From the desk of Donviejo
FORWARD PROGRESSIVES
You would think, in 2016, that the topic of rape and the horrors that accompany it would be fairly well understood. If there’s a group of people who deserve, without question, to be able to do whatever they want without input or judgement from anyone – it’s someone who’s been the victim of a violent sexual assault.
However, for some bizarre reason, some Republicans seem to believe that rape victims who were impregnated by their assailant somehow should either lose control of their bodies, thus being forced by the government to give birth to the child or that they should look on the “bright side” with the “gift that God” bestowed upon them.
Yes, because nothing says “God loves you” quite like being brutally and violently sexually assaulted, resulting in that woman becoming pregnant by the very man who raped her.
Such as Missouri State Rep. Tila Hubrecht, who recently said that if a woman becomes pregnant following a sexual assault that she should look at that as a “silver lining” to the tragedy.
“It is not up to us to say ‘no just because there was a rape, they cannot exist,’” Hubrecht said. “Sometimes bad things happen, horrible things, but sometimes God can give us a silver lining through the birth of a child.”
These comments were made concerning legislation that could give Missouri voters the right to determine whether or not fetuses should be given constitutional rights.
First, the fact that someone would consider fetuses as “people” is absurd. When a baby is born, we don’t consider it 9 months old, do we? Not only that, but what about the Constitutional rights of the actual living and breathing woman? If this somehow became “law,” there’s absolutely no chance it is held up as Constitutional. It would basically ban abortion – which is an issue we settled over 40 years ago with Roe v. Wade.
That’s neither here nor there.
What I want to focus on is how ridiculous it is for anyone to try to tell a rape victim that it’s some sort of “blessing from God” if they happen to become pregnant from the assault and that they should view it as a “silver lining” from the horrific event.
These comments really wouldn’t be that big of a deal, except this sort of attitude isn’t exactly uncommon among the Republican party. In the past we’ve seen Todd Akin try to claim that a woman can’t become pregnant if it’s a “legitimate rape” and I’ve even wrote a story just over a year ago about another Republican who said it can be “beautiful” if a child is the result of a sexual assault. To say nothing about the fairly sizable chunk of the Republican party who don’t believe rape victims should be allowed to have abortions.
The bottom line is, there’s nothing beautiful about any kind of sexual assault – nothing. If a woman who is the unfortunate victim of such a violent and heinous encounter does happen to become pregnant because of it, the only person who should have any say so over whether or not she has that baby is that woman.
End of story.
It is inexcusable and actually very disgusting that this sort of attitude still exists, and somewhat flourishes, within one of our country’s two largest political parties.
By Allen Clifton
