The Rape Exception
Human Rights Watch, Feb 2006:
Mexican officials actively prevent rape victims from gaining access to legal and safe abortion, and they fail to punish rape and sexual violence inside and outside the family, said Human Rights Watch in a report released today. The 92-page report, "The Second Assault: Obstructing Access to Legal Abortion after Rape in Mexico," details the disrespect, suspicion and apathy that pregnant rape victims encounter from public prosecutors and health workers.
The Other Rape Exception
Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, Feb 2006:
A man's life has been sacrificed, and three children have been denied their father by malicious feminists who have lobbied for laws that punish spousal rape just like stranger rape and deny a man the right to cross-examine his accuser. They have created a judicial system where the woman must always be believed even though she has no evidence, one in which the man is always guilty.
continued...
The man Mrs. Schlafly defends in her column was convicted of raping his estranged wife back in 1985. Schlafly apparently misses the good old days, some 30 years ago, when it was legal in all parts of the US for a man to exercise his "conjugal right" to his wife without her consent (also known as rape). The basis for the "marital rape exception" goes back to English common law.
Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Justice of England from 1671-1676:
The husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract, the wife hath given herself in kind unto the husband which she cannot retract.
Sir Hale was raised by a Puritan vicar. He married twice and had 10 children. In 1664, he condemned two poor women to execution for witchcraft. Anyway, thanks to the women's rights movement, this aspect of "traditional marriage" has largely been reversed in this country. Spousal rape is now illegal in all 50 states. The first state to repeal its marital rape exception? None other than South Dakota, back in 1975. However, in many states the penalties for marital rape are still less than for non-marital rape, or else additional conditions apply (such as prior seperation or use of force). Until a change was proposed last year, Arizona law allowed judges the discretion to treat spousal rape as a misdemeanor and order counseling.
Arizona State Rep. Warde Nichols (R-Gilbert), March 2005:
"When you enter into a marriage, you enter into a contract for all sorts of different things with your spouse," he said. And that, he said, includes of sex ... "Why should we take it to a Class 2 felony and put a husband away who's been a good husband for however many years ... based off of something that was OK in a marriage up until that point?"
Rep. Warde Nichols' official bio gives his religion as "Christian," although he's more specifically a Mormon. He is married and has 2 children. His position on witchcraft is not known, but he is at the forefront of efforts in Arizona to protect "traditional marriage" from homosexuals. Anyway, Rep. Nichols' views on spousal rape did not prevail, and penalties in Arizona are now equalized. Coincidentally, this year Warde Nichols co-sponsored two bills to make it harder to obtain abortions in Arizona.
This year, South Dakota turned from its proud history as the first state to remove the marital rape exception. If Bush gets another SCOTUS appointment, South Dakota could go down in history as the first state to re-criminalize abortion - and without a rape exception. Some "reasonable" conservatives have scolded South Dakota for going too far.
But my question to them is this: Given the attitudes of "family values" Republicans like Warde Nichols, what would be the worth of a rape exception anyway? In a country where women are increasingly required by law to be shamed before they can obtain a legal medical procedure, and where spousal rape can in some cases be treated as a misdemeanor, is there any reason to believe that rape victims seeking abortions would be treated any better than they are in Mexico?
In conclusion, here's some more detail from Human Rights Watch:
In Mexico, abortion in general is illegal, but rape victims have the legal right to a safe abortion under all state criminal codes. However, women and girls who approach the authorities to exercise this right face multiple obstacles, Human Rights Watch found.
A number of agencies in various Mexican states - particularly the state attorney general's office, public hospitals and family services - employ aggressive tactics to discourage and delay rape victims' access to legal abortion. A social worker in Jalisco, for example, showed scientifically inaccurate anti-abortion videos to a 13-year-old girl who had been raped and impregnated by a family member. Some public prosecutors threatened rape victims with jail for procuring a legal abortion, and many doctors told women and girls, without cause, that an abortion would kill them.
[...]
"Lidia Muñoz," a 25-year-old rape victim, was intimidated by medical personnel in a public hospital in Mexico City in 2005. An NGO representative who was present gave the following account:
When she got the authorization and went to the hospital to have the [abortion] done, the doctor in charge of her care said to her: "We are going to have many problems, because we are going to have to do a death certificate [for the aborted fetus]. You are going to have to bring a hearse, [and] to buy a coffin to take away the body, because we can't have the body here."
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