"A rape victim could be charged with a felony and face up to three years in prison if she aborts a child conceived in that rape, according to a bill proposed by New Mexico state Rep. Cathrynn Brown (R-Carlsbad)." New Mexico House Bill 206 attempts to further dehumanize rape victims by criminalizing abortion as “Tampering with evidence." (WaPo, HT: @aileengraef)

  • eldritch

    BULLSHIT.

    “Tampering with evidence.”

     What is this, I don’t even…

    • millie fink

      Savages. Or at best medievalists, in the worst way.

    • Sagodjur

      Actually, that’s fine if they want to call it evidence. Since people can’t be evidence, it’s their assertion that unborn fetuses aren’t people. Since the chain of evidence must be maintained for that evidence to be admissible, the state will have to perform abortions in order to collect the evidence and properly store it in a secure facility. You wouldn’t leave evidence with the victim specifically out of fear of evidence tampering.

      • awjt

        That’s so fucked up.  But I like the way you think.

        • Sagodjur

          I agree. As I was writing that comment I was imagining that scenario showing up in a Chuck Palahniuk novel.

    • jerwin

      Tampering with evidence of God’s love.

  • Fantome_NR

    fucking absurd and disgusting. if this “evidence” is needed to prosecute a rape case, the aborted zygote can be preserved. there is no need to cary it to term. pathetic.

    • NI MEN HAO-DY TRAMPOLINA

       It’s all about punishing women. Women must be punished for existing.

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

        Wait, what? Women exist when dudebros aren’t thinking of fucking them?

        Seriously, this is the most stupid law ever. If it happened to be the case that a woman’s embryo or early term fetus was relevant to an investigation and potential prosecution, they could take tissue samples for DNA analysis from the aborted fetus.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/WV2FCQLT2ZZN3IMI6ZPZ6O77KU Clark

    Rep Brown is backpedaling by saying the bill is to target a rapist who gets his victim pregnant, such as in a case of incest, and forces the victim to get an abortion to hide the crime.  However, given the language of the bill and Brown’s staunch pro-life position, it is clear that her goal is to target abortion doctors to shut them down and put them behind bars.  She’s truly a wackjob of a legislator.  Did she fall into some ice and get frozen in the middle ages and get thawed out recently?

    • flickerKuu

       Because that always happens… sigh.

    • echolocate chocolate

      And in that situation, surely it would be better to provide optional and confidential counselling to abortion patients, giving them a chance to tell someone and start on the road to prosecution of the rapist… rather than treating them like a piece of meat that is only useful as “evidence”.

      I mean for christ’s sake, criminalising victims for destroying evidence of crimes against themselves, are you fucking kidding me?

      • http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin

        How would that punish the survivors? Isn’t the point to punish the survivors?

        • echolocate chocolate

          Well the point is obviously to be politically opportunistic and screw the consequences. That every one of these backward policies will have no effect other than to roll back civil rights and ruin people’s lives is inconsequential to the parasitic sociopaths making these proposals.

    • glaborous_immolate

      The language of the bill says exactly that: it applies when the act is done “with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime.”

  • Engineer_

    Wait… What? 

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Langford/12816097 Michael Langford

    So, can we get a link for who’s running against this wacko?

    • http://www.eff.org/ deaduncledave

      She reps Eddy county in NM, one of the most conservative parts of my state. Don’t hold your breath.

  • chgoliz

    She’s not requiring the woman to marry her rapist or else go to prison?  She’s too soft on (morality) crime to be a real Republican.

    • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

      I know you’re kidding, but please stop giving her ideas!

      • http://www.fagerland.org tofagerl

        It’s all the rage among religious fascists over in the middle east!

  • jandrese

    Doesn’t matter who is running against her.  Her seat has been gerrymandered to total safety.  The only danger she has is losing a primary to an even more extremist right winger. 

  • yetanotherhumanbeing

    Found this nugget from the Salon piece:

    Brown said in a recent interview that she’s a skeptic on global warming.
    “I believe it’s now a discredited theory,” she said. “I believe Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth was helpful. It gave us sources to evaluate, It was helpful in debunking the theory.”

    http://www.santafenewmexican.com/localnews/26HOUSE-FRESHMAN-CLASS-profiles–ready-for-sun-#.UQLnauhG-Hl

    :D

    • flickerKuu

       God help us. Republicans are truly the most ignorant, uneducated slobs in the room.

  • theophrastvs

    Damn. just when the standard for the absolute zero of human empathy is established here comes another republican to achieve new lows.

    • blueelm

      Yeah. I really have nothing to say anymore. I hate that these disgusting rape/murder/torture loving, hate filled beasts have so much power in my state.

  • http://www.fieldsovgravity.com/ Garymon

    So would she apply the same ‘logic’ to removing a bullet from a shooting victim?

    • Jason Baker

      Stolen humor, but “If it was a legitimate shooting, the body has ways to just shut bullet down.”

      Edit: Yes, now I see that someone else has already inserted this joke here.

      • JonS

        Jokes aside(?) … I wonder if this could be re-worked as a way of getting rid of the death penalty. Because, you know, once you kill some one, it’s kinda hard to get them to confess/provide evidence.

  • http://twitter.com/egumeny Eirik Gumeny

    The bill’s already being reworked — she claims a drafter wrote it wrong — but it’s still messed up all around. http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/politics/nm-abortion-bill-draws-heavy-fire

    • cwcaton

      Thank God you posted that. I almost said something foolish about the law says “intent to tamper with evidence,” but then that article points out that having an abortion to hide a rape is a perfectly acceptable decision for a victim to make. I appreciate you keeping me from putting my foot in my mouth!

  • s2redux

    Now they just need a companion bill to rename the rep’s district from “Carlsbad” to “Brownsbad.”

  • Roose_Bolton

    I’m telling you, there’s something almost beautiful in the sheer madness of your Republican party, America. Such pure, unadulterated WTF, which will only be eclipsed by the next mind-blowing idea they come out with tomorrow.

    • http://profile.yahoo.com/WV2FCQLT2ZZN3IMI6ZPZ6O77KU Clark

      The craziest WTF part is that the base is largely poor and their interests would be better served by voting democratic.  To me, that’s the biggest WTF : voters who vote against their own self interests and the interests of their families… (voting against health care??? wtf)

      • theophrastvs

        yep.  i’ve been following theories on that head-scratcher for-f’n-ever.  best ones are generally:  religion and xenophobia  (“wait, are those two non-overlapping concepts?”)

      • L_Mariachi

        The reason I don’t like this line of criticism is that voting only in one’s own direct self-interest is not something we should aspire to. Of course there’s a big difference between voting to raise your own taxes to fund homeless shelters and voting to give largesse to Walmart and pro sports team owners at the expense of the public treasury, but the “voting against their self-interest” language elides that distinction.

    • http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin

      When does the sheer madness stop being beautiful and start becoming an ugly dystopia? Do they have to start sending even more people into the prisons to provide even more cheap labor to their campaign donors? Do they have to turn the reeducation camps for lgbt youth into concentration camps?

      • That_Anonymous_Coward

        I think that happened about 10 years ago…

  • flickerKuu

    Someone check under that woman’s dress. No real woman would ever propose this “law”. What is wrong with Republicans? Why are they obsessed with things that don’t matter to the living???

    • http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin

      “Do you think this penis makes my rights look bigger?”

      No. I can’t find the studies right now, but trans womyn face more violence, including sexual violence, than cis or intersex womyn. An immunity to pregnancy and to the specifics of this proposal doesn’t mean an immunity to rape and the ways this proposal legitimizes rape and punishes survivors.

    • Ipo

      No real Scotswoman would.  
      No need to check under skirts or kilts, no humane human would. 

  • http://www.nothinginside.net mindysan33

    And you know that there are people out there, right now, nodding their heads that this is good legislation that will save babies and somehow protect women!  Someone thinks this is wise legislation and I bet someone will try to introduce similar bills in other states… cause they see yet another work around to end abortion.

    What is wrong with people? Seriously? What is wrong with them? 

    • millie fink

      And you know that there are people out there, right now, nodding their heads that this is good legislation that will save babies and somehow protect women!

      Saving babies, yes. But protecting women, or any female humans? No. Not at all a concern of theirs, unless it’s their own “innocent” and pure daughters. Or missing white girls and women.

      • blueelm

        Only upper class white women and girls who have not ever drunk alcohol, actually. Believe me, they don’t care if a bunch of “trailer trash sluts” get raped and die. 

      • Sagodjur

        Actually, it’s worse than that. They only care about saving *unborn* babies. Once the baby is born, mom can raise them in the slums without federal assistance or healthcare for all they care.

      • http://www.nothinginside.net mindysan33

        I don’t know… I think I disagree about (some) of them not caring about women. I think you are right that they don’t ACTUALLY care about women. I mean clearly they don’t, especially if they are not virginal and white. And rich, don’t forget rich (or at least upper middle class), as blueelm points out below. If they cared, they would listen. They would work to protect our rights. They don’t do that. BUT I do think there is a subset, a rather large subset- who are activists, if only at the grassroots level – who thinks that anti-choice laws protect women – they really buy that stuff.  In their mind, a liberated woman is an oppressed woman and we live in an age where the proper god ordained roles have been turned upside down, in all ways (the gender order, the racial order, the religious order, etc). As to their view of women, we are so weak and fragile, we need to be led down the proper path in life… Because god said so.  It’s like the people who try to convert atheist, not out of malice, but because they believe that they know best because god told them so in a book that was translated and retranslated to fit one political context or another…

        Now, I agree that the politicians who pass these laws and many of the people who support them/vote them into office are deeply misogynistic and racist. All they care about is staying in their jobs and they do that by appealing to their base, some of whom are the people who craft this legislation… They also skate this fine line of racism, because they know they can get that vote by doing so. 

        But of course, none of these laws protect women. We all known that here. And of course, if you are rich, white and elite, the laws don’t matter anyway, because there is a whole different reality you live in then, where you pretty much can do whatever.

        I don’t know. The whole thing is depressing, whether people are passing these law out of “trying to protect women” from themselves or out of misogyny and racism.

        EDIT: FYI, not to say this is an excuse for them. No, in a way, I think this makes them all the worse. Because they are doing it because they think it is the right thing to do.

      • Ipo

        New Mexico doesn’t have white majority.  I think the divide is religion not race.  Same as in Pakistan. 

        • http://www.eff.org/ deaduncledave

          Exactly. The majority is Hispanic. (You’d be surprised how much racism there is against Hispanics in this state.) The problem is the holy Roman Catholic church.

  • Chuck

    Obviously, the “proof” will be that the victim’s body didn’t “shut that whole thing down.”

    • Chuck

       BTW — will the victim have to sit in an evidence locker until the baby is born?  And will the baby have to stay there afterward until the trial is done?

      • Tribune

        Sounds like it should be the plot to some dystopian sci-fi movie.

        • anankesf

           Handmaid’s Tale perhaps?

  • jimkirk

    If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the internet, it’s that there are just too many kinds of stupid out there.  (And the Republican Party accounts for about 90% of them.)

  • IronEdithKidd

    Typical – anti-choice legislation being proffered by someone incapable of getting pregnant.  

  • spacedmonkey

    Seriously, anyone who votes for people like this is a evil sack of shit and utterly worthless as a human being.   I can’t figure out any other way to see it.  And don’t say they’re just dumb and ignorant. “Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from evil.”    Being that stupid is an explanation for why people do evil shit, but it’s no more an excuse than, say, having too much testosterone is an excuse for being violent.

  • Petzl

    Isn’t it cool how anti-abortion republicans keep coming up with novel arguments that insult the intelligence and disgrace our humanity?  It’s like dystopic psychohistorical fiction, but it’s not.

  • peregrinus

    The taliban have clearly decided to work from the inside of their most evil enemy.  Obama’s clearly pulling troops out of Afghanistan to put them into New Mexico.

  • http://www.eff.org/ deaduncledave

    For the record, Google still has cached her contact information under the nmlegis.gov website. I expect she’d love to hear your opinions on this matter…

  • Velocirapt42

    The only even slightly likely scenario in which this would happen is with incest, where the rapist would stick around long enough to know about the pregnancy. God knows a girl pregnant with her father’s baby should be stopped from terminating the pregnancy at all costs. If it was legitimate rape, her body would have shut the whole thing down anyway.

    • http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin

      This is America. The likely scenarios can also include prosecutors trying to pad their records and private prisons bribing officials to fill their cells.

    • glaborous_immolate

      No, lots of rape is done by someone the victim knows and is in a relationship with. Rape is not just strangers jumping out of bushes. 

  • http://redesigned.com redesigned

    fuckpublicans…they put the evil in ignorant.

  • glaborous_immolate

    I think the bill just says its evidence tapering IF YOU INTEND TO tamper with evidence to hide your own crime. So this is wildly misleading as an article.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      You’re giving it its most benevolent possible interpretation, which does not square with what we know of law and how it’s enforced in the real world.

  • starfish and coffee

    A rape case is judged on whether there was consent or not. Conception does not prove either consent or not consent so irrelevant as criminal evidence.
    I realise that there was mention of incest in this particular case, but again there *could* theoretically be consensual incest (not likely I know..) for which again conception would not prove anything either way.
    So evil aside, it’s not a very clever argument.

  • Gilbert Wham

    Um, wouldn’t biological material from a D&C provide DNA evidence, if that is, indeed, their (publicly stated) aim? Also, fuck those people and their crazy new ideas for crazy laws.

    • Gilbert Wham

      (not that I’m having a D&C done in order to provide evidence is a Good Thing, you understand. Cos, clearly, it fucking isn’t)