Women Fight Virginia GOP for their Right Not to be Raped
Virginia's Republican legislators have decided that they know what's best for women - most specifically women who have decided to have an abortion.
And what's "best" for women by these legislators' definition? For the women to be as good as raped under the guise of a required trans-vaginal ultrasound mandated by these (mostly male) legislators for no medical reason at all. None. (More on why it's legally rape in a moment.)
Evidently, these Virginia Republicans have decided that a woman who chooses to end a pregnancy - any pregnancy, including resulting from rape or incest - doesn't really know what she's doing. She needs to be 'shown' what her decision really means...although, interestingly, it's not mandatory that the woman ever looks at the ultrasound results. Evidently, just the vaginal intrusion is enough. Then, she needs a bit more time to come to her senses.
Poor little woman. She can't think for herself. So they've decided to do the thinking for her.
Thankfully, it's not working. At least not completely. Not yet.
Because, along with the separate but related 'Personhood' Bill that Virginia legislators are also in the process of passing - which gives rights to an unborn fetus from the moment of conception (yes, like the two-cell zygotes you learned about in school) - Virginia's legislators are now being treated to some of the most creative demonstrations imaginable.
Sure, there are those who are petitioning and picketing. But the most creative of all was the silent demonstration that the legislators were treated to as they walked in and out of the State House building.
Hundreds of protestors simply stood, silently, and watched them. Men, women and children. Putting faces and bodies to what was otherwise being treated by the legislators as an impersonal decision.
But it's not impersonal at all. Because, whenever a woman - or man - is raped, it's very personal for them.
The legal definition of rape in most States includes the language "unlawful sexual intrusion." That means that, without the woman's (or man's) consent, some object - human or otherwise - is being forcibly inserted into the victim's body.
Given that in the case of the Virginia legislation, women have no choice whether the probe will be inserted into their vaginas, the action is, by definition, rape.
That either leads to the Virginia legislators being rapists or legalizing rape. If it's the latter, then the recommendations made by so many across the internet in response that the male legislators have a mandatory rectal probe has both legal and moral merit.
Follow Technorati