During the debate on Missouri’s Handmaidian, anti-woman abortion ban bill, GOP State Senator Barry Hovis explained the lack of any exception for rape or incest:
Republican Rep. Barry Hovis said in the chamber Friday that most of the sexual assaults he handled before retiring from law enforcement weren't strangers "jumping out of the bushes."
"That was one, two times out of 100," he said. "Most of them were date rapes or consensual rapes, which were all terrible."
Abortion-rights supporters who attended the debate immediately hissed in response.
The story appears in both the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, though I’m too lazy to sign-up for the on-line addition of the Post.
Hovis later “clarified” his statement:
Hovis, a lawmaker elected in November from Missouri's southeastern Bootheel region, later told The Associated Press that he misspoke. He implied that he had meant to say "date rapes or consensual or rape."
"It's my apology if I didn't annunciate the word 'or,'" Hovis said.
When pressed on whether that explanation made sense in the context of the rest of his sentence, he said that he believes there is no such thing as "consensual rape."
Do I need to point out the irony that Hovis is from Missouri’s Bootheel region? I think not.
Anyway, the idiocy of Hovis’ coments is not terribly troublesome. I have come to expect that type of verbal excrement of the GOP and if I got insensed every time a Republican said something stupid, hateful or hateful I’d be in the hospital for high blood pressure.
What bothers me is the reporting. There is no sense in discussing “consensual rape” because such a thing cannot, literally, exist, if you believe that words have definitions. However, I want Hovis, and people of his ilk, to explain why rape that occurs between people who know each other is any different than rape committed by a stranger.
Every one of these legislators should be bombarded with the same set of questions wherever they go:
Can a husband rape his wife?
Can a boyfriend rape his girlfriend?
Can a father rape his daughter?
Should insurance cover the morning after pill?
Should insurance cover Viagra?
Will the state help provide for their legislative offspring?
And, although I doubt the ultimate Constitutionality of such an amendment (which has never stopped them before), will they also make it illegal for a Missouri citizen to seek an abortion in another state? For that is the kicker. The Holier-than-Thou anti-choice people that can aford it, will quietly send their daughters to the Free States to have their little problem taken care of.