Brickbat: The Cleaning Crew

Texas state Rep. Jodie Laubenberg, R-Parker, has sponsored a bill that would ban abortions in the state after 20 weeks, and she spoke out against an amendment to that bill that would create an exception for rape or incest. She says it isn't needed because when women go to the authorities to report a rape they are given a rape kit and "get cleaned out." Of course, rape kits only collect evidence of any possible rape. Laubenberg later says she knew that and misspoke. She meant to say that when a woman reports a rape she can be given emergency contraception and other treatments to help prevent pregnancy.

Comments

[invisible furry hand]

Ted S, this was here when i checked at 6.01am your time. No alt-text, of course, but is it really needed in this case?

[Ted S.]

So for once they didn't back-date a Brickbat. On the day that most people probably aren't going to be here.

[Agammamon]

Not surprising. On every other day the poor intern who actually hits the "post" button is busy making coffee runs and giving out hand-jobs. Today no-one else is there (but he *has* to be of course, someone's *got* to answer the phones) so there's nothing keeping him from getting it in on time.

[invisible furry hand]

and giving out hand-jobs

Not selling them? No wonder he's a poor intern...

[Agammamon]

He's an *intern* - its 'job experience' he's getting.

[Sy]

Ten bucks there's a massive spike in reported rapes once this passes.. And a whole new revenue stream for the reservations in Oklahoma.

[Ted S.]

Ten bucks isn't much of a revenue stream.

[Ted S.]

It never ceases to amaze me that there are Republicans too stupid to realize that the national media is going to save stuff like this and hang it on the presidential candidate in 2016.

[CampingInYourPark]

"It never ceases to amaze me..."

Like a dog chasing his tail? People say stupid shit and there's not very much anybody else can do about it. BFD

[VG Zaytsev]

A smart republican candidate would embrace it, seeing has how late term abortion is very unpopular. He also could point out that the abortion laws in the socialist paradise of Sweden are more restrictive than this one.

And a truly brave republican would point out that white progressives lover abortion because it's mostly poor brown babies being disposed of.

[Hash Brown]

The only argument against a rape/incest exception is that the fetus is a person and has rights (either from conception or from week n). If a politician doesn't have the guts to make that argument, then she should STFU.

[Suthenboy]

Very true. In this case, setting the limit at 20 wks seems to be a tacit admission that that is the point where they consider the fetus to be a person. Thus no exception for rape or incest past that point.

[Scarecrow Repair]

What always amazes me about the rape / incest exception is that it allows punishing the kid for the errors of the parents. Does this make it ok to kill the kid after birth if the father commits a crime then? What if it turns out the father is a bigamist and that the original conception was in fact rape by a different name? What if the incest isn't discovered until after birth?

I have more respect for the absolute anti-abortion crowd than the ones that carve out exceptions like this.

[Agammamon]

How does bigamy equate to rape?

[Scarecrow Repair]

If a woman saves her virginity for marriage and he lies, isn't that the moral equivalent, or the mental equivalent, to physical rape? Unwanted sex is rape of one sort or another.

[sgs]

"What always amazes me about the rape / incest exception is that it allows punishing the kid"

It's not a kid.

[Scarecrow Repair]

By *their* definition it is. By *their* definition, they are murdering a human being for its parents crimes. Their definition sees birth as utterly unremarkable, although I bet none of the celebrate fuckdays instead of birthdays.

[Suthenboy]

The bill doesnt seem unreasonable, and her fauz pas not that bad, but you would think they would learn to polish up their rhetoric on abortion/pregnancy/women's health etc and stop putting both feet in their mouth. Make sure that everyone the party backs has a grasp on reality ( no more women's bodies rejecting rape, no more she was asking for it), shows some respect.....

Wait a min. What am I talking about? It aint called the party of stupid for nothing.

[RBS]

I don't know, thinking collecting evidence = getting "cleaned out" is pretty damn stupid.

[VG Zaytsev]

Yeah, except that's not what she said.

So let me tighten her phrasing up a little bit.

"It's standard practice for ems to give women that have reported a rape, the morning after pill as part of her treatment, while they are also collecting forensic evidence to catch and convict the rapist"

That's not functionally different than what she said - It's also a lot more long winded. And anyone that didn't read-hear her statement and know that she was referring to that standard process is a fucking idiot. Certainly too stupid be a 'journolist', a very low bar to clear. It's not like journos don't routinely clean up the dialogue of real people that they quote.

This is just another example of politically motivated selective reporting - outrage. The kind that's never used against Obama or democrats.

As such, repeating it is a marker of a leftist douchebag.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Why would you need more than 20 weeks in the case of rape of incest if 20 weeks is enough time for other types of pregnancy?

[CampingInYourPark]

Don't you know rape and incest fertilizes the womb with the spawn of Satan? We can't have those things living in our society.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

Hell, even if they are the spawn of Satan, it seems to me that most women would be less likely to dilly dally on aborting in the case of rape or incest such that they'd be even more likely to get it done inside of 20 weeks.

If the woman is physically prevented from getting an abortion -- held captive by a rapist, e.g. -- that would be much different, but it seems unfeasible to make laws which can cover outlying scenarios like that without opening up the opportunity to circumvent the law.

[AlmightyJB]

Yeah I would think that damn near 100% or rape victims that are open to abortiin are going to do so almost immediatly. An exception probably wouldn't matter cause it's probably unnecessary. That being said, let's nkt pretend that there would not be the same "outrage" over this bill had the exceptions been granted.

[Agammamon]

"She meant to say that when a woman reports a rape she can be given emergency contraception and other treatments to help prevent pregnancy."

Except, of course, she can't be given those treatments past a certain timeframe or its illegal.

[ant1sthenes]

Yes, I think 20 weeks is a little past that timeframe.

[mr lizard]

Clean up crew? I think I've seen that on youporn.

[anarch]

Is every victim of every crime obliged to report it to the government?

[anarch]

I.e., is continued pregnancy the penalty for failing to report a rape?

[Agammamon]

Yes - the government is a part owner of your labor, so any crime committed against you is depriving the government of its rightful tithe, therefore anyone committing a crime against a citizen is also committing a crime against the government.

[Eduard van Haalen]

If this legislator hadn't made this minor faux pas, would the media have deigned to mention that there are *female* legislators supporting this bill?

Of course not - *real* women are proabortion. There's no need to interview intelligent prolife woman leaders like Charmaine Yoest - that would mess up the narrative. Only mention female prolifers if they can be portrayed as morons. That's some real woman-affirming journalism you got there.

[Eduard van Haalen]

To be fair, sometimes the MSM profiles Yoest in the context of "Look at these clever prolifers updating their message to make it more popular." See, eg, this from the NY Times Mag:

http://nyti.ms/11jOqDz

[Eduard van Haalen]

Thus, my point is that when something like the Texas bill comes up, they forget all the Yoest profiles they did and it's all "old prolife guys vs. courageous choicer women."