A few days ago, Dante Atkins at the Daily Kos accused pro-lifers of being the "American Taliban" for trying to curtail taxpayer funding of abortions. On Sunday, Atkins went at it again, in a blog entitled "The Rapeublican Party." It began: "To take a page from Senator Harry Reid's book: if you're a woman anywhere to the left of Fred Phelps, I don't understand how you can in good conscience vote for the Republican Party."
Atkins acknowledged that Rep. Chris Smith backed away from language that would seek to deny taxpayer subsidies for abortion in cases of statutory rape (where a child gives consent, but is below a state's age of consent). But like many advocates of abortion, Atkins wants to insist that pro-lifers are all about "punishing women for daring to have sex" instead of protecting unborn children from being ripped apart in the womb:
The Hyde Amendment has always specifically exempted victims of rape from the federal funding ban, even though the hypothetical child resulting from a rape is no less innocent than one resulting from consensual procreative activities -- which clearly goes to show that the funding ban clearly has much more to do with punishing women for daring to have sex than it does with "protecting innocent life." As originally written, however--before a gigantic outcry from across the nation forced a reconsideration of this idea -- H.R.3 would have narrowed exempted rapes to those considered "forcible." Date-raped young teenager? Out of luck. Plied with alcohol or drugs? Too bad for you. Physical or mental disability? Oh well. Victim of incest? Grin and bear it -- literally.
The Daily Kos believes the opposite -- that taxpayers who aren't committing statutory rape should lend a helping financial hand to those who are, and women who aren't "daring to have sex" until they get in trouble should be subsidizing those women who do.
Aside from rape, Atkins also serves up the "abortion rights" talking points by arguing with a "conscience clause" bill by Rep. Joe Pitts, insisting that Catholic hospitals under ObamaCare should be forced to provide abortions to women when the life of the woman is said to be in danger. As the ACLU insisted to the federal government, Catholics who own hospitals should not be allowed to make decisions about medical care in hospitals they own. (Everything should be considered to be really owned by Planned Parenthood.) Atkins concluded:
The voters in this country should take a good, long, hard look at what the Republican Congress has introduced and promoted in its first weeks in office. A Congress and a party that was elected in a desperate quest for more jobs has shown itself once again to a subsidiary of the fundamentalist elements of its base. As it is, the voters should determine if this is actually the Congress they want in 2012; but women especially should reconsider any inclination they might have otherwise had to vote for a party that seeks to redefine rape to include physical violence, and then allow hospitals to let them die as opposed to terminating the pregnancy.
If you vote GOP...you're asking for it.
