Missouri State Representative Rick Brattin (R)?has proposed a bill that would require women to obtain written consent from the man who impregnated them before being cleared to have an abortion.
No protections are put in place when the woman seeking an abortion is a victim of domestic violence; however, the generous Representative Brattin stated that victims of “legitimate” sexual assault should not have to seek permission from their rapists. The bill would also require victims to report their attack to the police, as Brattin believes that:
“Just like any rape, you have to report it, and you have to prove it.?So you couldn’t just go and say,?‘Oh yeah, I was raped’ and get an abortion. It has to be a legitimate rape.”
There are many, many things wrong with this bill. The misogyny behind the idea of requiring women to seek permission from a man to control their own bodies is enraging. The callousness in thinking that a domestic violence victim, whose safety and possibly even her life is at stake, must return to a man who has abused her to seek permission to make a medical decision is stunning.
Let’s put all that aside for a moment, though. Let’s explore in more detail Brattin’s comments?about exceptions made for sexual assault victims.
Let’s talk about “legitimate” sexual assault.
Candidates from the?Republican party have made “legitimate rape” a fairly common phrase. It was first coined by Representative Todd Akin, who insisted that women couldn’t get pregnant if they were “legitimately raped,” since, as so famously uttered in 2012:
“If it’s legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down.”
According to Paul Ryan and Todd Akin’s co-sponsored bill to eliminate public funding for abortion, the only exception should be made in cases of forcible sexual assault. Ann Coulter, Republican shill, helped narrow that definition further, insisting that it isn’t “legitimate rape” “unless it’s forcible sexual assault, as in when a victim gets “hit on the head with a brick.'”
There are a lot of problems with defining sexual assault in this way. The biggest problem is all the forms of sexual assault this perpetual myth makes invisible: the victim who was held at gunpoint may have no injuries, nor might the unconscious victim who was drugged prior to her sexual assault, or who had been drinking heavily, and neither does the domestic violence victim (you remember her, the one who has to get her abuser to sign her permission slip?) who experiences sexual assault on a regular basis, but who goes along because she lives in fear that her abuser may kill her or her children if she refuses. It’s possible, and even common, for a victim to show no marks or bruises.
Brattin also helped to narrow the definition, stating that “legitimate rape” includes a report to police. Despite a multitude of available scholarship on this subject, Brattin ignores the fact that forcing victims to report rape is nothing other than a way to further victimize them. Reporting isn’t always the safest option for a victim. Rarely are arrests immediate and rarely are perpetrators kept in jail until their conviction (in cases where there is a conviction). In fact, only 2% of reported rapes ever lead to jail time. Since 68% of rapists are known to their victim, reporting?may leave a victim unprotected while a rapist roams free who knows how to find her. In some cases, such as the ones that involve domestic violence, a victim may still live with the perpetrator. Yet we expect these women to report a sexual assault?to police because, as Brattin states, it’s “just common sense?”
Common sense for whom, exactly?
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