Rep. Wasserman Schultz: Bill Redefining Rape To Prevent Abortions Is ?A Violent Act Against Women?
House Republicans wasted no time in declaring their legislative priorities for the 112th Congress. The first: repeal health care for millions of Americans. The second: redefine rape. A day after repealing health care, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act, a bill that would not only permanently prohibit some federally funded health-care programs from covering abortions, but would change the language exempting rape and incest from rape to “forcible rape.”
By narrowing the Hyde Amendment language, Republicans would exclude the following situations from coverage: women who say no but do not physically fight off the perpetrator, women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped, and minors impregnated by adults. As the National Women’s Law Center’s Steph Sterling puts it, this new standard of force “takes us back to a time where just saying no was not enough.”
And yet, 172 Republicans — including sixteen women — and lone Democrat Rep. Daniel Lipinski (IL), chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus — readily support the new standard. Appalled at such a cavalier attack on women’s rights, one House member is not taking the change lightly. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) “fiercely denounced” her conservative colleagues for this “absolutely outrageous” dilution of victims’ rights. Enraged at the suggestion that “there is some kind of rape that would be okay,” Wasserman Schultz told The Raw Story that she considers the bill itself to be “a violent act against women”:
“It is absolutely outrageous,” Wasserman Schultz said in an exclusive interview late Monday afternoon. “I consider the proposal of this bill a violent act against women.”[…]
“It really is — to suggest that there is some kind of rape that would be okay to force a woman to carry the resulting pregnancy to term, and abandon the principle that has been long held, an exception that has been settled for 30 years, is to me a violent act against women in and of itself,” Wasserman Schultz said.
“Rape is when a woman is forced to have sex against her will, and that is whether she is conscious, unconscious, mentally stable, not mentally stable,” the four-term congresswoman added.[…]
Wasserman Schultz dismissed the effort as a nonstarter in the Democratic-led Senate and a guaranteed veto by President Barack Obama, but conceded that it may pass the GOP-controlled House. She called it “yet another example” of how the “extreme right-wing fringe of Republican Party has complete control over their agenda.”
Because the bill makes the Hyde Amendment (which currently requires renewal every year) permanent, supporters are ignoring the rape language change and say it “largely codifies what has already been in practice” since 1976. As TPM notes, the pro-life community, “which is usually more than willing to sound off on abortion and what needs to be done to stop it,” has been “radio silent.” Smith, the bill sponsor, who lauds the bill’s “comprehensive approach” in restricting victim’s rights, refused to address the issue of forcible rape.
While this is not the first time anti-abortion lawmakers have attempted to pass the forcible rape language, there is probably a good reason the pro-life network has stayed mum. An overwhelming number of Americans believe abortion should be a choice when a woman is the victim of rape or incest. In a poll taken 30 years after the Roe v. Wade decision, 81 percent of Americans believed abortion should be legal in cases of rape or incest. The visceral and comprehensive violence such attacks inflict on victims should be as well understood among lawmakers as it is among the public. But the GOP insists that, despite what common sense, compassion, and gender equity demand, just saying no is no longer enough.
Chamber Of Commerce Continues Decades-Long Assault Against Clean Economy
At a Washington DC press conference, U.S. Chamber of Commerce officials blasted President Obama’s call for a clean energy future. Christopher Guith, vice president for policy at the Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, said a national clean-energy standard is “ridiculously premature,” even though 25 states have renewable and alternative energy standards, the first established in 1983. The Institute’s president, former Bush official Karen Harbert, said that the United States should instead allow “increased access to land for oil and gas drilling both onshore and offshore,” drilling a deeper hole with fossil fuel dependence.
This opposition to clean-energy job creation on behalf of big oil is nothing new for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Throughout the 2000s, the chamber led the opposition to action on climate change, promoting global warming denial. Its history of defending pollution at the expense of the health of the American public and American jobs, however, goes deeper:
1999: Chamber of Commerce opposes reinstating Superfund taxes on toxic polluters. In a letter earlier this month to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, two large pro-business groups urged Congress not to reinstate the taxes. “Raising taxes on industry runs directly counter to congressional efforts to reduce taxes,” said the top officials at the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. [National Journal, 10/19/99]
1997: Chamber of Commerce fights stronger smog and soot standards. The Chamber questioned the scientific studies used by the EPA to justify the tougher health standards, arguing that more research should be done before businesses are burden with standards that will require new and expensive additional pollution controls. [AP, 5/28/97]
1993: Chamber of Commerce opposes trade sanctions in NAFTA for failure to enforce environmental laws. “Authority to impose sanctions against private interests in any of the three countries should remain with the individual governments, and not be ceded to some supranational body not accountable to voters,” said Willard Workman, vice president, international, of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. [Journal of Commerce, 4/13/93]
1992: Chamber of Commerce opposes binding global warming treaty. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned that it would block any attempts to include binding commitments to reduce gases related to global warming. [Greenwire, 9/16/92]
1990: Chamber of Commerce attacks Clean Air Act revision. The Chamber said that the proposed legislation would ”vastly increase the cost and complexity” of environmental regulations – perhaps costing U.S. industry $20 billion more a year. The Chamber of Commerce particularly objected to provisions of the Clean Air bill that would tighten pollution controls related to motor vehicles, smog, coal and toxic chemicals. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 8/23/90]
1988: Chamber of Commerce criticizes call for action on global warming as a “scare statement.” The Chamber’s Harvey Alter called the ”Blueprint for the Environment”’ prepared by 30 environmental groups full of ‘broad scare statements,” including: that ”…global warming threatens to devastate the world, but no timeframe is mentioned. Depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer will damage agriculture and marine life and cause an epidemic of skin cancer, but no mention of the remedial actions now in place is made.” [Inside Energy, 12/19/88]
1984: Chamber of Commerce opposes hazardous waste dumping ban. Harvey Alter, manager of the natural resources office at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, argued a ban on the dumping of wastes containing dioxin, polychlorinated biphenyls, heavy metals, halogenated organic compounds and cyanides would only “promote illegal dumping”. [Chemical Week, 8/8/84]
1982: Chamber of Commerce petitions to weaken Clean Air Act, claiming it kills jobs. “Obviously, the Clean Air Act needs to be changed,” said Dr. Harvey Alter, manager of the chamber’s resources and environmental quality department. “The construction ban has no place in this country. It is an inherently unfair punishment of communities and does not clean the air.” [Associated Press, 7/15/82]
1981: Chamber of Commerce compiles secret hit list of federal employees for Reagan. In 1981, the Chamber compiled a ”hit list” of 18 government employees it urged the Reagan White House to dump from their jobs, including 10 EPA officials; Anthony Roisman, former chief of the Justice Department’s hazardous waste section; a half dozen Labor Department employes, and Maxine Savitz, deputy assistant energy secretary. [UPI, 9/6/84]
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
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