October 12, 2021, 6:24 am
Republican legislators in Texas, who are apparently as morally bankrupt as they are stupid, have continued the gross charade of insisting that S.B. 8—i.e. the Texas abortion ban law—doesn’t force sexual assault survivors to carry unwanted pregnancy to term.
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At a recent hearing, they even trotted out Dr. Ingrid Skop, who seems to be doing her best to earn her special place in hell. A Texas-based member of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (aka Doctors You Should Probably Stay Very Far Away From), Skop argued, “there’s adequate time in this law for a woman who’s been raped to discover that she’s pregnant, and if she wants to terminate the pregnancy, I think that she has time to do it.”
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So, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) did what she does best. Which is to say that even though part of the GOP platform is gutting public education, AOC took them to school.
“Once again,” Ocasio-Cortez said, “we’re in a room of legislators who are attempting to legislate reproductive systems that they know nothing about… Six weeks pregnant—and it’s shameful that this education needs to happen, because this conversation shouldn’t even be held in a legislative body—six weeks pregnant is two weeks late for one’s period.”
“When you are raped, you don’t always know what happened to you,” Ocasio-Cortez explained. “And I speak about this as a survivor. You are in so much shock at what happened to you, sometimes it takes years to realize what actually went on.” The rhetoric around this bill, AOC said, is unhelpful because it addresses an alternate reality in which sexual assault is largely perpetrated by strangers lurking in alleys at night. This simply isn’t true, and nothing about Texas’ current approach reads as anti-sexual assault.
If @GovAbbott is as “anti-rape” as he claims, why doesn’t he just lead the Texas state leg to pass a law for $10k bounties on people who engage in or aid sexual assault?
Or is he opposed to that bc it’s a slippery slope of vigilantism where men could be unjustly targeted?
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 9, 2021
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AOC pointed out that sexual assaults are “overwhelmingly” committed by someone the victim already knows and trusts, and that the trauma of being assaulted, just like any other trauma or major stress can (wait for it) even make one’s period arrive late.
“The stress of a sexual assault,” she pointed out, “[can] make you two weeks late for your period, whether you’re pregnant or not.”
AOC also listed other reasons that menstrual cycles can run late sometimes, including changes in weight, or life stressors—or sometimes, no reason at all (most people’s cycles aren’t perfectly regular with no deviations, for an entire lifetime).
“Unbelievable,” AOC concluded. “Unbelievable that the Republican side would call a witness so irresponsible and hurtful to survivors across this country.”
*First Published: October 12, 2021, 6:24 am
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