Anti-abortion activists are
predictably furious that House Republicans backed off from having a vote on an anti-abortion bill over language in its rape and incest exception. The bill as written requires that a woman have gone to the police or other authorities to report the rape or incest prior to seeking an abortion past 20 weeks.
"I'm ready to get arrested," said Jill Stanek on Thursday. "I've never felt that way before, but this is personal." [...]
"This is just a Republican fail of epic proportions," said Stanek, between sessions at the Family Research Council's annual pre-march conference. "They had publicly announced this big day, and got thousands of people excited, just to pop the balloon."
Oh, gosh. Did it pop your balloon of excitement that people object to the Congress making rape and incest survivors jump through hoops to get medical care? You poor thing. For his part, Sen. Lindsey Graham is trying to soothe people like Stanek without getting into even more toxic territory:
"We need to find a consensus position on the rape exception," he said. "The rape exception will be part of the bill. We just need to find a way definitionally to not get us into a spot where we're debating what legitimate is. That's not the cause. We're not here debating legitimate rape. We're talking about saving babies at 20 weeks."
It will be interesting to watch Republicans try to figure out what rape exception they consider legitimate without doing anything that looks like debating what legitimate rape is. And Lindsey? Regarding "saving babies at 20 weeks," let me fix that for you: You're talking about non-viable fetuses and your decision to give them more rights than the women who carry them.
Meanwhile, the White House has released a veto threat on the other anti-abortion bill House Republicans are planning to vote on to show that even though they aren't quite ready to vote (again) on making rape survivors jump through hoops, they're still really, really opposed to abortion.
10:25 AM PT: The House has voted 242 to 179 to pass the bill that veto threat targeted, one interfering in women's ability to get private insurance that covers abortion.