Republicans’ latest awesome idea: have the IRS audit rape victims

ThinkProgress: House Republicans are currently advancing the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act,” or HR 7, a measure that would impose sweeping restrictions on abortion coverage that could make the procedure less affordable for Americans across the country. In addition to preventing low-income women from using their Medicaid coverage to access abortion, HR 7 could also have dramatic implications for the tax code and the private insurance market. One of its most controversial provisions could actually require the Internal Revenue Service to conduct audits of rape victims.

Why? Because HR 7 eliminates medical-expense deductions for abortion care, essentially raising taxes on the women who opt to have an abortion. Like many abortion restrictions, this provision includes an exemption for victims of rape and incest, as well as women who encounter life-threatening complications from their pregnancies. But in order to enforce those exceptions, the IRS would have to verify that the women who are claiming a medical-expense deduction for an abortion fall into one of those three categories, to ensure they’re not committing tax fraud.

Essentially, that would empower the government agency to have the final say over what “count” as a sexual assault or a life-threatening situation. And that, in turn, would force victims to prove their case.

So if you have an abortion after a rape, you have to move heaven and earth to prove that you really were raped — including sitting through an IRS audit, which Republicans have basically argued is the worst thing ever.. But if you shoot someone on the street, you just have to say you were “standing your ground” and you don’t have to prove jack (although it helps if the bullet recipient isn’t white).

I’m not sure which is more disturbing, Republicans’ sick fascination with firearms or their sick fascination with rape. Either way, a lot of Republicans are seriously unhealthy people.

Your weekly insane Republican rape theory

Raw Story: A Texas Republican state representative pushing legislation that would enact one of the nation’s strictest bans on abortion claimed in floor debate Sunday night that exceptions for the victims of rape and incest are not needed because emergency rooms offer rape kits that “basically clean her out.”

“If a woman is raped… We have hospital emergency rooms,” Rep. Jodie Laubenberg (R) insisted. “We have funded what’s called rape kits that will help the woman, basically clean her out. And then hopefully that will alleviate that.”

Laubenberg, from Collin County, sits on the Texas House Public Health Committee and chairs the state’s chapter of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which promotes business-friendly legislation to conservative lawmakers all around the country.

She was responding to a Democratic lawmaker who asked if she feels it is fair to require that rape victims in El Paso travel over 500 miles to San Antonio — which is where the nearest clinic would be located if Laubenberg’s bill becomes law — just to obtain an abortion.

As Raw Story’s headline suggests, there’s video to go with this. But there’s no need to subject you to it here. It’s basically posted to prove that, yes, Laubenberg did indeed say something so incredibly stupid. Follow the link if you have to prove it to yourself.

All this rape theorizing is just a way to justify taking the right to choose away from even the victims of sexual violence. After all, if every fetus is the same thing as an actual infant and abortion really is murder, then carving out exceptions for rape and incest makes no sense at all. Women who are victims of sexual violence shouldn’t be allowed to kill their babies.

Of course, that explanation may be the truest, but it’s also not very popular. It’s as true to say that a fetus is a baby as it is to say that an acorn is an oak tree. And if the explanation isn’t very popular, then you lie. You lie your lying ass off and make up stories about how abortion following rape is unnecessary, instead of explaining that you can’t let a rape victim murder her “baby.”

This is why Republicans can’t shut up about rape and abortion. The lie causes enough outrage. The truth would be even worse. Between making up some crazy bullshit about rape and abortion and telling people what you really think, the crazy bullshit does a lot less damage.

Fox News’ sick priorities

ThinkProgress: Fox News host Andrea Tantaros attacked MSNBC for covering the Senate military sexual assault hearings on Tuesday instead of the concurrent House IRS hearings, saying “what they consider to be priorities” is “unbelievable”.

On the June 4 edition of The Andrea Tantaros Show, Tantaros, who is a co-host of Fox News’ The Five, said:

“Sex crimes in a military, they are a real issue. There’s no doubt about that. I’m not going to poo poo it and say it’s not. What baffles me though is the way they prioritize these issues. The timing and the tone of them. If these were liberal groups targeted by George W. Bush, they would not be covering sex assault in the military. … Why is MSNBC devoting so much time to this issue when, as David Axelrod points out, there are so many other issues to deal with?”

Media Matters reports that on June 4, MSNBC devoted an hour and twenty minutes to the eight-hour sexual assault hearing, and an hour and thirteen minutes to the IRS hearing. Meanwhile, on the same day, Fox News spent four hours on the IRS hearing and a scant 14 minutes on the sexual assault hearing.

So MSNBC devotes roughly equal time to the two hearing, while Fox virtually ignores one in favor of wall-to-wall coverage of the other. Priorities!

And what a dull four hours that must’ve been, since the IRS hearings have so far resulted in almost nothing newsworthy. The health of the IRS “scandal” is so poor that Republicans are forced to put it on life support.

The idea that sexual assault in the military is a 14 minute story in a 24 hour news cycle is ridiculous. And, as you may recall, much of what little coverage they’ve given the issue has been appalling.

Huffington Post: Fox News pundit Liz Trotta made a series of incendiary statements about rape in the military during a Sunday appearance on the network.

Trotta was reacting to news that the military will allow women to work closer to the front lines. Speaking to Fox News host Eric Shawn, she alleged that feminists wanted “to be warriors and victims at the same time.”

She cited a recent Pentagon report that sex crimes committed by army personnel have increased by 64% over the past six years. Then she made a startling statement:

“I think they have actually discovered there is a difference between men and women. And the sexual abuse report says that there has been, since 2006, a 64% increase in violent sexual assaults. Now, what did they expect? These people are in close contact, the whole airing of this issue has never been done by Congress, it’s strictly been a question of pressure from the feminists.”

So really, Fox News shriekers get to STFU about media priorities and rape in the military.

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