Increasingly, in an attempt to justify their extreme positions on abortion, the extreme-right have even made rape a partisan issue, pushing the agenda that somehow it's the rape victim's fault, that she wouldn't really get pregnant if she were raped, or that it's somehow a gift from God.
They say that rape is "just another method of conception."
Yeah, not to the raped it's not.
At what point do the rational-right wake up and say this is too much?
Why the war on the raped? It's because of two things. First, so much of their argument about the pro-choice argument is that the woman had a choice already, and she made the choice when she chose to have sex.
But what if she didn't have a choice? Would that mean she is still at fault? Would that mean that she the has a choice to abort her rapists baby?
The other aspect has to do with the misrepresentation of the so-called "abortion pill" or "morning-after pill" which is really a form of contraception. The right reels at the description of this as a contraception because in their understanding it's calling abortion contraception.
Of course the fact that not only do the pills not actually cause abortions but instead prevent fertilization by preventing ovaries from dropping don't matter. It's easier to smear the rape victim as a baby-killer.
The right have such an extreme position that they need to shift the blame for the pregnancy onto the woman. And as they do that they make it a conversation about justifying rape.
Abortion is an extremely complex and nuanced subject, and villainizing the raped to justify the most polarizing position doesn't help move it along.
Neither does the insane assertion that you can't get pregnant if you're raped.
Contrary to Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" assertions, women are twice as likely to get pregnantthrough rape as they are from consensual sex.
Akin, incidentally, had a history of accusing wives of potentially using false accusations of rape in divorce proceedings when opposing marital-rape laws.
So what if someone does "claim" to get pregnant through rape?
They use the "she was asking for it" defense, uttered by far too many conservatives, as though men are nothing more than hormonally driven animals who can't restrain ourselves at the sight of a mini-skirt.
Isn't this a war on men? I see attractive women all the time and manage to resist the compulsion to rape them.
No. Men don't have a right to forcefully sodomize a woman because they think she's dressed sexy. Nor do they have the right to plant their seed in her and force her to bear their child.
And because a woman dresses to attract a a man, it doesn't mean any man can have his way with her. Even if she is a promiscuous "slut" it's still her choice who she is promiscuous with.
So this is the extremist chain of logic. First, you can't get pregnant if you're really raped. Second, if you had sex with a total stranger, or your date, it's because you made them have sex with you by flaunting your wares, so it was really consensual.
So how do you deal with the women who say they were raped when they (according to the extremists) "really weren't."
Some girls just "rape easy" if you listen to Roger Rivard. Of course the explanation her is worse than the original statement. Speaking of his father's advice to him, Rivard explains,
"He also told me one thing, 'If you do (have premarital sex), just remember, consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry,'" Rivard said. "Because all of a sudden a young lady gets pregnant and the parents are madder than a wet hen and she's not going to say, 'Oh, yeah, I was part of the program.' All that she has to say or the parents have to say is it was rape because she's underage. And he just said, 'Remember, Roger, if you go down that road, some girls,' he said, 'they rape so easy.'
So these girls who were just had enough of an emotional bond with someone to sleep with them are now throwing them in jail because their parents are "madder than wet hens?" This is the issue. Suddenly the rape victim is at fault, and the rapist is the victim.
Even entire communities rise up to defend rapists because the play football. In fact they even want to make it worse to prosecute the rapists than to rape.
Raped women are suddenly in the wrong and these poor, testosterone handicapped boys are just the victims of wantonness.
In 31 states a rape-daddy has visitation and even custody rights.
So what do you do about the children of these unfairly accused rapists? You must protect them right?
They want to prosecute rape-victims who abort their rape fetus because it's tampering with evidence while only three percent of rapists go to jail.
The extreme conservatives (as opposed to the rational ones, who really are still there) have gone to the furthest extreme, placing more blame on the raped than the rapist.
The problem is when you start making it about "some women" who would lie about rape to get out of an unwanted pregnancy, you make it about any one woman, and when you do that you make it about all women. It's called an association fallacy.
Guess what. Most of the time a woman accuses her date, or uncle, or neighbor of rape, it's because he raped her, not because she's a vindictive evil woman who wants to send someone she loves to jail.
The extremists would have you believe that impregnated raped women are just a bunch of promiscuous trollops, enticing the poor boys with their wanton wares. Then, when their seductive tactics work and they get impregnated, the poor boy who has to go to prison because of her lies. So the state should at least protect his right to raise the child she spawned through her deception.
When the victim becomes the offender, and the rapist becomes the object of sympathy, we need to re-evaluate our priorities. Rape should not be a partisan issue. Rape is wrong. It is not a left/right issue. It's not a women's issue. It's a human being issue.