When is it rape?

When is it rape?

That's the question raised by a bill currently in committee in the House of Representatives, H.R. 3.  And the answer the bill gives is pernicious.

The bill itself purports to be about eliminating "federal funding for abortion."  Bullshit.  There has been no federal funding for abortion -- through any federally paid for health plans, including those offered to any federal employee -- for years.  The bill really is about eliminating any health plan coverage for abortion:  it would make any premium paid for an insurance plan that covered abortion non-tax deductible.  Guess how many insurers would choose to retain abortion coverage under those circumstances?

However, there have always been those exceptions: rape, incest, and life of the mother. (Not the health of the mother:  even in this bill, if a pregnancy would result in a woman ending up in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, but it wouldn't actually kill her, then there is no abortion coverage allowed.)  But apparently, "rape" was just not specific enough for the sons-of-bitches who wrote this bill.

The only recognized rape, the only rape that you will be allowed to have insurance coverage for, is "forcible rape."

Forcible rape.

So, what does that mean? Do there need to be bruises or broken bones?  Does there need to be a knife or gun?  What if the woman is told about the knife or gun but doesn't actually see them?  What if she is married to the bastard and the threat is not to her but to her children?  What if she is drunk? Drugged? Unconscious? In a coma?

Developmentally disabled?

What if she is held down?  How hard does she need to fight to get free?  If she doesn't struggle enough, does that mean it doesn't count?  What if she is just terrified?

This bill does not recognize statutory rape, either, except for incest.  If a 13 year old is coerced into sex (and let's face it, there are a lot of ways to coerce a young girl into sex that do not involve "force") by her father or brother, and gets pregnant, she can get an abortion and have her health plan cover the cost.  But not if she is coerced into sex by her 20 year-old camp counselor, or her 32 year-old next-door neighbor, or her 53 year-old gym teacher.

Presumably, too, in order to have coverage be allowed there would have to be a police report.  How else would you prove force?  There are women who do not report being raped, for some very good reasons, too: ranging from fear of public shaming, to desire to move past the trauma, to fear of what their attackers (or sometimes their own family members) will do.

The perniciousness goes even further:  do you really want your insurance company deciding if a rape is forcible enough to be eligible for coverage?  Do you really think they will ever find that force existed, unless the woman was left very badly beaten, with very visible marks of trauma?

I have had several people tell me this morning that "this doesn't change the legal definition of who can be charged with rape."  That is entirely beside the point.  The issue is of humane treatment for women* who have undergone the horror of rape, only to be faced with being forced to undergo a potentially hazardous experience (and make no mistake, pregnancy is a far more dangerous proposition than legal abortion) before she can heal from her ordeal.

Funny, anti-abortion activists spin this as a freedom from having to financially support a procedure they find objectionable on what are, at their heart, religious reasons.  Sort of a warped freedom of religion argument.   What about those of us whose religions require us to care for and take care of those among of who have been victims of violence? Who believe that God calls us to support the victimized in doing what they need to do for their own well-being?  I guess our religious beliefs don't matter.

Please, please, write your Representative now.  I would say that this atrocity is dead in the water, given the makeup of Congress and a Democratic president who would surely veto it, but you never know.

*Poor women, that is.  Financially well off women will be able, as always, to pay for -- and to travel to other places for -- legal abortions.