Acknowledge That Rape Is Rape and 5 Other Steps to Combat Sexual Violence

President Obama commendably convened a task force to address the rampant rape and sexual assault incidents that are "an affront to our basic decency and humanity. And it's about all of us -- the safety of those we love most: our moms, our wives, our daughters and our sons."

Herewith from my 20 years in advocacy for women and children are my suggestions for the council:

1. Acknowledge That Rape is Rape
One would think this would be obvious -- but one would be wrong.
A minority of people with a grasp on power believes that only a "legitimate" rape results in pregnancy. We know why some conservatives say this -- they want to deny birth control, morning after pills/emergency contraception and abortion options to women, so minimizing the effects of rape means minimizing those women's health options. We heard this from Todd Akin, Paul Ryan and Mike Huckabee, who defended Akin then and attacks Democrats now for (falsely) believing that women are "victims of their gender" who need to get contraception from "Uncle Sugar" to control our "libidos."

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Why Abortion Clinics Need Buffer Zones

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in a case that could ultimately determine whether women across the country can maintain safe access to abortion clinics. Depending how the justices rule on McCullen v. Coakley, cities and states may no longer be allowed to enact buffer zones around reproductive health care facilities — a policy that abortion providers say is critical for ensuring the safety of their patients and staff, since protests outside of clinics often turn violent.

Earlier this week, the New York Times and the Associated Press both profiled Eleanor McCullen, the 77-year-old plaintiff in the legal challenge who has become the face of the current Supreme Court battle. McCullen says that buffer zones violate her free speech rights, and points out that she’s hardly a threat to women entering health facilities. “I am 5 feet 1 inch tall,” McCullen said in a filed statement for the case. “My body type can be described as ‘plump.’ I am a mother and grandmother.”

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From Prisoner Sterilizations to Abortion Restrictions, the Reproductive Rights of Women of Color Are Being Trampled

So many women in the United States lack reproductive justice, but recent stories show how it disproportionately eludes women of color.

In the 1950s, John Rock and Gregory Pincus, the inventors of the birth control pill, sought a place where they could test the drug among a large population of women so that it could be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. They visited Puerto Rico and decided it would be the perfect place, because if they could demonstrate that “poor, uneducated … women of Puerto Rico could follow the Pill regimen, then women anywhere in the world could too,” according to a PBS American Experience write-up about the Puerto Rico trials. 

Many women in Puerto Rico were eager to use birth control, but “[t]he women had only been told that they were taking a drug that prevented pregnancy, not that this was a clinical trial, that the Pill was experimental or that there was a chance of potentially dangerous side effects.” Three of the women “guinea pigs” died. 

The physicians viewed these women as “ideal” subjects because they were poor and uneducated, and they in turn gave the women half-truths and false information. This weekend, we learned that in at least one prison, a somewhat similar situation has been unfolding in the United States.

The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) broke the news on Sunday that some women inmates in California felt pressured by their prison’s physician to get tubal ligations. The physicians, under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, also reportedly failed to obtain required state approvals before performing sterilizations on 148 women inmates in the state between 2006 and 2010, according to the CIR report.

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Sandra Fluke: GOP positions 'offensive, obsolete relic' of past

Sandra Fluke on Wednesday offered a dire vision of the future if Mitt Romney is elected president, one where rape would be redefined, women would be forced to have ultrasounds against their wishes, and access to birth control would be controlled by men.

Calling GOP positions “an offensive, obsolete relic of our past,” Fluke told delegates at the Democratic National Convention that “we know what this America would look like and in few shorts months that’s the American we could be, but that’s not the America that we should be, and it’s not who we are.”

Fluke was referring to a host of Republican moves, including measures to narrow the definition of rape to include only those that are “forcible," as well as attempts by Republicans in some states to force women seeking abortions to undergo a vaginal ultrasound and efforts to curb funding for Planned Parenthood, a leading source of contraception for poor and younger women.

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Virginia’s Proposed Ultrasound Law Is an Abomination

Under the new legislation, women who want an abortion will be forcibly penetrated for no medical reason. Where’s the outrage?

This week, the Virginia state Legislature passed a bill that would require women to have an ultrasound before they may have an abortion. Because the great majority of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks, that means most women will be forced to have a transvaginal procedure, in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced. Since a proposed amendment to the bill—a provision that would have had the patient consent to this bodily intrusion or allowed the physician to opt not to do the vaginal ultrasound—failed on 64-34 vote, the law provides that women seeking an abortion in Virginia will be forcibly penetrated for no medical reason. I am not the first person to note that under any other set of facts, that would constitute rape under state law.

What’s more, a provision of the law that has received almost no media attention would ensure that a certification by the doctor that the patient either did or didn’t “avail herself of the opportunity” to view the ultrasound or listen to the fetal heartbeat will go into the woman’s medical record. Whether she wants it there or not. I guess they were all out of scarlet letters in Richmond.

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Crazy. Tom