For the life of me, I can't understand why this is even open for discussion. No, I am not now (and never have been) in favor of abortion as a means of birth control, but come on, it's not a fucking black-and-white issue.

Planned Parenthood is in my will. I'll leave it at that.

This country is FUCKED UP.

Independents are overwhelmingly in favor of allowing abortion in rape and incest cases.

The GOP is doing a great job of whittling their potential voter base down to nothing.

If we can't trust women not to lie about getting raped to get abortions, why are we still taking the risk of letting them vote or own property? We can't trust them to be good citizens, a uterus utterly precludes that possibility!

Republicans need to be beaten. With hammers. Often.

seeing this stuff over and over makes me want to incite bills in these states requiring young men to submit DNA sample along w/ selective services for paternity database. Each male in the database that fathers a child will be put on an 18 year probation-variant. Maybe dead-beat-dadness can affect your credit score. Make it heavy on a man like it's heavy on a woman.

I want to slap the shit out of whoever was up there telling her to calm down, holy fuck.

Umm ... if we make abortion unavailable except in cases of rape or health emergencies, of course women will lie about rape to get abortions. There's a straightforward reason for this: many women need abortions, for reasons other than rape or medical emergencies. Given a bad set of choices--should I lie, or bring up a kid in poverty/an abuse situation?--many will likely pick "lie," and will justify it on the quaint theory that they are in charge of their own bodies. So this asshole is, indeed, a bold truth-teller. He's just a bold truth-teller who doesn't give a fuck about women and who doesn't value their rights.

@6 -- Seeing b.s. like this makes me want to propose bills in these states requiring ALL men to submit a DNA sample. Let the fucking Republican scum know that they're equal to women in being untrustworthy SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY HAVE DICKS. Apparently there is no level so low that a Republican won't stoop to it. If I still lived in Hammond (where I was born) I'd be down at Lawson's office handing them money for her next campaign.

P.S. - Why do modern Republicans have such ugly, ugly souls?

Wow. I would figure that a woman in that case would have to come up with a pretty elaborate story in order to get an abortion. Once you say you are raped, doesn't it have to be reported by whatever agency? I know PP asks that question on the paperwork... "Are you here because you were raped?"

And then if you weren't, you have to make a bunch of shit up and hope it stands... and as a result make the world worse for real victims of rape and incest.

He disparaged amyone who has gone through rape or incest with that very statement!

It passed the house. Assholes. http://www.indystar.com/article/20110331…|newswell|text|News|p

God I hate living in this fucking state.

The only good republican is a dead republican; dead after their head's have been cut off in a public square.

The French had a really good idea in 1789 on how to handle the conservatives in their country back then

@13, thank you! I've updated the post.

Um, so... I'm going to probably get flamed to all hell for this, but I think Turner has a point, although he doesn't really know it.

Disclaimer: I support first-trimester abortion rights and believe that government funding should be made available for abortions just like any other healthcare procedure, BUT...

If the only way a woman can afford to get an abortion is if she claims that she was raped, then this clause would be specifically encouraging women to make false rape claims. Turner frames that as an issue of people defrauding the state, but I'm more worried about the false claims themselves. False rape accusations can have tremendously damaging consequences for the falsely accused, even if they're never convicted.

Furthermore, Lawson's argument is provably false. There *are* women who lie about rape. They may not be the same people Lawson has worked with as a sex crimes investigator, but it happens, and we can't assume that everyone who makes a rape accusation is telling the truth.

Again, I think this whole argument is foolish, because women should have access to affordable healthcare, including abortion services, regardless of the circumstances of conception. It's just that, regarding this one issue, I think it's a little less black-and-white than Cienna and Rep. Lawson are making it out to be.

@8 and 16,

This bill only bans abortions after 20 weeks, which is pretty fucking far along in pregnancy. A vanishingly small number of abortions are performed that late, and effectively all of them are performed for health reasons. Women have little to no motivation to lie about rape or incest to be eligible for an abortion under this law.

And it's the Republicans who want rape or incest victims to be forced to make frape accusations with the police/DA's office in order to qualify for abortion at ANY stage in the pregnancy. It's Republicans who are begging for an increase in formal allegations, real or false.

@ 9 - I doubt you have to live in Indiana to donate to an Indiana state rep.

@16 Sure there are women who lie about being raped, but we absolutely CAN and fucking SHOULD assume every rape victim is telling the truth. Anyone caught making a false rape accusation should be punished accordingly, but saying we can't assume every rape victim is telling the truth is only going to discourage rape victims from coming forward. To not take every rape accusation seriously is to not take rape seriously.

@17: Noted. I'd be fine with the clause if it allowed a woman to make a rape claim without being forced to name or prosecute her supposed rapist. If they wanted to (and I would encourage them to), they obviously could, but in the case of a woman falsely claiming that she has been raped, no one else gets harmed in the process. Pushing for an increase in formal allegations is basically what I'm against.

@19: That's not how our justice system works. Taking a rape claim seriously is not the same as assuming the victim is telling the truth. Once a claim has been made, an investigation ensues, because the defendant also has rights that must be protected. You say yourself that anyone caught making a false accusation should be punished (they usually aren't), but how would you even separate the false from the true if you assume they're all true from the start?

@22

Rapes are already under reported in this country and women are still put through the wringer when they come forward. We should assume they are true because they could be true. If we assume they're false right away then the investigation will go nowhere and the woman, if she was raped, will be even more traumatized. It's called an investigation and proof. If she lied, she deserves to be punished. There still should be a honest investigation into it without a rolling of eyes or half hearted attitude.

Either way you spin it, this is just another way of putting the burden on the woman, whether she's a victim of rape and/or incest, or someone exercising her right to family planning. Men—legislators or otherwise—should have no part in this decision.

@6 Do guys still register for Selective Service? With a couple of wars going on and all, you'd think there'd be a low registration rate.

@25 If they want any money from filling out their FAFSA, they do.

@7- Me too! That was so insulting. I'm surprised he didn't toss in a "sweetheart" at the end.

Thanks for all of your posts and good work Cienna. I'm volunteering with Naral Pro-Choice Washington because I'm so tired of feeling upset about this.

Great expression of the woman--who I think is Gail Riecken--behind Rep. Turner at :38 and thereafter. Her eyes are about to bug out of her head.

@17: Since an anatomical screen ultrasound usually happens at 20-22 weeks, that's exactly when a lot of people will discover that their child has a disability for which they're not prepared or which isn't compatible with life. Abortion because of a fetus's disability isn't politically popular, but since parenting a severely disabled kid is, statistically, financially and maritally ruinous, I can completely understand why someone wouldn't want to do it. (And plenty of reasonable women wouldn't want to carry around a fetus for an extra 20 weeks knowing that it would die shortly after birth. Twenty weeks IS far along, but the next twenty are just as long.) Sure, there are plenty of things you can't know about until a baby is born, or later, but I think the more prenatal screening available, the better, but it's not so great if no one is able to act on that information.