Just When You Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Less Compassionate…

It’s getting hard to come up with titles for these posts that aren’t just a random bunch of characters as I bang my head repeatedly on the keyboard, longing for the gentle respite of unconsciousness.

Dear Mrs. DeGraff, What the hell were you thinking? Love, Every Other Woman On The Planet

During debate in the Kansas State Legislature, Representative Pete DeGraaf (R – big fucking surprise)  said while discussing a bill that would require women to purchase SEPARATE abortion insurance policies for coverage, rather than, you know just having your regular health insurance cover a perfectly legal medical procedure, as most of them now do:

“We do need to plan ahead, don’t we, in life?”

Rep. Barbara Bollier (R – kind of surprisingly) asked him, “And so women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with a pregnancy?”

DeGraaf drew groans of protest from some House members when he responded, “I have spare tire on my car.”

“I also have life insurance,” he added. “I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, I put it to you that this man could not be more callous if he were free-basing kittens and crushing puppies.

It’s good to know women should put rape and potentially lethal pregnancy complications on that list of things they should just “be prepared for in life.”  I’ll pencil the rape in before “high school graduation,” because that’s when it happened to me, and well, I got fixed, so I dodged that other bullet.

What in the nine hells is wrong with this jackass?  Rape and traumatic birth defects are just something we should be prepared for? Some people might suggest that having health insurance in the first place, should be preparation enough.  Those would be people with a sense of morals and compassion.

And he’s an Associate Pastor at his church.  That means, on some level, one of his jobs is compassion.

FAIL.

I’m going to echo Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon by asking, exactly what the hell do men think happens to woman’s bodies during pregnancy and birth? Some of them seem to be under the impression that it’s all daisy-strewn fields, bon-bons, strawberries and lounging about on clouds with a chorus of cherubim.  How the hell has this man been married and had children with his wife, and NOT known what pregnancy does to a woman’s body?  On top of that, how does he not comprehend how awful a violation rape* is, and how having to bear a pregnancy resulting from a rape is a violation no one should be asked to endure? Or how horrible to be forced to gestate a doomed child, or wait until a dead fetus poisons your body and kills you?

And how the hell is it compassionate to make women by extra insurance, because they should just “be prepared” for rape or the death of a wanted child?

Not to mention that, once again, this will disproportionately affect poor women.  Poor women are lucky if they have health insurance in the first place, let alone having enough money to buy a second policy.

Yet more evidence in the case for the GOP’s class war.

*I have actually had at least two separate men tell me something to the effect that rape can’t be “that bad” because “you already have a hole for it.  It’s not like he had to cut one or something.”  Now, marvel at the strength of my character that I am NOT in jail for homicide.