Redefining Rape

In 1973 I was a single mother living in Houston.  I had a decent job and lived in a modest but, I thought, safe neighborhood.  Late one night I left my little girl at home with a friend and went to the local Laundromat to do my laundry.  After a couple of hours I loaded my clean laundry in the car and was getting ready to leave when I saw something move across my rear view mirror in a flash.  Before I could register what I saw a man with a knife was in my passenger seat.  He told me to start driving and keep quiet, so I did.  In a few minutes we reached a heavily wooded park.  He led me to a secluded area.  Then he raped me. He fled immediately after and I staggered to my car and went home.  Aside from the degrading, terrifying non-consensual sex he did not hurt me.  The humiliation that followed was a second assault.  My doctor and my employer openly scoffed and even my soon to be ex-boyfriend was skeptical.  After all I was not bruised or bleeding or dead, how could it be rape.  Years of emotional trauma followed but I worked through it.  Although I can still see every minute of that night like a movie in my mind, in time I put it behind me and rarely thought about it. 

It came roaring back a couple of weeks ago when Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill) introduced HR 3, “The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act”.  According to the bill’s co-sponsors the aim of the legislation is to put into law a permanent ban on any taxpayer funded abortions.  Currently taxpayer funding for abortions is prohibited by the Hyde Amendment.   First passed in 1976 as a rider to an appropriations bill it is named for the late Republican Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois who first sponsored it.  It is not a permanent ban but must be renewed each year.  It is routinely attached to annual appropriation bills in Congress so that the ban remains in place. In its current form, the amendment exempts from the prohibition abortions performed as a result of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman.  In their zeal to restrict abortions, a legal and constitutionally protected medical procedure, the Congressmen changed the language in the exception from “rape” to “forcible rape”.   I wish I could ask Congressmen Smith and Lipinski and their 173 co-sponsors if believe there are categories of rape some more “rapish” than others.  I wonder if they truly believe that some women will falsely claim they have been raped in order to secure a “free” abortion.  I wonder if they have any notion at all the shame and humiliation that many rape victims feel after the assault.  I wonder why they felt it necessary to qualify the crime of rape.  With no visible injuries and no proof beyond my word the skepticism I faced after my assault was so daunting that I packed away the experience and did nothing.  While I have no proof that Congressmen Smith and Lipinski do not trust or even respect women and the choices we are supposedly free to make their actions speak volumes to me.  Right now I feel the same anger and humiliation I experienced all those years ago.  Memory is a powerful force. 

After much public outrage from around the country the Congressmen pledged to remove the language from the bill.  However, I searched the House of Representatives website, www.house.gov , as recently as February 22 and found the language still in the bill and no evidence of an amendment to remove it.