'Forcible Rape' Language Remains In Bill To Restrict Abortion Funding
After significant public blowback, House Republicans last week promised to drop a controversial provision in their high-priority No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act that would redefine rape. But almost a week later, that language is still in the bill.Republicans have been chanting like wild eyed zealots for years that government needs to get out of the lives of citizens. All as they expanded government power and intrusion on civil liberties. Now they want the government to use all its power to force women to suffer, even to the point of death, because they have decided rape is not always rape and child molesting is not always child molesting.
Last week, a spokesman for the bill's principal sponsor, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), said, "The word forcible will be replaced with the original language from the Hyde Amendment." The Hyde Amendment bans taxpayer dollars from being used for abortions, except in cases of incest and rape -- not just "forcible rape," as the Smith bill, H.R. 3, would have it.
But as The New York Times first noted on Wednesday, the "forcible rape" language remains. Ilan Kayatsky, a spokesman for New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the top-ranking Democrat on the House judiciary subcommittee focusing on constitutional issues, told The Huffington Post that while Nadler hopes the bill will soon be changed, they have been treating it as it's written.
"So the fact remains: more than 150 Republicans lent their name to this bill, as drafted, which includes the forcible-rape provision," the Nadler spokesman said. Several conservative Democrats also signed on as cosponsors of Smith's bill.
Smith's spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
There are several ways to change the language in legislation. It could be amended during the committee markup process, which has not yet been scheduled for H.R. 3. The bill could also be reintroduced, but a congressional staffer pointed out that the legislation's high-priority status likely inclines House leaders to keep the bill number already assigned, rather than renumbering it with a fresh introduction.
Another piece of legislation restricting abortion access, H.R. 358, also initially included the forcible-rape language, but Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) has reintroduced that bill without it. Now, however, it includes a provision that would allow hospitals to refuse to perform an abortion on a woman, even if that refusal threatens her life.
Five myths about Ronald Reagan's legacy
5. Reagan was a conservative culture warrior.
Reagan's contributions to the culture wars of the 1980s were largely rhetorical and symbolic. Although he published a book in 1983 about his staunch opposition to abortion (overlooking the fact that he had legalized abortion in California as governor in the late 1960s), he never sought a constitutional ban on abortion. In fact, Reagan began the odd practice of speaking to anti-abortion rallies by phone instead of in person - a custom continued by subsequent Republican presidents. He also advocated prayer in public schools in speeches, but never in legislation.
In 1981, Reagan unintentionally did more than any other president to prevent the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling from being overturned when he appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court. O'Connor mostly upheld abortion rights during her 25 years as a justice.
No wonder that home-schooling advocate Michael Ferris was one of many right-wing activists complaining about Reagan by the end of his presidency, writing that his White House "offered us a bunch of political trinkets."
