House Republicans Drop "Forcible Rape" Language from Bill on Abortion
CBS
Updated: 4:27PM ET
House Republicans have opted to drop the word "forcible" from a section of House bill about abortion that addresses rape, following widespread condemnation from Democrats and abortion rights activists.
The "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," also known as H.R. 3, is a bill that would make permanent the "Hyde Amendment" - a provision banning the use of taxpayer subsidies for abortions that currently requires annual Congressional renewal.
The bill came under fire earlier this week, however, for changes it made to the original language of the amendment - which includes exemptions for women who have become pregnant as a result of rape, incest or life-threatening illnesses. In the language of H.R. 3, only pregnancies resulting from "forcible rape" were exempted. The bill would also limit exemptions among victims of incest to minors only.
Critics of the bill argued that Republicans were trying to "redefine rape," and that federal coverage for the abortions of rape and incest victims would be dramatically limited.
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Comedy Central's "Daily Show" added fuel to the fire Wednesday night, when Jon Stewart prompted a mock debate with correspondent Kristen Schaal on what exactly is meant by "forcible rape."
"You'd be surprised how many drugged, underaged or mentally handicapped young women have been gaming the system," Schaal said. "Sorry, ladies the free abortion ride is over."
(Watch the video at left.)
On Thursday, a spokesperson for the bill's author, New Jersey Republican Chris Smith, told Politico that he would be changing the wording of the bill to reflect the language of the original provision.
"The word forcible will be replaced with the original language from the Hyde Amendment," said Smith spokesman Jeff Sagnip.
Opponents of H.R. 3 argue that even without the "forcible" rape language, the bill contains a number of provisions that will limit women's access to funding for abortions - including the limits on exemptions for cases of incest, and tax hikes for people with private insurance plans that provide coverage for abortion.
Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, told Hotsheet she found it "deeply offensive" that the members of Congress would remove the word "forcible" but allow the language regarding incest to remain.
"That they would actually go back and think about it carefully, and take out the word 'forcible,' and yet withhold health care from women being subjected to incest...I found that deeply deeply offensive and insulting," she said.
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The Republican party doesn't really want to outlaw abortion, because then how would they be able to use the issue to extort money from their faithful? The Republicans make hateful anti-choice gestures that come down hardest on the poor: women who can't travel, women who can't take an extra day off work, women who can't leave the state or the country to get the health care they need, women who can't afford to pay for abortion services without insurance. REPUBLICAN women, and the wives and daughters of Republican men, can afford all that. Poor women, working women, and single mothers cannot.
Maybe we should start calling them RePUBICans. I don't know what it's going to take to get these perverts to get their heads (and laws, and cops) out from under my skirt.
We are still waiting for them to do SOMETHING that matters!
What do you call a woman forced to bear against her will? A slave. It amazes me that the anti-choice Libertarians can look themselves in the mirror every morning and not be ashamed.
...The most attacked (feared?) Christian group on this issue is the Catholic Church. This is so because, unlike most Protestant groups, the Catholic Church has had a constant (~2000 year old) teaching on abortion. Abortion is inherently evil because its intent and effect is to terminate the normal development of a unique living human organism (a.k.a. a baby like all of us non-aborted big people were for 9 months or so). Referring to abortion as "a surgical procedure" fails to capture its gravely immoral "human sacrifice" aspect... at over 50 million abortions since Roe V. Wade (that's 50 million people who were denied the right to be born) we've quite outdone the Mayans and Incans combined!
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Feared? When religion has to enforce morality by creating secular laws I would consider that failure. Please climb out of your box for a moment voice and look at this with different eyes.
As has been the history of the Catholic Church it has been far more successful at creating victims than solutions. These laws are designed to target women only with a boys-will-be-boys mentality that is beyond logic.
What solutions do you propose to balance out the cause and need for abortion? Is the church willing to support legislation that the fathers of unwanted children will be forced to pay for the upbringing, clothing, feeding, and education of these children? Failing that, how about a law to force church's to pay for the upbringing, clothing, feeding, and education of all unwanted children?
No; of course not that is the job of those federal social programs that conservatives hate. How rich is the Catholic Church? How many children go to bed hungry every night?
Also, I would be careful about using Indian tribes and killing in the same sentence with the Catholic Church. The Indian tribes of Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean Islands, and South American were enslaved and some completely eradicated by Christians from the Catholic Church.
No abortions needed.