Authors: Mickey Huff
Censored 2012 (20 page)
Iowa has two bills on the table regarding this issue. The first, House File 153, mandates that the state recognize the personhood of a fetus from the moment of conception and requires that it provide the same protections to that fetus as to any person in the state. Iowa House File 7 expands the legal definition of self-defense to include the use of deadly force in defense in any place that a person is legally allowed to be. Taken together, the two laws would make the murder of abortion providers legal and mandatory for the state and/or its citizen.
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Justifiable homicide is not a new idea in anti-abortion circles. In the case of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas in 2009, his convicted murderer attempted to claim that his actions were justified because he was saving the lives of unborn children who were in imminent danger from the doctor. The judge in the case ultimately refused to allow this defense and the suspect was convicted of murder. Kansas, however, has restrictive laws regarding abortion as well.
Kansas has enacted a full ban on abortions after twenty-two weeks; consent for a minor seeking an abortion must be obtained by both parents; the abortion provider must read a state-written, unscientific script to their patients; and private insurance providers are disallowed from offering abortion services in their regular insurance plans.
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Additionally, a new law, SB 36, will likely shut down most health clinics in the state due to building code and requirements of proximity to a nearby hospital.
There is a slew of other signed, passed, or pending legislative actions restricting a woman’s right to a safe and private abortion across the country. What is listed here is by no account an exhaustive list of the current or pending abortion restrictions in state governments. What is clear is that these are not isolated pieces of legislation created by communities with their own best interests in mind. This is a conspicuously concerted effort throughout the country to rescind the constitutional rights of female citizens of the United States of America and to impose the morals of a certain religious faction onto the rest of the population. The New Right wasted no time in enacting these policies all over the country after their windfall election in November 2010.
In fact, the newly Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed House Resolution 3, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. This resolution takes aim at any tax credits that a person may be able to claim for medical expenses that might have been abortion services. Any health insurance plan, whether private or small-business employer-based, that covers abortion would not be considered tax-exempt. Tellingly, the taxable status of employer-based health insurance does not apply to corporations, only small businesses.
In effect, this would eliminate most insurance coverage for abortion across the nation. The bill does allow for tax exemption exceptions in cases of rape or incest, as is the historical norm. However, in an unreported committee statement of intent, language was reinserted
to alter the definition of the word “rape” used in the bill to specifically apply only to forcible rape in which the woman had to be physically subdued, fought constantly, and could prove it through medical exams. Although this bill has passed the House of Representatives, it is unlikely that the Senate will pass it and President Barack Obama has promised to veto it.
These legislators, through hypocritical rhetoric of libertarian mores coupled with an overt religious authoritarianism, are attempting to flood state legislatures with blatantly unconstitutional laws in order to force abortion rights defenders into a court battle. They are well aware that the current composition of the Supreme Court led by John Roberts makes
Roe v. Wade
vulnerable to being overturned completely if it reaches their court. Abortion rights defenders are aware of this as well, and have been wary of challenging any of these laws in court. The concrete results of these laws will be that scores of women will be left to abort their own fetuses; birth children to whom they bear no moral responsibility for raising because their options were restricted by the state; or undoubtedly be abused by the underground market that must inevitably grow to deal with unwanted pregnancies.
Conceptually, the Republicans passing these laws believe that they can, through legislation, stop abortion. That is their stated goal. However, they are attacking the only institutions that can potentially effect a solution: family planning clinics. The endgame here is the overturning of
Roe v. Wade
in its entirety, a return to unlicensed and dangerous abortions, and the criminal prosecution of any woman who would deny a fetus its full-term birth.
Apart from decisions regarding abortion, American women are being increasingly policed and harassed by their fellow citizens and institutions. In January 2011, a woman who was eight months pregnant met her friends at The Coach House Restaurant in Roselle, Illinois. While sipping water at the bar and talking with her friends, the bouncer approached and asked that she come outside to speak with him. Once outside he proceeded to ask her if she was pregnant and she answered in the affirmative. The bouncer then told her that she had to leave, ostensibly because he felt that the restaurant was not safe for a pregnant woman, but he most likely believed that she would drink alcohol while there and thereby damage her fetus.
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Though she said that she had no intention of drinking that night (which she has the right to do regardless), and the law enforcement officials in Roselle told her later that there are no regulations against pregnant women in bars, the bouncer felt he had the right to make decisions for this woman based on her reproductive status.
Among the many recent incidents involving women breastfeeding their children in public, two Ohio mall security guards forced a mother to leave the facility in February 2011 when they said that they had received complaints from shoppers about her exposed cleavage. Knowing her rights, the woman protested and told them that there were laws in place that protect her right to breastfeed in any area that she is personally allowed to be in any other instance. They forced her to exit the mall regardless and she later contacted city authorities and mall officials who both reiterated that she was legally allowed to breastfeed anywhere she liked.
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In both of these cases the legal rights of pregnant or nursing women were infringed upon by citizens who, armed with their own mores, values, and assumptions, believed they could make decisions for women based on their reproductive status regardless of the laws and protections that the US government has afforded women. That few people come to the aid of pregnant or nursing women during these incidents speaks to a cultural ambivalence toward this issue that often defers to those in positions of authority. However, when authorities are pursuing ends not codified in our laws, it should be everyone’s duty to uphold the rights of pregnant and nursing women.
Corporate media coverage of sexual assault in the military is quick to report the steps the military is taking to prevent and punish sexual assault. According to our story, “New Recourse Option for Victims of Military Sex Assault,” military sexual assaults in war zones rose 26 percent from 2007 to 2008, and another 33 percent over the following year, according to annual reports from the US Department of Defense.
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In 2005 the Department of Defense created the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO), the military’s first lead office to deal strictly with sexual assault. There are two recourse options available for victims of rape or sexual assault: restricted and unrestricted reporting. Restricted reporting is the new system, which bypasses the chain of command by permitting a victim to call a sexual
assault response hotline coordinator, or to tell a victim’s advocate, and receive medical care. With restricted reporting, however, no investigation is conducted into the incident and the accused assailant is free to potentially assault other service members. Unrestricted reporting forces service members who desire an investigation along with medical care services to first notify their commanding officers, as well as the person or people they are accusing—the investigation is often conducted on a “he-said” “she-said” basis. Without video proof or a multitude of witness testimonies, these investigations seldom determine the truth and are discontinued without conviction. In these situations, it is very dangerous to be the accusing party, as backlash assaults (subsequent assaults which take place because of attempts to prosecute the first assault) are common and accusers are often denigrated by their units and officers.
In the article “New Study: Sexual Assault in Air Force Goes Unreported,” we see that according to the United States Military, one in five US Air Force servicewomen is a victim of sexual assault, and nearly half of rape victims—mostly females who are assaulted by males—never report the crime. Of the nearly 20 percent of servicewomen who admitted being assaulted, 58 percent reported being raped and 20 percent reported being sodomized, which the military classifies as “nonconsensual oral or anal sex.”
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This raises the question of how our troops can defend our country when there isn’t an appropriate means for them to defend themselves against threatening forces within the military itself.
The New York Times
reported:
The Pentagon attributed the rise [in sexual assaults] largely to an upward trend in the reporting of incidents, and said the jump did “not necessarily” reflect an increase in the number of incidents. The Pentagon offered no evidence that reporting rather than sexual assault itself was on the rise in the military, and there have been multiple reports in recent years suggesting that the strains between close quartered men and women in war zones have exacerbated the problem. As they are quick to note, since 2004 the Defense Department has radically changed the way it handles sexual abuse in the military,
including encouraging victims to come forward, expanding access to treatment and toughening standards for prosecution.
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Yet, these changes are far from perfect and military culture expressly prohibits any public sign of weakness or a break in rank loyalty. These standards revisions from the Department of Defense are utilized more as a shield from criticism and inquiry than as a form of protection for assaulted men and women in the armed forces.
Corporate media coverage of domestic rape rates parrots the same misleading and inaccurate statistics as those reported by the federal government. According to the
Washington Post:
The number of rapes per capita in the United States has plunged by more than 85 percent since the 1970s … according to federal crime data. This seemingly stunning reduction in sexual violence has been so consistent over the past two decades that some experts say they have started to believe it is accurate, even if they cannot fully explain why it is occurring.
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Although this article states that rapes are one of the most underreported crimes, they qualify the reduced rape statistics reported by state and the federal law enforcement by stating that one school of thought holds that rape has declined for the same reasons that other violent offenses have: a reduction in the lawlessness associated with crack cocaine, a shrinking population of young people and an increased number of criminals in jail.
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The racialized connotations in this quote cannot be easily obscured, as the war on drugs and the prison-industrial complex have both targeted young, poor men of color. What has been said here is that the government has incarcerated a lot of black men; the underlying assumption being that it is predominantly black men that rape women; an assumption that remains unsupported by statistics.
In the article “Women Take Heed: Rape Reports Mislead,” we learn that the US continues to report decreased numbers of rape, but Eleanor Smeal, president of Feminist Majority Foundation, says the
numbers are misleading. In a hearing before [the] Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, Smeal called for a national reform of rape reporting. Specifically, Smeal argued the current definition of rape is outdated, excluding many types of rape. The definition has not been updated since 1927. It does not include forced anal or oral sex, vaginal or anal fisting, rape by an object, sexual assault, statutory rape, rape by men against men, any rape by a woman, the use of drugs or alcohol to subdue a victim, nor does it include rape of children younger than twelve. Smeal argues that underreporting of rape “threatens the safety and lives of millions of women. Without adequate reports, we cannot know the magnitude of the problem and therefore cannot adequately address it.” The national definition of rape must be updated.
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Most of the United States’ rape laws were first codified in the early twentieth century and have since seen little revision that acknowledges the major shifts in sexology, juvenile justice, and the rights of women.
Just as the high level of institutionalism in the military promotes acts of sexual violence more than it deters it, incarcerated prisoners in American correctional institutions are many times more likely than the general population to be raped or sexually assaulted. Within the national prison population, more than 18 percent of self-identified homosexual inmates (male and female) report being forced into sexual acts against their will compared with just over 2 percent of the self-identified heterosexual population. Self-identified homosexual inmates are not only victims of sexual violence from other prisoners, but also of routine acts of violence and negligence by prison guards and officials.
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Again, this relates to the culture of hypermasculinity and rigid gender codes that are enforced in masculinist institutions like prisons or the military. In both institutions, the exemplar agent is one who embodies masculine stereotypes to the extreme, who uses violence and intimidation to enforce his will and abhors femininity in any of its forms. It is no great wonder that women and feminized men in either the military or the prison system are attacked and used for coerced sexual purposes at an inordinate rate and that the perpetrators of these crimes are left unpunished.