Reprinted from Empire Burlesque
Following up from the previous post, we see the woman-bashing beat goes on. A Missouri pol has introduced a bill that would require women to get the written approval of a man in order to obtain an abortion; that is, the signature of the one what knocked her up. Rick Brattin, statesman from Kansas City, says the only exception to his man-mandating abortion restriction is in the case of "legitimate rape."
But as Mother Jones reports, Brattin is quick to assure us that he doesn't mean "legitimate rape" in the same way that his fellow Missouri statesman Todd Akin employed the term, during his disastrous run for the Senate. As you recall, Akin, delving deep into occult science, informed the world that a woman who really didn't want to experience the forcible insertion of hot salami could not get pregnant; ergo, any woman who claimed to have been impregnated by a rapist was, to put it in the most Christian terms possible, a lying slut of a prostitute who had it coming and wanted it anyway.
Brattin is much more enlightened. What he means by "legitimate rape" is that a woman reports the assault to the police, and "takes steps to prove it." Whether that means she must prove she was raped or that she must prove she at least tried to prove she was raped remains unclear. But rigor of jurisprudence is rarely a concern of our dedicated embryonists. The main thing is that women must seek the written approval of a man if they want to claim their constitutional right to an abortion. But if the babydaddy -- whoever he may be, as long as no lying slut can "prove" he raped her -- then the fetus-vehicle is out of luck.
"When asked if he would support an exception for women whose partners are abusive, Brattin says, 'I haven't really thought about that aspect of it.' But he adds, 'What does that have to do with the child's life? Just because it was an abusive relationship, does that mean the child should die?' Brattin notes that women in these situations can obtain protective custody once the child is born."
So if your guy beats you up then knocks you up, you must have his baby anyway. And if he's still ornery afterward, you can always get one of those protection thingies that have worked so well for the thousands of women who've been murdered by men under restraining orders.
Yes, it's just another day in the most advanced democracy the world has ever known -- or even imagined. I expect we'll be seeing Brattin in Congress soon enough -- or maybe even the White House, once the serpentine-entwined Bush and Clinton clans give their game of musical chairs a rest.
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