Dispatches from the War on Choice

I know, I know. You're all sick of this, and Jon is preparing some sort of poison for me even now.

Anyway, I direct you once again to South Dakota, where we find the following blatant douchebaggery from one of the anti-woman jagoffs there who helped pass the recent abortion ban in that state.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls "convenience." He insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother's life. I asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked.

BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

First, let's look at his lurid rape fantasy. Think maybe he's obsessed about this scenario a bit more than is healthy? I mean, the rape has to be "savage" and "brutal." He even throws in sodomy, just for good measure, though how that directly relates to abortion I'm not sure. And is there now some kind of scale on which rapes are measured? Will that be implemented at clinics throughout the state? I'm trying to refrain from making the obvious smart-ass comments here, because it would be easy to dismiss this as farce--unfortunately, it's not.

Also, Mr. Napoli requires women who seek abortion to be religious. Again, I'm not sure why that matters so much, but that's the scenario he's constructed.

Now, most importantly, look at State Senator Napoli's condition in the second sentence:

"The girl was a virgin."

Jesus Christ. So anyone who's ever had sex, even once, is ineligible, according to uber-misogynist Napoli, for an abortion, even if that woman was raped. If you read him closely, he wants this hypothetical woman to have intended to remain a virgin until marriage. So I guess if she was thinking about giving it up before the wedding, then she deserved to be raped, huh?

He wants to punish women.