[And a warm Canadian welcome to all you bitches. (If you don't know what that means, then you're getting here from somewhere else and, no, I think I'll just leave you to puzzle that out on your own because that's just the kind of guy I am.)]
Over here, Digby reproduces one of the most jaw-dropping and revealing admissions about the whole anti-choice movement:
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls "convenience." He insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother's life. I asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked.
BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
Just take a deep breath before you plunge back in there, because the stench of racism, bigotry and downright stupidity is purely overpowering.
So what would constitute an exception to the ban on abortions? Well, first, it can't involve just a female, no sir, it would seem to require a "girl." Apparently, adult women need not apply.
Next, we apparently need the extra condition that the victim be a "virgin" who was saving herself for marriage since, as we all know, any non-virgin girl who gets raped and impregnated just had it coming to her, the little slut, and it serves her right, doesn't it? But, wait. There's more.
She was also sodomized, despite the fact that, medically speaking, sodomy and conception don't have a whole lot to do with one another. And it wouldn't be just any old, garden-variety sodomy, no sir, we're talking "sodomized as bad as you can possibly make [sic] it," whatever the fuck that means.
(I'm also guessing that the conditions listed above wouldn't cover this case, would it:
According to [ex-wife Linda Carruth] Davis, [Bush appointee Dr. David W.] Hager's public moralizing on sexual matters clashed with his deplorable treatment of her during their marriage. Davis alleges that between 1995 and their divorce in 2002, Hager repeatedly sodomized her without her consent. Several sources on and off the record confirmed that she had told them it was the sexual and emotional abuse within their marriage that eventually forced her out. "I probably wouldn't have objected so much, or felt it was so abusive if he had just wanted normal [vaginal] sex all the time," she explained to me. "But it was the painful, invasive, totally nonconsensual nature of the [anal] sex that was so horrible."
After all, Davis wasn't a girl, she clearly wasn't a virgin and it's not at all clear that the sodomy was "as bad as you could possibly make it". And, besides, she wasn't impregnated so, really, this doesn't have anything to do with this story, but it was just fun to mention, don't you think? In any event ... onward.)
And, finally, we have the exception being based on the idea that the girl "was religious" since, as we all know, those are the only ones worth worrying about since, if you're a Godless whore, well, you get what you deserve, isn't that right?
You've always known that these people are about as spiritually evil and ugly as it's possible for a human being to be, but it's rare to see all that ugliness on such open and naked display. It purely takes your breath away, doesn't it?
AFTERTHOUGHT: It's almost impossible to encapsulate this kind of grotesque evil in a sentence or two but I'll give the last word to stevedore-philosopher Eric Hoffer:
What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.
SERIOUSLY CREEPY AFTERTHOUGHT: Is it just me, or can anyone else practically hear Napoli getting a hard-on describing just how thoroughly brutalized, raped and sodomized a girl would have to be to qualify for an abortion?
I'm thinking Napoli is not the guy I'd want to leave alone with my school-age children. If you catch my drift.
BONUS TRACK: Jesus' General says it in far fewer words.
9 comments:
The real horror story here: most people who read about this simply will refuse to believe it. It seems to be a given that a christian is basically a 'good' person, so they couldn't say such things, or at least wouldn't mean them if they did.
It's all a lot of childish bullshit. Religion, the Easter Bunny, etc. are for kids - period.
Thanks for pointing out the obvious here, CC. Its a shame someone has to do that.
Not only is there discrimination towards certain pregnant women here, but the right shows a discrimination to certain fetuses as well. I've thought this for years. If the reason you are anti-abortion is because you believe that the unborn child has a right to life, how can you possibly make an exception for rape? Is a fetus conceived via rape less deserving of life than a fetus conceived by consentual sex?
You gotta be consistant in your beliefs if you are going to convince anyone.
I knew already from personal experience that these people are twisted, but never saw it put so blatantly out in the open before.
On an unrelated note, I wonder why christian men are so fascinated with inflicting unwanted anal sex on their partners? There seems to be evidence that this is a rather commonplace occurrence with them.
I'm sure it has something to do with the christian demonization of women. They believe that we all deserve to suffer for Eve's generational sin, and since the bible tells them that we are nothing more than their property anyway, how they behave toward us is inconsequential in the eyes of their god.
I always feel such pity for the wives, sisters and (especially) the daughters of christian men.
I think its wrong to generalize about christian men, in their defense, they aren't all like that. However, there is definitely a subgroup of real wankers.
What I don't get, is that christianity preaches all kinds of tolerance and love for human kind (according to my mother who is a fundie) but they judge and judge and persecute and critisize and censor.
Then they demonize rape victims (she dressed like a hooker, she's promiscusous etc). There is no bigger humiliation for a woman than rape.
To the fervent anti-abortionists, why can't they let God make the judgements in heaven? "He" only knows what kind of private hell these women have been through (personally I beleive that God is a woman, since how could "he" give birth to the earth and humanity as a male....its a female characteristic Take that patriarch!).
If this God is so great and so tolerant, then he will forgive them. If not its out of people's hands! Don't Catholics get absolved for all their sins by confessing? I don't know. I'm just an ignorant atheist after all.
"now imagine she's white"
Shannon, I agree that it does seem odd- but it also occurred to me that it's precisely those fundie Christian males who feel so squeamish about homosexuality. I don't think it could be too far removed to observe that maybe they perform acts on their wives that they might be performing elsewhere if they weren't afraid of their buddies stoning them to death.
Great blog. Thanks. And, all great comments, too.
As for the comment that "There is no bigger humiliation for a woman than rape", I'm not sure I agree. I think that perhaps an even bigger humiliation is to be publicly and explicitly denied (and on a highly institutionalized level, at that) even the most basic of rights, and to be treated as, oh, idk, a vessel.
While I'm on this, I would also love to replace the terms "pro-lifer" and "anti-abortionist" with a more descriptive (and more honest!) term: "forced childbirth advocate". Using these other more common forms implies that any opposition to their view is "pro-abortion", or even better, "pro-death".
Rebekah,
That's been my suspicion too.
"Thou shalt do unto thy wife what thou wouldst wish to otherwise do unto thy football buddies."
I'm totally with you here about the religious misogyny, don't get me wrong, but I'm not understanding why you threw "racist" into the mix. Curious.
Post a Comment