Rolling Stone: The Ten Dumbest Things Ever Said About Abortion and Women's Rights
1. Texas State Senator Wendy Davis is a "terrorist" because she filibustered an anti-choice bill.
Earlier this summer, Texas State Senator Wendy Davis stood up in her now iconic pink sneakers for a marathon filibuster session, essentially to keep the state's abortion clinics open. Abortion rights groups cheered, while even her opponents – who later passed the restrictive laws anyway – had to acknowledge she was formidable. Except for one guy, Texas Rep. Bill Zedler, who tweeted of Davis' efforts, "we had terrorist [sic] in the Senate." The deep irony is that abortion-related terrorism does exist: When anti-choice extremists murder abortion providers like Kansas doctor George Tiller to advance their political agenda, that fits the actual definition of terrorism. Speaking peacefully on the floor of a state legislature, on the other hand, really does not.
2. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
The very upsetting reality of pregnancies resulting from rape presents a conundrum for anti-choice advocates – thus the tendency to deny that this scenario can even happen. U.S. senate candidate Todd Akin notoriously pooh-poohed the possibility in 2012, saying, "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." Historical context: This is a thoroughly bogus theory whose origins can be traced back to experiments done in a Nazi death camp. While the comment torpedoed Akin's senatorial campaign, it's a zombie lie that will likely continue to be invoked to deny women's right to choose.
3. Who needs abortion when victims of sexual assault can just get "cleaned out" by a rape kit?
Texas Rep. Jody Laubenberg is responsible for this twisted variation on the Akin theory, as heard during the debate sparked by Wendy Davis' filibuster. In Laubenberg's imagination, rape victims don't need access to legal abortion, because they can just use "what's called rape kits, where a woman can get cleaned out." Obviously, this is not how rape kits work. At all. (In fact, they use swabs to collect DNA evidence to identify victims' attackers; they do not prevent or end pregnancies.) Laubenberg's medically unsound comments became the target of unending mockery on social media.
4. Women shouldn't terminate pregnancies resulting from rape because it's what God intended.
Another favorite anti-choice talking point is to say that rape survivors should be forced to bear their assailants' children, because it's all part of a divine plan. Even Justin Bieber nodded toward this idea in his 2011 Rolling Stone cover story, saying, "I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason." To be fair, Bieber added that he hesitated to judge women in this terrible situation – which is more than many right-wing politicians have done. "Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that . . . is something that God intended to happen," U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said in 2012. The same year, presidential candidate Rick Santorum said that rape victims should just "accept what God has given to you" and "make the best of a bad situation." Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan's callous two cents? "The method of conception doesn't change the definition of life." These guys certainly found a way to shut that whole thing down: They all got slammed for their remarks and lost their elections.
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