“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” – Todd Akin, Republican Senate candidate in Missouri
Asked by reporters if he was saying that it’s never medically necessary to conduct an abortion to save the life of a mother, Tea Party candidate Joe Walsh responded, “Absolutely. With modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance… There is no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing.”
“So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch.” – Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk show host
Babies conceived through rape are “a gift in a very broken way.” Rape victims should “accept what God has given to you” and “make the best out of a bad situation.” – Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania senator
Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, who opposes abortion in instances of rape, co-authored an abortion bill last year that would have distinguished between statutory and “forcible rape.”
“I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” – Richard Mourdock, Republican Senate candidate in Indiana
* * *
Thank you, oh wise white males, for pointing out the depths of gratitude we ladies should feel in our roles as Keepers of the Seed. No, of course these are not our bodies, they belong to you and always have. We are not to shirk our responsibilities in this mysterious collusion, or be less than grateful and accepting of the gifts you have bestowed. You will lift the burden of decision from our slender backs, because you care (we can tell by that concerned knit of your brow), because you’ve got the science more than figured out, and because, after all, if there were anything legitimate in our complaints, god would surely have intervened on our behalf. If he doesn’t . . . well, then of course that’s an indictment in itself, of our innate culpability and the ways in which we must atone.
In your wisdom, you’ve provided the answer to all acts of violence—man against man, man against woman, man against child—there seems to be a pattern here—and what we females must come to understand is that it’s all part of god’s plan. We don’t need to intervene in any case of violent criminality. God has it figured out. He would never let something happen to one of his children that was anything but intended.
Thank you, right and shining daddies, for your unending patience in showing us the way.
Photograph by Ellen Von Unwerth
It’s all so sickening. Irrational, stupid, assholes. Every single one of them.
Oh MSB, have they taught you nothing? Sit down and put an aspirin between your knees, and quit your complaining.
I voted today. I hope everyone makes time!
I hope my ballot arrives soon. Drew’s got here days ago but I haven’t seen mine. I registered online, eons ago. . . . Apparently they only do mail-ins here, which is kind of disappointing. I like going to the polls on foot, it puts me in touch with my citizenship.
“Doesn’t it strike you as mildly ironic that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn’t want to fuck in the first place?” —George Carlin.
(I’ve been in a quotin’ mood all day…Apparently, the only words I have today are other peoples…)
Ha! Yes. I don’t see the supposed sex appeal of Paul Ryan; he looks like the nerdy kid in homeroom who seems so plausible that the teachers never check his answers.
Paul Ryan is a Ken doll. He also graduated from my alma mater, which both horrifies me and doesn’t surprise me a bit.
i like that quote. I might nick it
We mailed in our ballots 2 weeks ago.
I’m so sickened by all of this this morning — I was just watching some of the statements on this. What year is this? Where in the hell are we??
I hear you. I was watching some commentary after the last debate, and even from the left it seems so outlandish.
On the other hand, the PBS NewsHour? So gloriously unfashionable in every way and I fucking love it for that. Please may Gwen Ifill never get a stylist.
And this was exquisitely written, by the way. Best thing I’ve read today.
Thanks, Teri.
XO
I have another take on such remarks,
I am grateful for them—they are setting the benchmark for their party’s gender politics and it is going to smack them in the ass.
These political commentaries are the last gasps of air from a dying breed.
Women’s roles in the workforce are increasing exponentially. We are taking more leadership positions. Making more money and gaining more ground while our male counterparts are losing their professional footing.
I can’t help but wonder if all the rape/birth control remarks are not an unconscious collective backlash towards a movement that these entitled old white males know is about to steam roll right over them.
My hope: these absurd rape commentaries will end up splitting the party even more and pushing moderate female conservatives towards the left.
I don’t know, J. It seems to me they’re being clever about this; by positioning some members of the party so far to the right, the rest of them appear positively moderate by comparison. That’s how we ended up with a centrist president the right can call a liberal. I think what will happen is that they’ll begin to walk the conversation back, so that repealing Roe v. Wade and replacing it with legislation that offers abortion only in cases of rape and incest looks like a reasonable compromise.
Very clever thinking, I hope to Christ you are wrong. Scary times these.
It’s like the Republicans had a secret meeting where they declared that forever after they would be cartoonishly evil. I’m sort of just…boggled that no one has said ‘are you scooby doo villains, the lot of you?’ to the whole crowd yet.
Oh, people are saying it, Helen, and people are laughing. But the righties have no sense of humor, so the jokes just sail over their heads and the politicians carry on making ghosts out of slide projectors.
where’s the gang when you need them?
Twenty-five years ago, when the abortion debate was first taking a violent turn in the wake of the Reagan Counterrevolution, I thought it was the one issue that could lead this country to its second civil war. Time went by and I thought maybe that wouldn’t be the case; lately I’ve wondered if my earlier intuition isn’t the more correct.
Josephine is right. What is happening in this country is that a ruling class–white, Christian, and conservative–has been watching its power ebb for a long time–a very long time–and is desperately fighting to hold on. When I say that its power has been ebbing for a very long time, I mean clear back to the one civil war we’ve had, 150 years ago. Come up to our own times, and the revolution that began with the Civil Rights movement, exploded in 1968, and ushered in such socio-political changes that the world I was born in–I’m old enough to have a faint memory of segregated public water fountains–has essentially vanished, and you have now in this country a minority of the population which knows that its ancestors were the majority and it cannot stand the change. Its anger has driven it mad. It seeks to take us all back to its hallucination, its dream of what it supposes was a better world but was in fact a world in which blacks were lynched, women were excluded, and all who were not white, male, and Christian were second-class citizens, if they were permitted to be citizens at all.
We’re not going back. I’m white (actually a freckled light pinkish-brown), I’m male, and I was raised a Christian (I am no longer a Christian–one of the casualties of the revolution–but I have read the Bible many times and will pit my understanding of the text and its context against any scripture-spewer any time)–but I’m not going back. That world was never mine–I’m too young. It was vanishing before my eyes as I grew up and is gone with the wind.
This is where and when we are and this is where and when we make our stand. We’re in the United States of America and it’s 2012. A powerful minority is screaming out its “last gasps of air from a dying breed.” As that breed dies it will thrash about. It is dangerous. It has killed and it will kill again. No change such as that which Western Civilization has been undergoing for a thousand years–yes, that long–and which has been steadily accelerating for the past five hundred years is going to be accomplished without distress. The United States of America is and always has been a focal point of that change.
The battle is serious and it is to the death. If the liberals don’t understand this, rest assured that the conservatives do. Their world is dying. Their world of superstition, ignorance, fear, and repression–it is dying, and they will fight to the death in a hopeless, foolish struggle to perpetuate it.
And others will fight to the death to protect the hard-won freedoms of the past two generations, built upon the struggle of even earlier generations. If Roe v. Wade is repealed, there will be blood. I hope the masters of repression realize this, but I do not believe they do. I do not believe they will see the error of their ways until the bill is presented to them.
It is dangerous, but I wish I could agree that we’ll be making our stand. It seems to me that liberals—and I count myself among them—have become so entitled that we’ve lost the ability to fight. The conservatives are fighting a one-sided battle against what really is a wall of apathy. Liberals don’t have the passion, we have only this sense of ‘of course, women should have the right to choose, of course we should have a black president when he’s the right man for the job, of course we should pay attention to the science of global warming.’ It’s all so common-sense for us that we don’t know how to argue our case. Added to that, the right’s anti-intellectualism, and their newfound discovery that they can lie outright with impunity, and what we have is a ticket to ride the crazy train.
Love your Leonard Cohen. Cue my Ozzy Osborne comeback.
I can’t even comment on the other bullshit without my hair bursting into flames, but I can on the bible too. I grew up very spiritual. Don’t know if I ever agreed to the full extent in organized religion, but being kind to each other, not killing, stealing, or ogling your workmate behind your spouse’s back always made sense to me. I’m rereading a lot of bible versus as research for the new novel and I can’t for the life of me see that I’m reading the same book these jerks are forever quoting and pulling their info from. Jesus (whether you believe him truth or character) hung out with a whore, took pity on a murderer. He acknowledged our imperfect human state and said it’s ok, don’t live in the past and keep growing. Didn’t he? I have yet to find the word abortion. How do they get this stuff?
Yes, there’s a lot of commonsense kindness in the new testament. A lot of horror and bloodshed in the old. But with any religion there are people who will twist the essence of the message to mean something else entirely. Most pro-lifers are firmly in favor of the death penalty—they have devised a way to explain that to themselves, and will point you to the scripture as if they can make it make sense.
here we go. play this loud. repeat as needed.
i just tried to post this to my facebook wall and it opened sabotaged with a 30-second crypto-fascist commercial. the bastards are everywhere.
It’s that other comment—you’re tagged now for life. Troublemaker.
“Troublemaker.”
Damn straight. I am now, and have ever been, a member of the Troublemaker Party.
“Too bad for them if they fall apart upon discovering that women aren’t men, or that the mother doesn’t have one. But isn’t this fear convenient for them? Wouldn’t the worst be, isn’t the worst, in truth, that women aren’t castrated, that they have only to stop listening to the Sirens (for the Sirens were men) for history to change its meaning? You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and she’s laughing.”
— Helene Cixous,The Laugh of the Medusa
Lovely, and perfect. Thanks, CJ.
Amen, sister!
Also, I’ve voted already, and the likes of those privileged boys did not get my vote.
Good on you, Paul. And I hope my white male friends have taken no offense, as present company is always excepted from the rantification. (Spell check is going, huh?)
It’s hard to focus today. I’m that angry. Breathe. Breathe….
I’m going back to my smutty pages. It’s all too much for me.
I remember metal hangers and young girls sliding down the stairs on their butts hard. I remember girls having full-term babies they said came early so no one would know. We knew. Those women became grandmothers and mothers at the same time.
That, this issue, still remains an issue, is the same as Sarah Palin’s ‘Shuck and Jive”, comment about Obama.
Boys and girls it’s all about prejudice, plain and simple. The prejudice of the conservatives is hidden as a nationalistic ‘values’ agenda. Do anything; say anything to make a black President fail. If the country fails too, so be it. Prejudice again a black president, prejudice against females, prejudice against anyone who isn’t them.
I remember sit-ins, campus administration building take-overs, fire bombings, terror in the streets kids, it was terror in the streets every-single-night. Anti-Vietnam war demonstrations and black voter registration killings on the news every night and guess what, IT HASN’T FUCKING CHANGED. We are still who we were and we should know better.
If, if, if if, and I mean IF, Mitt Mogul and his asshole for a VP get in…I want to shout this,
WE DESERVE WHAT WE GET.
My generation, mine, the one which belongs to me, yeah yours truly and my peers, we were the ones who believed that we could, would, did make a difference. Guess what boys and girls, the metal hangers will be back, getting to register and vote is still an issue, black is still a fucking issue.
We failed; I failed, because MY generation is the one doing this. MY generation is the one who believes in the Halliburtons and the Blackwaters and the Goldman Sachs and the Bain Capitals, Cayman Islands and the pull yourself up by your fucking bootstraps or go to church for a handout.
Jesus Chris Averil, you and Tetman, I’m voting for you and Tetman…dog catcher and zoning enforcement officer. Let’s all just start over, shall we.
I need a like button Wry.
Your generation grew exhausted over the years, Wry, and who can blame you? You worked so hard to make it easy on us that we never learned to do the work for ourselves.
We’re so totally fucked. Is there any way off this planet?
Your generation, which is a scant half-generation ahead of mine, made a difference, Wry. A big difference. Many of the battles we still fight were begun going on fifty years ago. People who didn’t live through those times don’t know what it was like, with riots in the streets of major American cities every year for six years, political assassinations, a draft scooping up the poorest and least educated and shipping them off to kill and die in the jungles on the other side of the planet, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation–I was a child then and it was a scary world. Don’t kick yourself because everything couldn’t be fixed in a few years and because a counterrevolution came. A lot of good was done and there’s more to come. The torch is being handed off. Its light shall not be extinguished.
I so agree with Wrywriter. After reading all the intelligent and sane words here, I realize why I got so upset recently after watching the Smothers Brothers documentary about their show from the sixties. If you had asked any of us back then if things would be screwed up in the same ways, or worse, in 2012, I wonder what we would’ve done. It’s one hard thing to live through all this slowly, but to think that it might never end.. I’m not sure I can get back to a reasonable level of depression until I hear that President Obama’s been re-elected.
It’s not going to end in our lifetimes. But most of our kids are so baffled by this shit that it gives me hope they might not perpetuate it.
The whole coat hanger, etc issue really scares me. I could scream when I hear the strains of pride in the voices of our politicians as they tell us we are continuing war efforts to ensure the rights of oppressed women around the world. Yeah right. We know your agenda for women.
God yes. But it’s that pitying little head-tilt and the expression of fake concern that pisses me off the most.
Yes! Me too! Come on guys, don’t piss on me and tell me it’s raining.
the scary thing is some women might agree with these idiots and then vote for them. Not might, but do.
Who are these women? Don’t they know what’s going on. Pro life = Mitt? I don’t think so. Pro life should = pro women’s health, pro respect a woman’s body.
If babies were extruded through a man’s dick don’t cha think this issue would have been settled a long time ago.
I know. I’m with you.
Babies are extruded through a man’s dick, and oh it feels so good.
However, my snarkiness aside, I do so wish men had the slightest inkling of how painful childbirth is. And how dangerous. I had major hemorrhage after my first child was born, and pneumonia on top of that. Without access to healthcare—another prong in the Republican attack—I would have died. And that’s just me, that’s just one story with a happy ending. Take away affordable healthcare and also the right to choose. . . .
Who needs the Taliban when we have these guys in our own backyards (and bedrooms)? It’d be impossible to improve on what Tetman said, so I won’t try.
I will make an admission, though. A couple of decades ago, when I was young and just starting in business, I registered as a Republican because most of my clients were Reps. It was distasteful at times, but necessary, I thought. I never bothered to switch back. Now I get a small amount of satisfaction watching these idiots waste money and time on me with their mailers and phone calls, plus I get to know thine enemy up close by perusing their hateful, Neanderthal screeds before I tear them into little pieces.
The biggest problem I see is that there is so little common ground between the two camps. The far right seems to believe that education itself is an evil promulgated by the liberal left. They do not seem interested in facts or learning, or scientific method, preferring what is essentially voodoo as their guide. Where then do we begin the discussion, or is it even possible to have one? Maybe Tetman is right–maybe the culture war will get bloody.
Bill Maher says to his right-wing guests that it’s impossible to argue when the two sides can’t agree on the facts. That, for me, is the most dangerous part of the Tea Party movement. Facts don’t matter. Science doesn’t matter. They scream about the Constitution but disregard its most basic premise: separation of church and state. Most of these people actually believe America was founded as a Christian nation! By Christians!
Oof. I have a headache.
What separation of church and state? It’s funny to me that my most conservative friends say they just don’t like big government and don’t want government “in their business.” Could the issues you’ve listed here Averil be any more in our business?? I’m suffocating.
Lemme guess. Your logic does not compute.
I feel the rage and worry bubbling up and then I come here and read everyone’s comments and it’s like stepping out into fresh air. Ahhh. Thank you.
We are looking down at a very scary line in the sand, and I worry that not everyone understands that. I voted early and spent over 2 hours in line waiting and listening to the rumblings and mumblings and biting my tongue but unable to stop my glares (I finally had to put on my sunglasses.)
In the meantime I am planning meet-up and wine/champagne-bottle openings with friends when–not if but WHEN–Obama is re-elected. What say we plan one here?
I’m in! (until then I’m hiding in my bedroom lest I start screaming at someone)
Totally in. I’ll be lining up the Jell-o shots. I’m a classy chick, you know.
Love it. Jell-o shots it is.
Susan and I watched a film on DVD this evening that fits in well in this line of discussion. It’s a documentary called “!Women Art Revolution.” We rented it through our NetFlix membership. I recommend it. It’s a reminder of how far our society has come in fifty years, and how the dogs of counterrevolution constantly threaten all the gains that have been made.
Thanks, Tetman, I’ll look for that one. I could use a reminder right about now.
I’d vote if I could! I really hope you guys can keep the baddies and lunatics at bay. Frightening but so true what Tetman says – that subsiding of white Christian male power that they cannot abide.
The pro-life comments are truly fanatical.
I heard an interesting comment by Chrystia Freeland on Bill Maher’s last night. She said (and I’m paraphrasing badly) that the pro-life movement is stuck with an untenable philosophical position: If life truly begins at conception, then aborting a fetus even of a rape victim is murder. But most people can’t stomach the thought of forcing a woman to have the child in that instance, or when the mother’s own life is in danger, so what many of them do is try to imagine that the paradox doesn’t exist. That’s why right-wingers like to pretend the woman’s body has ways to ‘shut that whole thing down,’ and why they ignore the fact that childbirth is still a dangerous proposition for the mother. For the wing-nuts, it’s always a matter of twisting the science to fit the ideology.
Ted Turner said something to Jerry Falwell a generation ago that has never been quoted near enough. In a Saturday Evening Post interview in 1984, there was this exchange:
Post: People accuse you of being among the Moral Majority and yet you obviously, if you’re worried about population control, are not an anti-abortionist.
Turner: That’s right. I’ve talked to Jerry Falwell about it. I said abortion isn’t murder and I can prove it. He said, “How?” And I said, “Because you don’t have funerals for miscarriages.” That stumped him. He said, “I guess you’re right.”
Good point. Another thing that puzzles me is how no one ever talks about in vitro fertilization, and what becomes of all those unimplanted zygotes. Those are babies too, are they not, if we’re following the ‘life begins at fertilization’ line of thought?