As someone who has been pro-choice forever, one of my least favorite subjects is the “no abortion, not even in cases of incest and rape.” While I do think that it’s contemptible that the new Texas law does not have a rape/incest exception, make no mistake: the entire thing is contemptible. Banning abortion is contemptible with or without special exemptions. We shouldn’t have to justify to the state why we as women seek medical procedures. No rape victim should have to tell a governor that she was raped and that’s why she needs an abortion. This is what Roe is fundamentally about: women having the right to make private medical decisions without intervention of the state. Speaking of, Gov. Greg Abbott got the question and his answer was pretty terrible:
When a reporter confronted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott with a tough question about how the state’s new law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy will affect victims of rape and incest, the Republican swiftly vowed to eradicate sexual assault in the Lone Star State.
“Rape is a crime, and Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets,” Abbott said on Tuesday.
The promise was not received well by many critics of the law, which effectively bans most abortions in the state. There are no exceptions to the six-week rule for victims of rape or incest.
“I would love to see Texas address violence against women, but that is not what this bill does,” Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Tex.) told MSNBC on Tuesday. “It’s kind of this magical thinking that’s typical of [Abbott’s] approach to governing, that he’ll give an answer that is really untethered to the reality of what he’s doing.”
Fletcher said she would support efforts to prioritize victims of sexual assault in Texas, which reported more rapes than the national average in 2019, by putting resources toward rape kit backlogs and other measures to combat violence. But the congresswoman said she questioned the sincerity behind Abbott’s Tuesday comments about rapists. “We know that Texas, unfortunately, has not been making this its top priority,” she added. “It has instead made its top priority banning abortion.”
Texas state Rep. Gene Wu (D), who represents a district near Houston, also expressed doubt about Abbott’s plan to stop rapes in Texas. “Wait,” Wu said in a tweet mocking Abbott’s answer, “Governor Abbott had a solution to end all RAPE and he sat on it until now?”
Yes, Abbott’s answer was unsettling. The law effectively forces victims of rape and incest to carry their assailant’s child and instead of addressing that fact, Gov. Abbott is like “well, rape is a crime, let’s eliminate rape!” Gee, why didn’t those lady activists think of that? “You guys, did you know that the state of Texas could prosecute rapists and that would solve this problem we’re having with the abortion ban? WOW!”
Reporter: Why force a rape or incest victim to carry a pregnancy to term?
Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX): "It doesn't require that at all, because obviously it provides at least 6 weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion." pic.twitter.com/Mbx5JVHG1D
— The Recount (@therecount) September 7, 2021
As of February 2021, there were over 6,100 unprocessed rape kits in Texas.
Greg Abbott has been Governor of Texas since 2015… and was Attorney General of Texas before that since 2002.
In case anybody is curious how serious Abbott is on "eliminating" rape in Texas.
— Pé (@4everNeverTrump) September 7, 2021
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Getty.
LOL eliminate yourself you piece of trash
Excellent comment
I volunteer as tribute
But what about the rape and incest victims?
hey, they have six whole weeks!
/S
He will pass laws making it impossible to prove rape…problem solved. I loathe this man
That’s exactly what he means. All cartoonishly evil masked villains will be removed from the streets, which is easy enough since that’s not what a rapist actually looks like. And if the perpetrator wasn’t a cartoonishly evil masked villain, it probably wasn’t rape, right?
Precisely Bettyrose, all cartoonishly evil men beware you better leave Texas. The rest get a free pass. God help women in Texas.
In Abbott’s mind, all these cartoon rapists probably have brown skin, too, to make them easier to spot.
My thought was, are the rapists ‘on the streets’? Aren’t most people assaulted by people they know? Which means it’s happening in the home or the work place.
Exactly. What an idiot. It’s so messed up that someone could look at this issue and say, “i beleeeve in St8’s rites1!” Not every person capable of getting pregnant has the freedom or means to just leave when laws like this are allowed to happen, and when people like this tool are put into power.
If it WAS a cartoonishly evil man it was probably the Governor
If it WAS a cartoonishly evil man it was probably the Governor
Exactly. Eliminate rape by refusing to believe that men rape. And Problem solved.
All right then — start with Brett Kavanaugh! Go after him!
Oh, he’s okay?
This makes me so enraged I just can’t. He has zero intention of doing anything about rich white men who rape women.
Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, flip sides of the exact same coin.
Yeah , if he wants to eliminate rapists, he needs to start with the ones in the Republican party. Too bad he means to eliminate non-white rapists (aka one who could possible be a minority). Or even just the poor white rapists, but if you’re white and have any kind of money to donate to the party, you can rape all you want and never be prosecuted.
I’d be happy just to eliminate rapists from the Supreme Court.
Me too!! I cannot believe that we have TWO sexual predators in the Supreme Court of our country…..🤬
But, I laughed my ass with Rep. Wu’s response to Abbott regarding rapists!!
Thank you for recommending Representative Wu’s posts. I needed that!
Good one! Me too.
This guy has got to go! What an f***ing clown! Unfortunately, this clown is mandating that he is in charge of women’s bodies (unless they want to wear a mask that is)….GTFO
Amazingly, his disapproval rate is just 50%. What is going on in Texas?
Abbott is courting the MAGA crowd. This is what the MAGA wants to see. That’s why he’s doing this. This is symptomatic of the Republican party, not just Abbott. He wouldn’t bother with any of this if it didn’t help him for a 2024 presidential bid.
I was really hoping COVID would do us all a solid and take this POS out before he could do any more damage. Time for Texans to leave in droves.
Now would be a great time for a Democratic candidate to announce they are running against this POS.
Yes!!! Please!!! I am for Beto!!!
It won’t help unless the Republicans are willing to not vote against their party or abstain. We’ve already seen from the last election that people will claim they’re not MAGA but vote MAGA all the same – because Republican. At this point, if you vote for trash like this, you are most definitely MAGA is what I say.
He’s just a fundamentally bad person. That’s all I’ve got.
The majority of women who experience sexual assault are attacked by SOMEONE THEY KNOW, not a stranger on “the streets” (which, IMO, is a racist dog whistle).
What’s telling is that Abbott really can’t defend this law. The Texas Legislature voted down a change to the law that would have allowed exceptions for rape and incest (proposed by a Democratic representative, of course).
This I can confirm, as both a rape survivor and a Texan. He wants to get all rapists off the street? Well, I’ve a got a couple of names for him. Oh, but wait . . . the statute of limitations has run out. Well, damn it. I guess 10-year-old me should have known better.
Also, what about men who have not raped anyone yet, but will? Do their first victims get a pass on being allowed to have an abortion while any subsequent victims are left in the cold because the state didn’t manage to “get the man off the streets” in a timely enough manner?
This is leaving out that most women aren’t even aware they’re pregnant by six weeks. The men who wrote this law clearly have very little understanding of women’s bodies and cycles, as a pregnancy is counted from the first day of a woman’s last period, so a woman that is six weeks pregnant can be as little as one week post-conception, depending on when ovulation occurs.
This law is clearly in violation of Planned Parenthood vs Casey, which is the definitive Supreme Court ruling on abortion, not Roe vs Wade. It states that restrictions on abortion are unconstitutional when they are enacted for “the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.”
It’s why they’ve passed laws in the past that hallways of clinics have to be a certain width or that providers have to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. I’ve never expected anything but cruelty from the Republicans in my state, but this really takes the cake.
United Nations is on them, too. they claim that the way the law is written is against international law.
Note that he says “off the streets,” completely ignoring the reality of the rapists who prey on the people living with them (eg family members, visiting relatives and friends….)
He’s just evil.
exactly…it’s all just so awful
Gee what was stopping him from eliminating it before?
How magnanimous of him to finally exert his apparent omnipotent anti-sexual assault powers now. What a hero.
I’m really tired of the worst timeline
I’m having a lot of trouble existing in this world today, and Abbott and his ilk are part of the reason why. How are sensible, compassionate people supposed to live through this?
It’s so hard right now. It’s especially hard to stay compassionate and caring-something I’m struggling with right now
“Gee what was stopping him from eliminating it before?”
I really wish that journo had followed up with that exact question.
This man is certifiably insane.
Welp.
I hope white supremacy was worth it. Considering the bulk of white women in Texas support these politicians…
Come on ladies, y’all know you can disable your uterus during rape!
I’m sure you already know about this, Mabs, but Déjà vu just hit me hard, so I had to look it up because I couldn’t remember his name.
Just in case anyone out there doesn’t know/remember, former Missouri congressional representative Todd Akin claimed just that. While running for senate in 2012 he said “If it’s legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”
Thankfully, that comment shut his whole campaign down because he lost dismally to Claire McCaskill even after attempting an obviously forced apology. Apparently, he doubled down in a book a year later, writing that he regretted apologizing before defending his original statement, something I just learned while Googling.
I know he’s not the only person to ever make this claim, but the excerpts from said book in this Politico article – https://tinyurl.com/339mkphm – are just . . . awe-inspiring in their delusional self-pity. If that’s what living inside the mind of a mediocre white man is like then I’m more glad than ever to be a woman.
One of my son’s best friends was raped this summer and she got pregnant. She took care of it telling no one at the time and now she has a birth control implant in her arm. Except she is a lesbian who should never need birth control. My son only found out because she had big bruises on her arms and finding out it’s birth control he had to ask why. Sometimes I really hate this world.
Yes, that was him. And it haunts me to this day (obviously, thus the comment). I can never unhear it.
Of course now that he mansplained, I understand that all it takes is six weeks for an incest victim, who is probably a minor who may not understand that she is a crime victim or what pregnancy is or have her own money or a driver’s license or vehicle—to get a pregnancy test, go find a provider, arrange transport, and pay for an abortion, all without her abuser finding out!
oh really??? well in a state that encourages open carry, i am thinking that you’ve actually made it easier for women to become the targets of violence but this bill and others like them aren’t about caring about the health of women or logic
The justice system sure doesn’t work in favor of rape victims. Less than 10% of rape cases lead to convictions and police stations across the country sit on thousands of rape kits for years, as if it weren’t a legitimate crime.
Is he going to go after attempted rapists to send a message, or will they get the Kavanaugh treatment if they are politically connected and wealthy enough?
Highly recommend the recent podcast episodes on this terrifying abortion vigilante law and the supreme courts inaction. Both “Boom! Lawyered” and “strict scrutiny” each had two barn burner episodes that were also really informative.
I’m changing that stupid slogan “God Bless Texas” to “God Damn Texas”.
That’s much nicer than my grandmother’s edit. Grandma’s a devoted fan of the F-word.
TX Gov. Greg Abbott promises to ‘eliminate all rapists from the streets’
Not because he gives a single solitary shit about rape, or rapists
But to shut up those women who keep bitching about wanting abortions
This trash has no right to dictate what a woman does with her body. He obviously spoke to no woman in preparation of making this law. Just religious fervor from republican lunatics. Backwards piece of shit.
“it provides at least 6 weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion” he says.
except the first 2 weeks on the clock you are not even pregnant yet. and the next 3 weeks you cannot detect pregnancy by a test yet.
remember when it took a while for journalists to start calling out Trump’s lies on the spot? Yeah, can they start doing that again when a politician says something patently false?
I hate I’m so numb to this horror that my attention went to grammar. At LEAST 6 weeks would mean there’s a maximum cut off, that 6 weeks is the least amount of time someone would have to wait (which ironically enough is true lol since 6 weeks is typically the least amount of time you need to know you’re pregnant)
But only the free-roaming rapists. Not the ones they cultivated themselves. You know, cops and the people who work in his building and the ones they send to Capitol Hill. Those rapists technically aren’t “on the streets” (read: white) so they get a pass.
Before moving back to FL for COVID, I lived in Houston’s NW corner, known informally as Cy-Fair. It’s diverse, moderate-to-liberal, and the public schools are very good. In 2018, local Cy-Fair elections swept every male Republican out of office. Still, the state legislature is full of dumb-asses who pass horrible, nonsensical, MAGA boilerplate laws. Democrats from the state capitol have been in Washington, furious about the restrictive election laws passed in Texas. They feared for their lives. If you’re reading this and you can help support Texas Democrats running for the legislative government in Austin, please, I beg you, go there and work for change. It’s a beautiful state with great people. Be part of the solution.
And all of this in the service of the f***ing Bible, a book written by mortal men for the sole purpose of enslaving humanity.
Jesus IS Satan.
Getting all rapists “off the streets” tells me everything about how this piece of shit sees rape. Most rapes happen in the home, in the workplace, etc. and most rapists are not the “stranger” who attacks you in the street. It is someone you know, an acquaintance, family member, supposed friend, or someone else who has gained your trust enough to be alone with him somewhere. Then the man claims “consent” and most rapists (98%? correct me if I’m wrong) never go to jail. Abbott knows this and he does not care. He is a fucking monster.
He’s a waste of breath and a pestilence.
AS IF the rapists are out on the streets. Stupidity knows no bounds.
I cannot believe that in the year of 2021 women have to defend their basic right…
It’s not 6 weeks, it’s 2 weeks.