This is who House Republicans stand with.
House Republicans are bringing back their 20-week abortion ban. Speaker John Boehner was forced to
abruptly cancel a vote in January when Republican women pointed out that it looked really bad to require women to have reported rape or incest to the authorities in order to qualify for the bill's rape or incest exemption. But now, Republicans think they've tweaked the bill enough to solve their little
"definitional problem of rape." Except we're talking about House Republicans here, which means this is
a question of what window dressing to put on the tiniest possible window. For one thing:
... the bill did not change a provision that allows victims of incest to receive an abortion only if they are under 18 years old, according to a draft released Monday.
Because abuse can't persist past a woman's 18th birthday, apparently. And I guess Republicans are okay with inbreeding as long as the parents are legally adults. As for rape victims, they now won't have to have gone to the police in order to qualify as rape victims. But the bill includes a two-day waiting period for rape survivors, during which they have to get counseling or medical care from a source other than an abortion clinic. Jump those hurdles, ladies!
On top of all this, Republicans have added a heaping dose of questionable science, emphasizing the disputed claim that fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks and calling for efforts to be made to preserve the life of the fetus—even though a large fraction of late-term abortions are chosen because the fetus has serious health defects and would be unlikely to survive.
Republicans may have tweaked their abortion bill in hopes that it won't look quite so bad as the one they really wanted to pass. But they haven't tweaked their contempt for women and women's choices.