I wish this headline involved hyperbole. Sadly, it is literally true.

From Mother Jones 1/28/11: (Hat Tip: Jed Report)

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.)

Given that the bill also would forbid the use of tax benefits to pay for abortions, that 13-year-old's parents wouldn't be allowed to use money from a tax-exempt health savings account (HSA) to pay for the procedure. They also wouldn't be able to deduct the cost of the abortion or the cost of any insurance that paid for it as a medical expense.

Ratzi would love the scum behind this legislation.

This legislation is horrifying, but it isn't surprising. Boehner already has started a push for more vouchers that would put more DC school children in the hands of child molesting priests.

There also is a well known problem of rampant child molestation among Republican Party officials. I wonder how many of the cosponsors of the legislation have impregnated girls in the 13-15 range and don't want their embryos and fetuses aborted.

This is sick, sick, sick.

Of course, the general misogyny behind this heinous provision must be condemned too. What kind of sociopaths would actually try to narrow down what is considered rape? The level of hatred of women illustrated by this bill goes beyond disgusting. More from the Mother Jones article:

"This bill takes us back to a time when just saying 'no' wasn't enough to qualify as rape," says Steph Sterling, a lawyer and senior adviser to the National Women's Law Center. Laurie Levenson, a former assistant US attorney and expert on criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, notes that the new bill's authors are "using language that's not particularly clear, and some people are going to lose protection." Other types of rapes that would no longer be covered by the exemption include rapes in which the woman was drugged or given excessive amounts of alcohol, rapes of women with limited mental capacity, and many date rapes. "There are a lot of aspects of rape that are not included," Levenson says.

As for the incest exception, the bill would only allow federally funded abortions if the woman is under 18.

Aaaaaaaahh!

Photo: Talk Media News

 

Whenever a Republican talks about "bipartisanship," it's bound to be something hateful and extreme. The latest efforts to shove unwanted vouchers down Washington, DC's throat is a rather blatant example of this. (Politico 1/24/11)

The day after President Barack Obama makes education a centerpiece of his State of the Union address, House Speaker John Boehner will try to force his hand on the issue of school vouchers in Washington, D.C. as a test of the White House’s commitment to bipartisanship.

The Ohio Republican, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), will introduce legislation on Wednesday to reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, the speaker’s office said Monday, making a school voucher initiative that Democrats, including Obama, have strongly opposed as a bargaining chip for beginning discussions on the administration’s desired education proposals.

“If the president is sincere about working together on education reform, we should start by saving this successful, bipartisan program that has helped so many underprivileged children get a quality education,” Boehner said in a statement to POLITICO.

In 2001, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) did an excellent expose debunking claims by the corporate media and militant Christian fundamentalists that vouchers improve educational achievement. Studies funded by voucher supports show know educational advantage in voucher schools despite the ability of those schools to weed out disruptive students and students with learning disabilities.

It just isn't honest to say that there is any educational benefit to vouchers.

Of course, vouchers were never intended for educational purposes and certainly aren't meant to help poor people. Rightists like Boehner and Lieberman are the types who derive enormous pleasure from the suffering of the poor and the accumulation by the rich. This initiative is all about religious indoctrination and erosion of the First Amendment.

Vouchers, like any government funding of religion, is absolutely forbidden by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Yet, in the one of the most dishonest Supreme Court rulings since Plessy vs. Ferguson, a 5-4 majority fraudulently claimed that the purpose of vouchers was educational and that government funding of blatant religious indoctrination is somehow "constitutional."

Eventually, that blatantly unconstitutional ruling allow vouchers will be overturned by a more honest Supreme Court. In the meantime, We the People will have to defend the Constitution from anti American extremists like Boehner and Lieberman.

The obvious unconstitutionality of vouchers legislation is hardly the only problem with voucher legislation. This is a rather transparent effort to discriminate against atheists and force us to participate in religion by forcing us to pay for it. Reprehensible bigots like the ones behind the vouchers legislation are obsessed with shoving religion down the throats of atheist Americans instead of treating us as the full citizens of this country which we are.

As bad as the bigotry is, there is something even worse about vouchers programs. They promote child molestation. The dollar amounts are deliberately set so that poor parents can not send their children to elite private schools, but instead to Roman Catholic schools. This puts far more children in the clutches of child raping priests. The irony of a moralizing gasbag like Lieberman doing something he knows damned well will result in the rape of more children is enough to give any reasonable person pause.