Even House GOP Women Could Not Abide GOP's Anti-Choice Legislation

Sahil Kapur at TPM, yesterday:

Facing a rebellion led by women in the party, House Republican leaders abruptly pulled legislation on Wednesday night to ban late-term abortion, unable to reconcile differences over language involving rape.

Instead the GOP decided to hold a vote on a measure seeking to outlaw taxpayer funding for abortion on Thursday, the day of the annual March For Life, a massive anti-abortion rally in Washington.

The original legislation would have banned abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, a move polls say Americans support. The language that caused the chaos required women to report a sexual assault to the authorities in order to seek medical treatment to terminate a pregnancy.

...

(Bolds mine. - SB)

This is getting altogether out of hand. Is this what a majority of Americans support? Isn't sexual assault indignity enough? How much more must the government force on women?

Any woman (particularly any young woman) who votes for a Republican for Congress after this crap is utterly nuts, of the self-hating variety.

'Pro‑Life' Legislation? 'Pro‑Rape' Is More Like It

Robin Marty at TPM discusses changes in Michigan law that makes it almost impossible for a woman to purchase private insurance with her own money that covers abortion... even when the pregnancy results from rape... without buying a separate "rider" explicitly covering the rape exception, a rider which is, effectively, utterly unavailable.

Marty says this:

Supporters called it “The Abortion Insurance Opt-Out Act.” Opponents referred to it as the “rape insurance” bill. ...

Of course, neither name reflects reality. What this law does in fact is authorize rapists to force their victims not only to have sex with them, but also to bear their child. "The Rapist Empowerment Act"? "The Woman As Reproductive Vessel Act"? Pick a name: under any name, this bill, which has passed in eight states including Michigan, point-blank deprives a woman not only of the right to decide whether to reproduce, but also of the right to choose the father of her children. Under such a law, a rapist off the street acquires the same parental rights as a consensual sex partner. And the woman... the woman has no rights at all.

These laws are being passed in states that have petition mechanisms by which citizens can introduce and pass laws, mechanisms which can completely circumvent the fundamental protection of a governor's veto. Government by the consent of the governed mutates into a kind of mob rule available to any large enough group of extremists. If you do not see the difference between laws created by this process and laws created by the more conventional legislative process, you are not thinking clearly. Only the latter laws really reflect the consent of the governed.

No one... no one... has a right to force a woman to bear a child conceived as a result of a sexual act in which her participation was involuntary... an assault, a rape. What's next... a reinstitution of droit du seigneur?