In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set.
Yeah. So there’s up to $1200 that rape survivors had to pay because the sheriff Palin appointed didn’t want to see more “burden” being placed on the tax payer.
As Jack & Jill Politics points out, Palin is also against abortion rights even for rape survivors.
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Previous post: A little more about Palin’s religious beliefs
Next post: Sarah Palin: Objectively pro-sexual assault
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Oh, wow… Thanks for posting this, Jill. This has to be the most unsettling thing I’ve heard about her thus far.
This is appalling not only for revictimizing rape victims….but also adds hypocrisy on two levels…..Palin’s draping herself as a moral clean-cut person and being an anti-tax crusader.
Can’t get lower than effectively taxing rape victims in order for the authorities to do their job…..:roll:
This sounds like standard rightwing governance to me. I can’t say I’m surprised. I don’t think her efforts to save Wasilla taxpayers money were very effective. Didn’t she leave the city 20 million bucks in debt?
I really don’t think it was about saving taxpayers money. I think it was strictly about rightwing ideology. They don’t like spending shit on the public welfare or the public commons.
OT: she also cut funding for programs that provided housing and job training to pregnant teenage girls. Which is kind of ironic.
So, Sarah Palin is awful in ways I don’t have words to express. But I am always curious when progressives frame the issue as though supporting abortion in cases of rape and incest is somehow a more reasonable or defensible position than being completely anti choice. The only basis for opposing abortion that has any grounding in morality is the believe that a fetus is a living being and is entitled to its own rights. And of course, very few people manage to even make that belief morally consistent and defensible, when they refuse to care as much about providing health care and food for living children, or ignore the fact that where abortion is illegal, the death of pregnant woman is inevitable, or rally against birth control, which reduces the number of abortions, or attack and threaten women at clinics and create a climate of fear that is hostile to life. But at least you can kind of understand why a person who genuinely believed that life began at conception would be opposed to abortion on principle.
But once you allow exemptions for rape and incest, you’ve conceded that a fetus is not a child and has no special rights. Otherwise you wouldn’t distinguish between the rights of fetuses based on what has been done to or by their parents. I mean, no one is saying a woman who is raped by her husband or ex husband has the right to kill their 8 year old, and if a child and a fetus are really the same thing the fetus has all the same rights. Of course, most of us recognize some distinction between an 8 year old, or an 8 month old, and a fetus. But once you recognize that disctinction, the only basis for opposing legal abortion is a need to punish and control women. If abortion were murder, it wouldn’t be OK for anyone. So if abortion is ok for rape surivors, then it’s not murder, so on what basis is it being withheled from everyone else? Because female sexuality is only OK if it’s unconsensual? Because every woman who has an unplanned pregnancy through consensual sex is irresponsible and immoral, and unwanted babies are a good cure for that? Because condoms never break, birth control never goes awry, no one ever plans on a baby they want and then loses their job or has some other life changing situation? Because we’ve fetishized female victimization to the point that rape is the only allowance for life’s unfairness we give women? And even then, only in theory, because only a miniscule percentage of rape survivors see their rapists formally convicted– so it’s a straw man argument anyway, because how is a woman supposed to prove, within the timetable for a safe abortion, that her unplanned pregnancy is the result of rape or incest? Are we going to divert limited rape investigation resources away from prosecuting rapists and into checking out the stories of women applying for rape exemptions for abortions? It’s pretty much the most illogical and morally indefensible positon on abortion that I can imagine.
So when I hear someone who is opposed to abortion completely, I disagree with that person and am suspicious of how far their defense of life goes , but when someone tells me they support abortion only in cases of rape and incest, I know right away that person is a scary evil right wing hypocrite who doesn’t give a damn about human life, andis opposing out of abortion not out of any defense of life, but out of a need to control and demonize consensual female sexual activity because female sexual agency is apparently terrifying and must be punished. I guess I’m curious about progessives who have the opposite reaction– what makes a rape exemption logical and morally defensible? What makes a politician who supports rape exemptions better than one who does not?
Interestngly, they claimed that such billing saved them $14,000 a year. The kits were said to be anywhere from $500-$1,200 per exam…that’s 11-28 rape kits, i.e., reported rapes per year.
US per capita rape rate is .5 per 1000. In the mid 90’s Wasilla’s population was approx 5,000. WTF???
It’s not, for all the reasons you said.
But here’s why I think it’s important: The entire anti-choice position is premised on a lot of the thoughts you laid out. That is, it’s about controlling female sexuality and punishing women under the guise of “protecting life.” If it were actually about valuing life and saving babies, anti-choice groups would be the first in line promoting wider birth control access, comprehensive sex ed, aid to families with dependent children, better school lunch programs, expanded welfare, universal health care, etc etc. They would probably also oppose outlawing abortion, because it’s been shown time and again that countries where abortion is illegal have far higher rates of death and injury from illegal abortion, and also have higher rates of infant mortality.
But anti-choice groups don’t support all of the measures that actually decrease the abortion rate. They don’t support measures that make it easier for women to have children. They don’t support measures that support healthy lives for children and families.
So they’re all about controlling and punishing female sexuality. I agree that the ones who support abortion rights in the case of rape/incest are particularly hypocritical in their bleatings about “life.” But since none of them really value “life” as much as they claim and instead use it as a stick to beat women with, it seems to me that the ones who would disallow abortion even for rape victims and even for women whose health or lives would be threatened by pregnancy are particularly cruel in their woman-hating.
In other words, they all think that women who get abortions are selfish sluts. At least the ones who would allow rape/incest survivors to terminate their pregnancies are honest about it, and at least carve out a small exemption for someone (the rape/incest exception supporters also usually support abortion rights in the case of threat to maternal life or health — something not usually supported by those who oppose abortion in the case of rape or incest).
But I agree with you that it’s fucked up no matter how you slice it.
How exactly do they justify billing anyone but law enforcement for rape kits? I mean, seriously, it’s collecting evidence of a crime for use in a criminal investigation. This is the only circumstance I’ve ever heard of in which the complaining witness is tagged for part of the investigative costs.
Of course, it’s pretty indicative of how society views rape. Every other crime, we recognize that catching the perpetrator is a societal good and band together to absorb the cost of investigation. Rape, well…apparently it’s best for society if the individual victims bear the responsibility of scraping up enough non-refundable money to get the ball rolling on their own. God forbid the tax-payers foot the bill for gathering evidence of a violent crime in order to get a sex offender off the streets. Maybe we should consider it fortunate that rape victims aren’t required to hire PIs or off-duty detectives on their own dime and then present the DA with a ready-to-prosecute case.
Eva, that was a whole lot of thinking to arrive at your conclusion. Your tenets of thought do not cover the entire and limitless belief systems, values or trends of thought people can have concerning abortion. For the one who you believe wants to control the feminist sexual being because they only believe in abortion for rape victims, for example, and not other cases, you have neglected a whole bunch of reason, and other valid moral arguments such as: In the case of a woman who has been raped, the right to life of the fetus/unborn is a constant, but is superceded by the right of a woman who has been raped to stop what she perceives to be rape-related trauma. A consequential rape child is undesirable by some, not all, rape victims who become pregnant as the result of the rape. To the ones who cannot surpass such moral nobility and live with the results of forced motherhood, including carrying a rapist’s baby to term, the average reasonable person can understand, and would thus justify terminating the unwanted pregnancy. That abortion wrong is outweighed by a greater wrong–the undue attack and violation of a sexual nature of an independent human being, who is not dependent upon the life of another to live, unlike a pre-born fetus, and the perpetual reminder of such a violation through forced motherhood, or forced incubatorship. So, I’m afraid it’s not that easy to demonize people that don’t arrive at the same point you do, although we all present heartfelt valid opinions. We can value all life, but must in certain circumstances make rank decisions on what life should be preserved.
We make these determinations when we decide who should get the dealth penalty, the rank of necessity for organ donees, whether a 95 year old will get the new heart, or a 10 year old boy. Life is valuable, but there are hard demarcations to what takes priority when there is a conflict.
North Carolina also req’s rape victims pay for the test. You guys going to blame that on Palin too?
With a few simple changes, however, lawmakers could ensure that this program fulfills its original mission. Congress should require states that receive grants to use at least 30 percent of the money to pay for testing backlogged rape kits. It should build in accountability by requiring that states report how many rape kits are tested annually. Lawmakers should also lift restrictions against states using the grants to pay private labs for DNA testing; crime lab directors across the country have cited this as a reason that they have not applied for or been able to fully spend their grant money.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/21/AR2008072102359.html
N.C. hospitals bill rape victims
Rape victims across the state are paying for their ill fortune in the most tangible of ways: a bill for the evidence kit needed to lock up the rapist.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/health_science/story/941202.html
Mulloverthis,
I’m not suggesting anyone be forced to carry their rapist’s baby, because I’m pro choice. I’m just asserting that it’s weird to me that of all the unfair and traumatic things that can happen to a woman that result in her pregnancy being unplanned or unwanted, we fetishize the ones that involve unconsensual sex as deserving special treatment. I don’t understand why the average reasonable person cares so much about someone else’s body and reproductive choices, unless they believe they are defending a person who can’t speak for themselves. And if that’s what they believe, then why does a “baby” lose its right to live because of something it had no control over, unless we’re admitting it’s not quite a baby in the first place? It’s ridiculous to me that we’re prepared to make a value judgment over women’s lives and bodies period, or that some external force should decide that rape is the only legitimate trauma in a woman’s life, and even then, my point that a rape exemption is completely unenforceable in a world where women who report rape are called liars and discouraged and charged for their own fucking rape kits stands.
Preying Mantis wrote: “How exactly do they justify billing anyone but law enforcement for rape kits?”
I believe that most of those who try to justify this practice believe it keeps out the riffraff which would likely be defined as anyone raped by someone likely to say: “It was consensual.”
I also blogged on this policy and how it reflects directly on Palin. I noted that soon after she took office Palin fired the incumbant police chief so she could have fired this one as well if she disagreed with his policy.
WTF? I did not know about this. This is very disturbing for all of the reasons already mentioned. Thanks for the info.
That is very, very, odd.
Even MRAs and people who believe in most accusations of rape are false usually support rape kits, as they provide good neutral evidence of identification, etc.
Jeezus fucking christ, this woman is nuts.
Coming next on Palin TV: “Domestic violence victims charged for police time and effort when a call did not result in an arrest!”
I think the idea is that, as is argued in some libertarian circles, some government services ought to be moved to a more fee-based system rather than payed for out of a general tax fund. The idea works really well in some areas: in Chicago, for instance, a fee based water department manages to encourage conservation, pay for the government service being provided, and still turn enough of a profit to reduce or eliminate the cost of the same service for low income residents. The problem is that pseudo-libertarians like Palin hear that idea and then apply it selectively to areas that don’t make theoretical sense but do support their own prejudice. Having a fee based Police department not only doesn’t work, but it kind of undermines one of the basic roles of government that even most libertarians agree is appropriate.
Let’s be clear: charging a crime victim for a medical test would, for people with insurance, just mean paying a modest hospital room co-pay. Not ideal, but probably not a prohibitive burden. It’s people without health insurance who wouldn’t be able to afford the test. Therefore, Palin’s policy seems to suggest that she thinks that only those rape victims who have health insurance deserve a rape kit. Forcing women to pay for the investigation into their attacker is one (very distasteful) thing, but advocating differential law-enforcement treatment based on the availability of health insurance is, IMHO, even worse.
She’s such an asshole. I’m sorry I don’t have more intelligent political commentary than that.
Unfortunately I’m not really surprised by this. It’s disgusting, but fits right in with the rest of what I know about her.
I have been reading about how many women are supporting her. These are Republican and independent women, and probably some of them agree with her views on things like abortion. But I wonder how many of them would feel about things like this…? So far it seems that McCain/Palin have been trying very hard to keep Palin’s actual positions out of the spotlight.
Here’s hoping that such positions gain the spotlight soon, and the diehard Palin supporters open their eyes to the fact that there’s quite a bit of terrifying stuff to their candidate.
Forgot to add that, given Alaska has the highest rape rate in the U.S., this is particularly disgusting. So the solution to the expense of rape kits because there are so many victims is… start billing victims!
Wow.
Jill,
You want to shift the cost of forensic exams from the survivor to who? Whose purse are you going after?
And what of the cost for nonsexual assault? for the burn survivor? for the drunk driver survivor? for the all other “survivors”?
Where do you draw the line, and whose purse are you going after?
“And what of the cost for nonsexual assault?”
Uh, when did we start billing assault victims for evidence collection? I was under the impression that if you, say, got your ass beat by a stranger outside a bar and went to the cops, they just went ahead and collected any evidence that was available. You know, without running a credit check or making you put down a deposit or anything. Keep in mind that rape kits aren’t medical treatment. They’re forensic exams. Much like what we have done on murder victims or people whose death was under suspicious circumstances, all without seeing the need to bill their next-of-kin.
So why do rape kits get popped into a special category where the police aren’t going to do their damn jobs unless the victim shells out to collect their evidence for them first?
When you are injured in a car accident your health insurance isn’t really supposed to be billed for treatment of those injuries. Theoretically, the car insurance of the person at fault actually covers those expenses (if you were at fault, your health insurance picks up where your car insurance leaves off). It’s the same premise for a worker’s comp claim. Those culpable for the injury pay for the treatment (your health insurance becomes your secondary payer in these situations).
Additionally, a rape kit is not a diagnostic medical test – it is a procedure to collect evidence. It’s not appropriate to bill someone’s health insurance for it at all.
because these women didn’t allow themselves to be murdered to prevent the rape.
“because these women didn’t allow themselves to be murdered to prevent the rape”
True enough, I suppose. I mean, if they were murder victims instead of live rape victims, the forensic exam would be gratis.
“Let’s be clear: charging a crime victim for a medical test would, for people with insurance, just mean paying a modest hospital room co-pay.”
Sorry, I missed this one earlier. How do you figure it would just be a modest hospital room co-pay? It’s not medical treatment, it’s not medically necessary, and the purpose of the exam is documentary, not diagnostic. Half the insurance companies out there would probably bounce such a claim immediately, and the other half would very likely be within their rights to deny coverage for it at will.
Though yes, it would (and almost assuredly does) function to establish a differential in law-enforcement treatment, where only women who can scrape together the cash for the optional exam would be able to report and have any realistic hope of seeing a conviction, particularly now that forensic evidence is expected in sexual assault cases. I’m sure it would also function to keep women who could theoretically pony up for the exam fee but who’d be left hurting by it from undergoing the exam, given the enormous backlog of untested kits some areas have. Why bother choosing between justice and rent if you know there’s a 90% chance you’ll be sacrificing just so your clothes can take up space in some police department storage locker until the statute of limitations runs out?
You fail at fiscal conservatism, jz. Just because the majority of the posters and bloggers here are of a progressive bent doesn’t mean you won’t be called on a basic failure to understand theory. What you’re arguing is that the cost of evidence collection and investigation for one crime should be shifted to the victim instead of the police department/taxpayers. The problem with that is that you create a system in which there is not equal protection under the law, something that is required for even the most conservative of liberty-based governmental systems.
We don’t charge the estate of a murder victim for the cost of investigating their murder. Evidence collection is evidence collection. If we were talking about paying for the hospital stays of rape victims you MIGHT have a point, but we aren’t. If the cops don’t have enough cash in their budget to investigate crimes the answer isn’t to shift the cost of police work to victims. Not only is that monstrous but it is a dereliction of one of the few obvious roles of the government: law enforcement.
Either go back and brush up on your theory or be a better troll.
Also, “rape kit” is a bit of a terrifying phrase. A bit like “Cops for Cancer”. It isn’t clear that when they say “Cops for Cancer” that they’re really against cancer.
Same with “rape kit”.
So, say some young girl is raped by her father. Perhaps Palin expects her to save her allowance to pay for the rape kit? Or maybe she should ask her rapist/dad for a loan? But I guess it wouldn’t matter if she collected evidence or not, because even a solid rape conviction wouldn’t allow her to get an abortion if she got pregnant from the rape.
Palin makes me feel physically sick. Policies like that don’t seem all that different from rape itself… She might as well just tie women to the bed herself, and give rapists the room key. (Sorry if that’s too graphic.)
Barack Obama has ABSOLUTELY FAILED to enact legislation to protect Illinois rape victims from having to pay for their own rape kits, which they do to this very day. And until last month, every Democratic mayor in North Carolina allowed rape victims to be billed for the kits.
However, no rape victim in Wasilla ever paid a single cent for a rape kit. And you haven’t cited a single source indicating that one did.
Why are rape kits so expensive?
What is a community saying about rape when it doesn’t support an important part of a rape investigation? One would think a community would value getting rapists off the street.
Did Palin know about this? It would have rarely happened. Wasilla had less than 8 rapes a year, except in ‘02 they had 16. I can see where she would think like I would think, namely that who on EARTH would charge for a rape kit? Potentially very big, but needs more work if the purpose is to convince people who weren’t already against her.
I don’t understand why the women can’t just line up and support Sarah Palin:
I think former Senator Ricky Santorum (R-Wingnutopia) says it best:
(Sarcasm alert)
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