Rep. Gary Peters
You might have thought that Michigan's rape insurance law was about as low as the anti-choice right could go. But you'd be wrong. The law bars insurance plans in Obamacare's
private insurance market from covering abortion, forcing women to buy a separate rider to cover abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Democratic House member and Senate candidate Gary Peters has strongly opposed the measure, and
the response is truly disgusting:
“As the father of two daughters, I struggle with how to tell them that the state we love and where our family has been for generations is now unfairly discriminating against them and makes health care less affordable,” Peters said in a statement last week.
Right to Life of Michigan — the right-wing group that was instrumental in getting the new law approved last winter — has seized on that sentiment. In a new website highlighting Peters’ abortion policy positions, the group cites Peters’ recent comments to assert that the pro-choice lawmaker “wants to make sure abortion is accessible and cheap for his daughters.”
Did you catch that none-too-subtle slutshaming of Peters' teenage daughters? And did it make you want to vomit? This is a staggeringly vicious and stupid attack. Vicious because, again, teenage daughters. Stupid because, really, immediate family members of United States congressmen are not the people harmed by making abortion more expensive and harder to obtain. You really have to stretch to make Peters' position on this issue into a self-interested one—but stretch Right to Life of Michigan did, and the only plausible reason they did so was to take that shot at Peters' daughters. Which is entirely of a piece with this law the group supported to make life more difficult and expensive and limited for Michigan women.
Right to Life of Michigan has endorsed Terri Lynn Land, Peters' opponent in the Senate race. Peters is urging Land to "condemn these attacks for what they are—the worst of inflammatory partisan politics and nothing to do with finding solutions to the challenges facing Michigan women and our families."