The Party of Whoopi Goldberg: The GOP & Rape Rape

Remember a couple of years ago when Whoopi Goldberg commented that what Roman Polanski did in the seventies wasn't "rape rape"? The outrage was almost universal, but nowhere was it so vehement than it was among "conservative" bloggers, who can be uncommonly stupid when they put their minds to it. it never ceases to amaze me that Republicans are more obsessed with narcissistic, degenerate Hollywood assholes than the narcissistic, degenerate Hollywood assholes themselves are.

As for me, I've always hated Whoopi Goldberg because she's painfully unfunny and sanctimonious, yet not as hot as Sarah Palin, who says equally stupid things more frequently than does the star of Sister Act 2.

Hopefully, the same Republican commentators have some of their rape-rape outrage reserves at the ready because it appears that Whoopi's point of view has found a powerful new ally in ... the GOP.

Rape is only really rape if it involves force. So says the new House Republican majority as it now moves to change abortion law.

For years, federal laws restricting the use of government funds to pay for abortions have included exemptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. (Another exemption covers pregnancies that could endanger the life of the woman.) But the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” a bill with 173 mostly Republican co-sponsors that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has dubbed a top priority in the new Congress, contains a provision that would rewrite the rules to limit drastically the definition of rape and incest in these cases.

With this legislation, which was introduced last week by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to “forcible rape.” This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible. For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion. (Smith’s spokesman did not respond to a call and an email requesting comment.)

Wow. This is classic, even for Republicans. To say that they have a double-standard on abortion would be charitable. They actually have a triple-standard on this issue, as I touched on last week in relation to gay marriage.

You see, the GOP abhors Roe v. Wade because they feel that abortion should be dealt with by the states (although, presumably not the way that Ronald Reagan did when he signed the most liberal abortion law in America as governor of California). The only problem is that they really don't feel that way, as evidenced by their 31 years of support for a "human life" amendment to the Constitution, which would explicitly prohibit the states from making any decision at all.

And for a party that supposed to support a small federal government, local control and freedom of the individual, you'd be surprised by the steps that they've taken where babies are concerned.
The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 - more commonly know as the Laci Peterson law - made killing a pregnant woman a federal crime. Killing regular women is something Congress has been silent about, unless that woman is either a federal employee conducting her duties, is iced with a WMD, or killed in the course of a presumed interstate crime, like bank robbery or kidnapping. The Peterson Act was passed because a grand total of two states didn't have similar laws on the books.

I haven't done a detailed study of this, but I feel pretty safe in saying that abortion is the only medical procedure that has federal criminal statutes governing it, virtually all of which were introduced by Republicans. If you want to get your four-year-old granddaughter a clit ring, however, the feds are fine with that.

There's basically one "pro-life" position that I respect as intellectually consistent, regardless of how much I might personally disagree with it. That is that human life is sacred and abortion is always wrong, without exception. That's a pro-life position.

Most folks don't feel that way. They want to put any number of qualifiers on their support of life, usually by making exceptions for "rape, incest and the life of the mother." Well, that isn't a pro-life position because it demonstrably makes some lives less valuable than others. If you believe that a fetus is a human life with a soul, it hardly stands to reason that it would understand or approve of its own murder because of the circumstances of its conception. These people say that abortion is murder, but murder is okay sometimes. That undercuts the moral foundation of their argument just a little bit.

Republicans and their Tea Party puppets understand this. If nothing else, they're as good at parsing the meaning of words as Bill Clinton was. And that's why they're redefining rape.

You see, unless a woman gets the shit kicked out of her, federal law will no longer define her as being a victim of rape or incest. Just think of all the comfortable conversations this is going to lead to!

Girl: Hi, I was raped by my uncle and I think I need an abortion.

Soulless Bureaucrat: Are you sure that you were raped?

Girl: Yes. How could you ask that?

Soulless Bureaucrat: Well, I don't see a black eye or anything.

Girl: I was too afraid to fight back. He said that he'd hurt me ...

Soulless Bureaucrat: Then it wasn't rape under the revised federal statute. John Boehner says you were asking for it. Oddly, that's the only thing thing he hasn't cried about this week. You can try calling him, but he's almost certainly out having a smoke. Until then, go elsewhere to murder your baby, you hussy!*

Now, it seems to me that the Republicans who endlessly pissed and whined and fucking moaned about Whoopi Goldberg's comments about Roman Polanski could use some retroactive clarifying.

Was his victim raped only because she wasn't knocked up? Because the underlying premise of the proposed change in the law would suggest that she wouldn't have been raped unless he slammed her face into the edge of Jack Nicholson's jacuzzi. Was it really "rape rape"?

I only bring this up because I suspect that no fuckhead Republican blogger would address it otherwise.

*Editor's Note: I suspect that this post will be cited by a certain Liberal Part hack as an instance of my making "jokes about sexual assault on (my) web site" but this is only because said hack is a professional scumbag, a humourless asshole and was born to miss the fucking point.

He also fancies himself an observant Catholic that champions abortion even more than I do, which also makes him a monumental hypocrite. Not for nothing, but if you choose to be a part of the Church, they aren't wrong, you are! Their house, their fucking rules, son. That's why I haven't been a Catholic since I was 12 years old. Some people grow the fuck up.