Texas GOP pushing new anti-abortion Additional Rape Bill

Oh, DIAF

And the Republican war on women’s reproductive rights continues, this time in Texas:

If a woman is raped in Texas and impregnated by her assailant, she could soon be forced to endure a second round of physical violation at the hands of the state, thanks to a bill currently speeding its way through the state's legislature.

House Bill 15, better known as the "sonogram bill," sponsored by state Rep. Sid Miller (R), cleared the Texas House Monday afternoon in a final procedural vote. A similar version in the Senate already enjoyed substantial support from legislators, and now the two bills will be merged before final passage.

Thanks to the state's Republican supermajority and Governor Rick Perry's designation of the issue as an "emergency," there's almost no question that the state will soon mandate sonograms.

While proponents of the legislation like to say they're just ensuring that a woman gets "both sides of the story" on abortion, critics say the bill is really about shaming women into deciding against terminating a pregnancy.

However, these legislators aren't talking about requiring the most well-known type of later-term sonogram that starts with a bit of cold gel on a woman's bulging abdomen.

Since most abortions take place before 12 weeks, when the fetus is little more than a small cluster of nearly undetectable cells, the vast majority of women who request the procedure will instead be required by the state to undergo an invasive "transvaginal sonogram." (For a medical image depicting the procedure, click here.)

Worst of all, critics say, the bill does not include an exception for victims of sexual assault. That literally means that a woman impregnated by a rapist would have to undergo a second physical violation if she chose to terminate the resulting pregnancy.

Can we please label this an “Additional Rape Bill”? Pretty please? It’s just so fitting – forcing desperate women who’ve gone through horrible ordeals to submit themselves to even more unwanted (and utterly pointless) vaginal invasion by complete strangers for the sole purpose of making their already painful decision even more difficult to bear, all because of the stiff-assed ideological zealots, who have no fucking idea what any of what those women (whom they seek to control like the patriarchal asshats they are) have to deal with, want to pander some more to their electoral base of equally mindless, bullshit-spewing, religiously crazed fuckwits.

I know that’s what I’ll refer to any of these downright inhumane bills from now on: Additional Rape Bills. And I heartily encourage everyone to do the same. We need to let these douchebag legislators know that what they’re doing is not fucking okay. It’s vile, morally criminal and utmostly reprehensible. It serves nothing but to heap additional scorn and hardship unto already suffering victims. And, again, these asshats even have the gall to sit there and proclaim that all they’re doing is “protecting the sanctity of life”.

Until, of course, the mother gets in the way. Then, fuck her, the worthless walking uterus. Right?

… Okay, maybe this is starting to tick me off.

(via @todayspolitics)