Just a Thought: Indiana Congressman Thinks Women Lie About Rape

Up in Indiana, when the Legislature isn't voting to ban the already banned gay marriage, the Indiana House is also considering what would be one of the nation's most restrictive anti-abortion laws. The new bill will ban all private insurance coverage--I'll say it again, private insurance coverage--from paying for an abortion, and it would require abortion providers to tell women that the procedure carries a risk of breast cancer--although the American Cancer Society says there is no evidence of a link between the two--and that a fetus can feel pain.

Women will also be told that there are couples "willing and waiting" to adopt children and that those couples might pay for prenatal care and childbirth. And abortions would be illegal after 20 weeks, except to preserve the life of the woman.

But, before the law was passed, it's sponsor, GOP asshat Representative Eric Turner, objected to what he called a proposed "loophole" in the law, whereby in the cases of rape and incest, the victims of those crimes could proceed with terminating their pregnancy. In fact, Turner went so far as to say that women will fake having been raped in order to get free abortions:

"I just want you to think about this, in my view, giant loophole that could be created where someone who could--now I want to be careful, I don't want to disparage in any way someone who has gone through the experience of a rape or incest--but someone who is desirous of an abortion could simply say that they've been raped or there's incest."

Yes, Eric Turner thinks all women are so cavalier about abortion that they will blatantly lie about being raped, or being the victim of incest, in order to get an abortion.

This sent one of his colleagues, Congresswoman Linda Lawson--who was a sex crimes investigator for the Indiana police for six years--into a rage: "Women don’t make this up! My Goodness! This is the state of Indiana!"

Now, women in Indiana do not have the right to decide what to do with their own bodies. The Legislature has decided that Indiana women will have to pay high out-of-pocket costs for abortions, even if the procedure is necessary to save their life or the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. 

How have we come to the point where a politician can call half the people, half the voters, in his state, liars? How is it that we've come to the point where women, all women, will stand by and let men dictate what they can and cannot do in terms of their own bodies?

Women are not so cavalier about abortion that they simply schedule it as part of their day. They don't squeeze it in between shoe shopping and Cosmos with the girls. I have known women who've chosen abortion, for their own personal reasons, and not one of them came to the decision lightly, or without careful thought. And not one of them ever felt the need to lie about their reasons for choosing to end a pregnancy. And not one of them, after the procedure, went out to celebrate.

How is it that politicians don't see this? Mainly because it's male politicians, who seek to control their women, all their women, of their state.

Once again, I'll say it: if the situation were reversed, and men were the ones who got pregnant, we wouldn't be having this discussion, because men would never let anyone, even a wingnut like Eric Turner, tell them what they can do with their own bodies.