And if only Republican Men could get pregnant......just think!
They're at it
again.
Two days ago, a key
Republican-led committee passed the notorious "rape audit" bill, requiring rape
victims who get abortions to report the details of their assaults to the
IRS.1 And here's the
kicker--the bill passed without a single female vote.
We know that the only way to make
Republicans back off their war on women is to hold them accountable in their
districts. So we've created a powerful ad showing the faces of the 22 men who
passed this bill without the support of a single woman.
They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, and
in this case, that's absolutely true.
With the help of UltraViolet members, we're
already pushing this image out far and wide on social media. But to really make
this controversy take off, we need to expand the effort with ads targeted at the
districts of the men who voted for this horrifying bill so that they can't
ignore us.
If we can raise $20,000, we'll have enough
to make sure this terrible bill dies. Can you chip in $10 to help pull it
off?
It's incredible--while most Americans want
Congress to focus on jobs and the economy, Republicans remain obsessed with
controlling women's bodies.
It's almost like they've learned nothing from Sandra Fluke, Todd Akin, and the political backlash from the war on women.
But the fact is, by being so blatant about their anti-woman politics, they're handing us a golden opportunity to make sure this bill and others like it go down in flames.
The ad we created just says it all--22 men and not a single woman telling rape survivors that they need to report their assaults to the IRS when they access abortion services.
Can you chip in $10 to make sure as many Americans as possible see it?
Yes, I'll chip in $10.
Thanks for speaking out.
--Nita, Shaunna, Kat, Karin, Malinda, Adam, and
Gabriela, the UltraViolet team
Sources:
1. House Republicans Are Pushing A Bill That Would Force The IRS To Audit Rape Victims, Think Progress, January 16, 2014
House Republicans Are Pushing A Bill That Would Force The IRS To Audit Rape Victims
By Tara Culp-Ressler
on January 16, 2014
on January 16, 2014
"House Republicans Are Pushing A Bill That Would Force The IRS To Audit Rape Victims"
CREDIT: AP Photo/Mike Groll
House Republicans are currently advancing the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act,” or HR 7, a measure that would impose sweeping restrictions on abortion coverage that could make the procedure less affordable for Americans across the country. In addition to preventing low-income women from using their Medicaid coverage to access abortion, HR 7 could also have dramatic implications for the tax code and the private insurance market. One of its most controversial provisions could actually require the Internal Revenue Service to conduct audits of rape victims.
Why? Because HR 7 eliminates medical-expense deductions for abortion care, essentially raising taxes on the women who opt to have an abortion. Like many abortion restrictions, this provision includes an exemption for victims of rape and incest, as well as women who encounter life-threatening complications from their pregnancies. But in order to enforce those exceptions, the IRS would have to verify that the women who are claiming a medical-expense deduction for an abortion fall into one of those three categories, to ensure they’re not committing tax fraud.
Essentially, that would empower the government agency to have the final say over what “counts” as a sexual assault or a life-threatening situation. And that, in turn, would force victims to prove their case.
“Imagine having to recount a sexual assault — a horrifyingly painful, personal experience — to a tax collector,” NARAL Pro-Choice America says in an action alert to its members to encourage them to mobilize against HR 7. “An anti-choice bill in Congress would do just that. It could force sexual assault survivors who access abortion care to prove the assault occurred.”
That certainly sounds horrific. However, it’s important to remember that HR 7 is hardly the only piece of anti-choice legislation that sets up this dynamic.
The biggest political controversies over abortion policies throughout the past year have centered on rape victims, highlighting the anti-abortion laws that don’t extend any exceptions to them. It’s easy to see why the pro-choice community focuses on leveraging the outrage surrounding rape and abortion.
Voters overwhelmingly favor legal abortion access for individuals who have become pregnant from rape, and policies that don’t fall in line with that seem especially callous.
But even when abortion restrictions do include some kind rape exception, as HR 7 does, the issues don’t end there. Exceptions for rape victims have some unintended consequences. They require some kind of system to separate the women who have become pregnant from sexual assault from the other women who want to end a pregnancy for a different reason. They essentially necessitate “rape audits.”
And in states across the country, that’s exactly what’s already occurring. The audits aren’t being conducted by the IRS, but they are being conducted by state officials.
Medicaid coverage for abortion services provides the best example of this. The Hyde Amendment, the policy that currently forbids low-income women from using their Medicaid coverage to help pay for abortion services, includes the same exceptions as HR 7 does. Thirty two states and the District of Columbia follow that federal standard for their local Medicaid funds — so, if the women who live there want to claim one of those exemptions, they already need to sufficiently prove why they deserve it. Some states require more proof than others. In 22 states, low-income rape victims who want to use their Medicaid coverage to pay for their abortion need to present a doctor’s note. Eleven other states require them to file a report with law enforcement or a social services agency. Last year, Iowa approved a law that requires the governor to personally approve each woman who’s seeking an exception to the Medicaid coverage ban.
Studies have found that these exceptions don’t operate as intended. Most rape victims who rely on Medicaid don’t actually end up getting reimbursed for the procedure, largely because of all the red tape. “Basically these exceptions don’t work. It’s really a myth that there is coverage that is still provided,” Stephanie Poggi, the executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, told the Washington Post.
Nonetheless, that hasn’t stopped state legislatures from moving forward with similar restrictions in other areas of the insurance industry. Outside of Medicaid, several states have already imposed abortion restrictions on the private insurance market that are similar to HR 7. And the health reform law has given states an opportunity to impose coverage bans on the procedure in their new insurance marketplaces.
We already live in a world in which navigating insurance coverage for abortion is so complicated that many women simply assume their insurer won’t pay for it, and end up financing the entire cost out-of-pocket. And we already live in a world in which victims of sexual assault are forced to prove the validity of their experiences to a skeptical society that doubts they’re telling the truth. We certainly live in a world that’s enacted nearly as many barriers to abortion access as humanly possible.
Abortion restrictions that assume that some women’s reasons for terminating a pregnancy are somehow more valid than others exploits all of these dynamics. HR 7 fits neatly into this worldview — but it’s a continuation of a trend, rather than a brand-new outrage.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/16/3167301/taxpayer-funding-abortion-rape-irs/
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