What about secular, married victims?

March 7, 2006

Following up on the previous post about South Dakota’s abortion ban, the perspective from the law’s chief legislative sponsor is particularly noteworthy. The quote has been making the rounds this week, but it deserves to be shared as broadly as possible.

South Dakota State Rep. Bill Napoli’s (R) legislation includes no exception for unwanted pregnancies caused by rape or incest. On PBS, however, Napoli explained one possible scenario whereby a rape victim may be eligible for an abortion.

“A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.”

C&L’s video of Napoli’s comments is worth watching, just to fully appreciate how serious Napoli is about this. The strong implication, as TP noted, is that a rape victim may be able to obtain an abortion in South Dakota, “but only if you are a virgin, religious, brutally sodomized, and not entirely sure whether the rapist or family member actually impregnated you.”

Of course, as Dibgy noted, those sure are a lot of caveats.

Do you suppose all these elements have to be present for it to be sufficiently psychologically damaging for her to be forced to bear her rapists child, or just some of them? I wonder if it would be ok if the woman wasn’t religious but she was a virgin who had been brutally, savagely raped and “sodomized as bad as you can make it?” Or if she were a virgin and religious but the brutal savage sodomy wasn’t “as bad” as it could have been?

Someone ought to ask State Rep. Napoli for his response.

Update: The post initially misidentified the state lawmaker. The post has been corrected throughout.

State Rep. Roger Napoli (R) seems to have a pyschopathically lurid interest in sexual relations with virgins. Of course, I can’t properly diagnose him medically until I’ve seen him on the videotape.

  • I think there is a problem in Napoli’s consistency. I don’t know his reasons for a ban on abortion, but I imagine it has something with valuing the fetus as a human being.

    But in his statement about severely sodomized, religious virgins he places a greater weight on the importance of the mother’s life. So in this case, whether the fetus is human or not, the mother’s life takes precedence. In other words, valuing the fetus as a human takes a back-seat to valuing the mother’s life over the fetus’.

    Flash forward: I imagine that the laws created would involve a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy to determine whether or not a victim could be liable for an exemption. The more time it takes to do this, the later term the abortion will be. The later the term of the abortion, the more risk towards the mother’s life. This means that the exception written in law, meant to preserve the well-being of a mother actually endangers her life even more.

    So basically, there is a procedural flaw in the abortion law (assuming that it will take some time to determine the validity of a candidate).

    This was the reasoning used in Morgentaler v. The Queen, a Canadian case in which the abortion laws were abolished from the criminal code.

  • At the end of the video at Crooks & Liars, Napoli says that when he was growing up, if a boy got a girl pregnant, they got married and the whole town participated in the wedding. And that he thinks we as a country can go back to those ‘traditional values’. To Napoli, women get abortions because they don’t want to get married.

    Given that line of argument, why not pass a law saying that if you get someone pregnant you have to marry them?? How come anti-reproductive rights folks never talk about the responsibility of the man? Wouldn’t this be an easier bill for them to pass?? Or would this be opposed by ‘conservatives’ because it interferes with the man’s right to marry whom he wants??

    Just thinking out loud…

  • How can somebody be where they are at, and be so totally clueless? Can we sue people that are this stupid. I mean he is going out of his way to explain how inconsistant the whole law is. How can he present exemptions catagorically, and pretend like the law was well written, why aren’t these part of the law? If he says only a certain type of rape is exempt, then he should bare the responsiblity of the rape babies, and the mental health bills, don’t tell me that if you shove enough Jesus their way that they would be ok. They should all be embarassed for doing this, if I was pro life I would be mad at this moronic effort to push forth a half ass bill. This is begging to be shot down.

  • To Napoli, Hunt and the rest who are pushing this stupid law: I hope your wife and married daughter are never the victims of the brutality you so graphically describe.

  • It’s as if Bush brought back the caste system from his trip to India.
    A purity caste is entitled to special exemptions from the law… Earn points for virginity and good Christian upbringing. More points for ” being sodomized”,that only apply if your heart was pure…. Added points for current religious and political affiliations with the party in power. But as in the good old medieval days, unlimited purity points could undoubtely be purchased with cash for ” purity dispensations. Sounds like a money maker .. I can hear the ad now for “Pure Virgin Abortions”.. then the fast talking legal announcement… (only for those applicants with registered certificate of virginity and with documented intent of saving their virginity until marriage)

  • As I mention here, it’s interesting to compare Napoli’s comment to excerpts from Lynne Cheney’s “Sisters.”

    The similarity lies in a common expression of a certain pent-up something or other.

    Or, maybe it’s just me.

  • So… if a man was attacked & disfigured would he not be allowed to have plastic surgery to correct it? I mean, isn’t it really the same thing? Let him go around showing the world he was mugged, just as the poor woman has to go around showing the world (and living with) the fact that she was raped.

  • It’s instructive to remember the reason there is no health-of-the-mother exception in the Federal Partial-Birth Abortion ban is that right-to-lifers complain that health-of-the-mother is too often used as a convenient excuse to get a late term abortion.

    So here is Napoli saying that life-of-the-mother can be stretched to cover a rape victum because she’s ???? suicidal ???? over carrying her rapist kid. Doesn’t that sound like a convenient excuse?

    If the guy wanted to make an exception for rape, he should have just written in an exception for rape.

  • I’m with Tbogg on this one. I hope, and would pray if I thought it would do any good, that this guy gets colon cancer.

  • It would be more compassionate and humane (not to mention benighted, puritanical and medieval) to require the raped mother to wear a scarlet “A” upon her bosom.

  • It’s quite obvious what Rep. Napoli is getting at here. A self-styled traditionalist, he knows that women who are victims of rape or incest really asked for it. They dressed provocatively, they were putting cream of their legs when Daddy came home, they were listening to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and brother Bart couldn’t control himself. But, being the sophisticated 2006 man that he is, Napoli has revised that conventional wisdom to allow that there is a possibility that a few of these women are actually not guilty. Thus, virginity coupled with the right Jesus-type religion isn’t even enough. This woman should at least have to had to endure a terrible (of the worst kind imaginable, and he’s got quite an imagination) punishment. Punishment is key here. Either be punished brutally before the birth (after a couple of other important “innocence” criteria are met) or be punished for the rest of your life having a born a child emblematic of your “fall” who his ilk won’t lift a finger to help. Ah, that’s life–if you know what I mean. Gridlock, I applaud your idea of forcing men in consensual relationships to marry their fallen woman however, I fear, it would only serve to spike the incidence of Cheney phenomena, shooting mishaps. “Oh, gee, were you standing there, Sheila? And with my baby too…!”

  • Someone needs to check Mr Napoli’s computer at work. I have a feeling he’s been spending quite a bit of time on some rough porn sites. He seems to have this whole “brutal rape and sodomization of young religious virgins” pretty well mapped out in his mind.

    And one question, Mr Napoli — how does any of this perversion make the unborn child less innocent and deserving of life? Hmmmm???

  • Napoli’s comments certainly seem to belittle the horrific experiences of those women who may “merely” be raped in a “normal” fashion. He makes it seem like a non-virginal woman who is raped had it coming.

    And there are people out there who think someone like that – Napoli – should be entrusted to represent them in government? Now THAT may be the most frightening thought of all!

    • Comments are closed.