Michigan lawmaker reveals she is a rape survivor in powerful testimony against new “rape insurance”
Source: Salon
State Sen. Gretchen Whitmer shared her personal experience of sexual assault to show what's at stake in this law
KATIE MCDONOUGH
The Michigan Legislature voted on Wednesday to pass a measure to ban all public and private insurance plans in the state from covering abortion. As Salon has previously noted, the law will force women and employers to purchase a separate policy to cover abortion care, a rider that must be purchased in advance of becoming pregnant, even in cases of rape and incest.
Democratic lawmakers have vowed to press for a repeal, and fought hard to block it from passing in the Republican-controlled Legislature in the first place. One of those lawmakers, state Sen. Gretchen Whitmer, abandoned her prepared remarks while testifying against the measure and bravely disclosed her own experience as a survivor of sexual assault to show whats really at stake with a law like this on the books.
Her entire testimony is incredibly powerful and well worth your time, but Whitmer goes off script and shares her experience as a survivor of sexual assault and a mother to two daughters around 7:45.
I am not the only woman in our state who has faced that horrible circumstances, she said while debating the measure. I am not enjoying talking about it it is something I have hidden for a long time but I think you need to see the face of the women who you are impacting with this vote today.
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Read more: http://www.salon.com/2013/12/12/michigan_lawmaker_reveals_she_is_a_rape_survivor_in_powerful_testimony_against_new_rape_insurance_law/
valerief
(53,235 posts)for men's limp dick medicine--which ultimately can trigger a woman's unwanted pregnancy.
Yeah, that's totally fair.
Cha
(297,809 posts)thanks, DonViejo~
canuckledragger
(1,670 posts)Honestly, this republican obsession with rape and abortions...
Is the party full of rapists they're trying to protect or something?
Or is it just the plain old war against women thing?
Maybe a huge dose of both?
freshwest
(53,661 posts)And they won't be overturned by the USSC, as the ERA did not get enough votes to make women full citizens. It's just been by grace they've gotten anything for years, except the vote, but haven't used it to get their full rights...
RWNJs cannot be moved from their position by any story of rape, incest or any other cause for an abortion or even family planning. Liberals need to take a look at what they believe. They blow off outrage like bugs.
They preach that any woman who wants an abortion has a mental defect to even consider wanting to kill her child, thus they are not able to make a rational choice, so they make laws to keep their version of what is sane to control them since they're incompetent.
As to a rapist making a rational choice to not rape, they'll tell us 'Boys will be boys.' Thus reducing the male sex to little more than sperm donors and incapable of reason by mental defect, as well. So have at it, livestock, no one can go against those instincts.
I've read young men making the same case, by saying that there is no such thing as rape in the 'animal kingdom' and transferring that to humanity. Making light of the religious bent, but the results are the same, which is all that matters. We're livestock.
See, they got it going both ways.
Women's breasts attack the eyes of men and make them commit rape as their god Rush says. And they must obey him. I am disgusted beyond words with the Idiocracy that is being forced upon us.
After a while, not only will a number of people not want to be alive, there really won't be much reason for them to be. Livestock is slaughtered for profit, it is not educated or heard, or given rights.
But the profit goes where, to whom, and why?
Tx4obama
(36,974 posts)New Michigan Abortion Law Requires Women To Buy Something That Doesn't Even Exist Yet
Michigan women will have to purchase a separate rider if they want their health insurance to pay for an abortion, after the state's Legislature on Wednesday banned most public and private plans from covering abortion as a medical procedure.
Women must buy the rider before they become pregnant in order to have abortion coverage, once the law goes into effect in March. Women who become pregnant through rape or incest must already have the rider in place for an abortion to be covered, leading some opponents to dub the riders, "rape insurance."
But currently, insurance abortion riders don't actually exist in Michigan, the law's opponents say.
"There are no riders in Michigan that we are aware of," Lori Lamerand, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Mid and South Michigan, told The Huffington Post. "There are some riders available for some procedures, but there are certainly no riders for abortions here."
Elizabeth Nash is the state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a nationally recognized nonprofit reproductive health institute. "The riders don't exist," she told The Huffington Post. "There's no cost information. The riders just don't exist."
-snip-
Full article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/12/abortion-rider_n_4433040.html
WowSeriously
(343 posts)heaven05
(18,124 posts)with snyder the snake and these RW bastards running this mess, we have a really sad and demoralizing state to claim as home. And michiganians voted for this mess, so every RW puke who voted for this shit, shame, shame, shame on you!!!!!!
niyad
(113,627 posts)going to move them over into the category of decent human beings. they are absolutely sickening, and the fact that women find it necessary to reveal such trauma in the hopes of changing their minds is beyond depressing.
niyad
(113,627 posts)with this insane idea, the people who agree, the people who vote for it, the people who voted for the people who vote for it, and each and every person who agrees with it, experience all the trauma, all the pain, all the upheaval, each and every negative thing that happens--in some form or other. (no, before you start jumping, I am not advocating rape. I do, however, want them to experience somehow, what they are doing to women with their insane, destructive, hateful legislation). there has to be some way to reach these people, make them absolutely aware of what they are doing.
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,374 posts)... plenty of Michigan women must have bought Snyder's "tough nerd" slogan, because he got elected. And a bunch of teabagging Repubs got elected to MI legislature. There is nothing stopping Republicans from doing the bidding of the Kochs.
Michigan women, if there is such a bloc, can vote these bums out.
niyad
(113,627 posts)reversible.
Srkdqltr
(6,341 posts)niyad
(113,627 posts)exist? why am I not surprised?
jmowreader
(50,567 posts)for the Commissioner of Insurance in Michigan to decide there is no compelling reason to allow abortion riders to be sold in Michigan.
littlemissmartypants
(22,839 posts)I usually don't curse but fiddlesticks these repukeycons are gonna be sorry they opened up this vagina issue when we uppity women unload our ovaries of steel on their butts. eom