Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
In the wake of the House abruptly abandoning (for now) an extreme anti-abortion bill, Republicans are finger-pointing and arguing over how to deal with what Sen. Lindsey Graham called "this definitional problem of rape." Some Republican women rebelled and, despite having
previously voted to pass an earlier version of the same bill, forced Speaker John Boehner to pull the bill because it required victims of rape and incest to have reported the rape or incest to the police or other authorities in order to be able to obtain an abortion after the bill's 20-week cut-off point.
Thing is:
Only about one in three women who are raped file reports with law enforcement, according to the Justice Department.
Definitional problem, indeed.
For many of the people angered by the failure to vote on the bill, though, rape shouldn't matter at all. Women should be forced to continue those pregnancies. The fetus matters, not the woman. And so congressional Republicans are pleading with protesters to help them solve that definitional problem, and hoping that a vote on a replacement anti-abortion bill will assuage the rage and convince the protesters that things will be worked out in the end:
“It’s a messaging issue,” said North Carolina GOP Rep. Renee Ellmers, whose objections to the restrictive rape language helped scuttle the bill and whose office later drew dozens of protesters who had wanted the stricter approach. “I believe our heart is in the right place, and we’re standing up for what is right. But I think in order to be able to have that conversation with the American people, we have always got to be speaking from the perspective of the individual and … having compassion for women in all situations.”
Oh. A messaging issue. Well, then, we'll have to look forward to finding out how Republicans solve the definitional messaging issue of how women can prove that their rape was legitimate enough for Congress to allow them to get the medical care they want.