Good segment about this on last night’s Newshour, transcript here. The most revealing exchange was this one, in which Fred De Sam Lazaro (I’ve always loved his name) puts a question to state senator Bill Napoli:
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls “convenience.” He insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother’s life. I asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked.
BILL NAPOLI: 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.
Napoli’s comment raises the prospect of a kind of religious apartheid, in which the state is empowered to make moral distinctions based on the faith and supposed sexual purity of rape victims. Ladies, if you’re sexually experienced and not religious, too bad for you.
What a useful look into the theocratic mind, and what a clear reason to fight these people full-on in the political arena.
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