainstream Republican Party bosses lobbied hard for him to get of the race. The behind-the-scenes back room pressure was immense according to one Akin insider.he former congressman reflected, “Republican leadership was strong that you have to step down. But there was a very strong grass roots element saying don’t you give in to those party bosses. You stay in there and you keep fighting.”
That divide between the Republican establishment and Akin’s grassroots supporters percolates today on a national level.
Akin explained, “Really what it goes back to is whether the Republican Party is going to be run by the insiders, or run by the grassroots organization. That’s a question still to be determined.”
Republican strategist Karl Rove recently started a new Pac aimed at opposing candidates like Akin.
Rove argued, “Some people think the best we can do is Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock - they’re wrong. We need to do better if we hope to take over the United States Senate. We need to get better conservative candidates and win.”
Critics on the far right say they won’t allow Rove or anyone else on the “inside” to exclude them.Akin does think the Republican Party is at dangerous crossroads.
“I believe the party will either stand on principled positions or its going to be replaced by some other party,” he said.
As for the next chapter, Akin says he’s ready for a comeback, but isn’t sure what form that comeback will take. He’s considering academia, public speaking, and even politics.
We asked, “Would you ever consider putting your hat back in the political ring again?”
“It’s one of those things that depends on the circumstances really. I don’t rule anything out,” he said. “ I consider it a bright new future and I’m interested to see what the possibilities are.”
h/t: KSDK
University of Arizona student tells women who dress like “whores”: “You deserve rape.”
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Dean Saxton, a junior, is notorious for giving inflammatory sermons in the middle of campus.
According to the Daily Wildcat, the Dean of Students received “stacks of written complaints, emails and multiple phone calls regarding Saxton’s sermon about women.” Many students directly confronted Saxton, even trying to pull down his sign. Saxton embraced the attention on his Twitter account, posting a screenshot of an article about the Take Back the Night with the comment, “The whores are out.” In other sermons, Saxton has cursed people who are gay, have pre-marital sex, masturbate or have lustful thoughts. His Twitter account is rife with anti-Muslim sentiment, as well; last month he tweeted, “There will come a time when the sword will be put to the heathen.”
However hateful his speech may be, university attorneys told angry students that Saxton is exercising his right to free speech, and has yet to violate the student code of conduct.
While Saxton’s language is more incendiary than the norm, victim-blaming is very much a mainstream habit. The string of recently publicized rapes of high school and college students have exposed how communities shame victims rather than condemn the perpetrators. Dartmouth College is currently dealing with a similar backlash to anti-sexual violence protesters, who received rape and death threats amid a slew of misogynistic and ignorant comments posted online.
University of Arizona, while hardly condoning Saxton’s extremist display, has struggled with its own rape culture.
Phyllis Schlafly wants America to get “back to basics.” And when it comes to preventing “marriage mayhem,” that means talking about sodomy, which is “a central feature of same-sex marriage.”
Specifically, it means talking about sodomy in the “Anglo American legal tradition,” from its criminalization in English common law as early as 1533 through the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Bowers v Hardwick upholding state sodomy laws. In Schlafly’s April 15 Eagle Forum missive she admiringly quotes from Chief Justice Warren Burger’s concurrence in Bowers, in which he quotes 18th Century commentator William Blackstone to the effect that sodomy is worse than rape.
But all this grand history was upended, Schlafly complains, with the Supreme Court’s “anti-tradition” decision in Lawrence v Texas, which overturned state sodomy laws and upheld the privacy and sexual freedom of consenting adults. And that, she says, has led to the marriage equality cases currently being considered by the Court. Not surprisingly, Schlafly has strong opinions on those cases:
If the pro-homosexual rights forces win, that which is natural to the human race —marriage — is destroyed, and our venerable Constitution and legal tradition are slammed by Humanistic forces wanting to reconstruct American law and society on an anti-Judeo-Christian foundation.
Of course, Schlafly has her own “traditional” views about rape. She has repeatedly denounced the concept of marital rape, saying that “when you get married you have consented to sex. That’s what marriage is all about.”
H/T: Right Wing Watch
The Kansas legislature is advancing an omnibus abortion bill that would, among other things, define life as beginning at conception in the state constitution and place unnecessary restrictions on abortion providers in the state. HB 2253 has already passed the House, and looks poised to gain enough support to sail through the Senate — but only after Republicans rejected several key amendments to soften the measure, including a provision to add exceptions for rape and incest to the state’s existing abortion restrictions. Top Republicans decried those provisions as “little gotcha amendments.”
Senators discussed the bill for more than two hours on Monday. There were several proposed amendments up for debate — a rape and incest exception, a provision ensuring that women won’t be prosecuted for using birth control even if the state officially redefines life with a “personhood” amendment, and a measure to remove HB 2253′s requirement that doctors tell women about a scientifically disputed link between abortion and breast cancer. All of them were rejected.
“These amendments are little gotcha amendments,” Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce (R) said during the floor debate. “I’m getting a little irritated at it.”
State Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook (R) explained she opposed the rape and incest exception because it would apply not just to HB 2253, but also to the existing abortion laws in Kansas. That means it would extend an exception in the cases of rape and incest to current state restrictions banning most abortions after 22 weeks, preventing private health insurance from covering abortion services, and requiring doctors to obtain parental consent before performing an abortion for a minor. “This language would completely undo 10 to 20 years of abortion legislation,” Pilcher-Cook said.
In fact, such an amendment wouldn’t “undo” state-level abortion restrictions at all. Exceptions in the cases of rape, incest, and preserving the life of the woman are still extremely narrow, and don’t change the fact that restrictions on reproductive care are still imposed on the majority of women.
Americans also overwhelmingly support abortion access for victims of rape and incest.
But for Kansas Republicans, it’s too politically contentious to ensure, for instance, that a minor who has been sexually abused by a family member doesn’t have to seek parental consent to terminate a resulting pregnancy. “This is political hijinks,” Pilcher-Cook said. “We should be focused on the bill instead of trying to make political points.”
A front-page message from the University of North Carolina student paper.
UNC is one of many colleges where students are begging officials to reassess rape culture.
(via politicalpartygirl)
NBC is hyping an “interview,” to be aired Monday, with convicted child rapist Jerry Sandusky. But what they don’t tell you is the interview wasn’t conducted by NBC. Rather, NBC is airing excerpts of an interview by John Ziegler, right-wing documentarian and propogandist. Ziegler has been publicly skeptical of the charges against Sandusky, who was convicted of 45 counts of child sexual abuse, writing that at the time the grand jury was convened “the legal case against Jerry Sandusky was actually remarkably weak.”
Ziegler insists he is “not supportive” of Sandusky and does acknowledge he engaged in “criminal behavior.”
The interview being aired by NBC as news content is part of a larger documentary called “The Framing of Joe Paterno.” On his website, Ziegler lambasts the Freeh Report of the Penn State scandal, which concluded Joe Paterno “failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade.” Ziegler attacks the testimony of assistant coach Mike McQueary who said he observed Sandusky sexually assaulting a child in the shower. Ziegler says “the evidence indicates that McQueary did not witness an assault, but rather a botched ‘grooming’”
Previously Ziegler has produced films such as “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected” and “Blocking The Path to 9/11,” a film defending an error riddled mini-series seeking to pin blame on Bill Clinton for the 9/11 attacks.
Ziegler is also defending Reno Saccoccia, the Steubenville football coach who “knew about the rape of a 16-year-old girl by two of his players, but didn’t say a word about it to school administrators or local law enforcement.” On his website, Ziegler asserts Saccoccia is “not culpable” and reveals he has been “advising him for the past several months on how to handle the media firestorm.”
Scott Paterno publicly opposes Ziegler’s efforts to defend his late father.
h/t: Think Progress
Fox News contributor ‘unnerved’ by Ashley Judd’s ‘obsession’ with rape (via Raw Story )
Fox News contributor and comedian Steven Crowder mocked liberal actress Ashley Judd on Saturday during a conservative gathering, claiming she was strangely fixated on rape. “By the way, in breaking news, Ashley Judd just tweeted that buying Apple products, again, is akin to rape,” he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
- American media on the India gang rape: Omg those barbarians are out of control! Look at us, we're so ahead of the times!
- American media on the Steubenville rape: Omg look at the lives we're ruining by convicting these 16 year old rapists!
The best description I can think of for CNN’s coverage of the verdict in the Steubenville rape trial: freakishly distorted and reprehensible.
The thing is, I don’t believe these reporters actually are sympathizing with the rapists over their victim; I think it’s more cynical and base than that. Dramatic displays of emotion are what CNN is after, because they’re good for CNN’s bottom line. In their marketing calculations, emotional outbursts draw viewers and sell advertisements. They seek out these kinds of scenes — and in this case, since the victim’s identity is kept secret, the only emotional outbursts they could show were the rapists’. So they exploited those moments to the best of their ability.
And in the process, caused great harm to their reputation. CNN continued with this bullshit even after a storm erupted on social media, condemning their coverage. The sheer contempt they showed for their audience, and for the victim of this terrible crime, was breathtaking.
And one more point: the sentences these two kids got were absurdly, offensively light in view of their crime.
Judge Thomas Lipps ruled Sunday in juvenile court that Steubenville High School students Trent Mays and Ma’Lik Richmond are guilty of attacking the girl after an alcohol-fueled party last August.
The 17-year-old Mays and 16-year-old Richmond were charged with digitally penetrating the West Virginia girl, first in a car and then in a house. They could be held in a juvenile jail until they turn 21.
Mays and Richmond apologized after Lipps found them delinquent of all charges against them.
“I’d like to apologize to her family, [the] community. No pics should have been sent. That’s all sir,” said Mays.
“I’d like to apologize to you people. I had no intentions to do anything, I’m sorry to put you through this — I’m sorry, I didnt… ” said Richmond as he broke down crying.
Afterwards, the mother of the victim’s mother, who is not being named, gave a statement to the media, saying:
“It did not matter what school you went to, what city you lived in, or what sport you’ve played. Human compassion is not taught by a teacher coach or parent. It is a God-given gift instilled in all of this. You displayed not only a lack of this compassion but a lack of any moral code. Your decisions that night affected countless lives including those most dear to you. You were your own accuser through social media you chose to publish your criminal conduct on. This does not define who my daughter is. She will persevere, grow, and move on.
“I have pity for you both. I hope you fear the Lord, repent for your actions and pray hard for his forgiveness,” she concluded.
Trenton Mays and Ma’lik Richmond both offered apologies to the rape victim and her parents, but her parents weren’t having any of it.
The victim’s mother sums up perfectly how everyone feels about this situation.
(via thepoliticalfreakshow) Trent Mays and Ma’Lik Richmond
Add to #10 video game losses (just had to mention that; I’ve seen/heard way too many gamers compare their losses in online multiplayer to rape)
(via callingoutbigotry)
