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Congressman Doug Lamborn, a Colorado Springs Republican, is one of 172 members of the U.S. House sponsoring a controversial bill introduced last week that would ban the use of federal funds for almost all abortions and limit the definition of rape to acts that are “forcible,” notes the Gazette. This highly refuted interpretation excludes cases of nonconsensual sex in which a woman is drugged, cases of incest in which the victim is under the age of 18, and statutory rape. “For example,” writes Mother Jones, “If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion.”
The American Prospect calls out the media for perpetuating the categorization of rape, before citing numbers from the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network: “Roughly two-thirds of all rapes were committed by someone known to the victim. Thirty-eight percent of rapes are committed by a friend or acquaintance, and 28 percent are committed by someone with whom the victim is already intimate. RAINN also estimates that 3,204 pregnancies occurred as the result of rape in the 2004-2005 period.”
Michael de Yoanna contributed to this post.