Alas, poor Nik­ki Haley. All South Carolina’s Repub­li­can gov­er­nor want­ed to do was pro­tect the health bud­get against ​“spe­cial inter­ests” that ​“dis­tract from… pro­tect­ing South Car­oli­na’s pub­lic health.” And she chose such nasty, self­ish spe­cial inter­ests to oppose! Hemo­phil­i­acs, for exam­ple, or peo­ple with sick­le cell ane­mia. Those folks sound pret­ty ​“spe­cial.” And, then, of course, there was the bit that stuck: The rape victims.

Haley’s veto, for­bid­ding $450,000 for the state’s rape cri­sis cen­ters was over­turned on Tues­day, by a vote of 111 – 0. Which is not sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing the public’s furor. Aside from protests by advo­cates and sur­vivors with­in the state, there was a bar­rage of fem­i­nist blog cov­er­age. One cri­sis cen­ter pub­lished a let­ter from a sur­vivor: ​“I did NOT choose to be raped that night. I was ASLEEP in MY HOME, yet you are cut­ting a bud­get for peo­ple that did NOTH­ING WRONG!!!!!”

Well. None of that looks oh so very good, for a politi­cian who, last week, was a favorite to be nom­i­nat­ed as Mitt Romney’s VP.

Nor should it, of course. As lots of peo­ple have point­ed out, demand for cri­sis cen­ters, and for domes­tic vio­lence aid, has risen dur­ing the reces­sion. And South Carolina’s rate of sex­u­al assault is well above the nation­al aver­age. Haley claimed the ser­vices are for ​“only a small por­tion of South Carolina’s chron­i­cal­ly ill or abused.” But in prac­tice, that num­ber amounts to more than 5,000 sur­vivors in one year, over 25% of whom were chil­dren. The cut would have elim­i­nat­ed the only rape cri­sis cen­ter in the city of Charleston.

But it’s worth look­ing at Haley’s ratio­nale for the cut. It would have ​“dis­tract­ed,” Haley says, from ​“pub­lic health.” Much-not­ed cal­lous­ness of the word­ing aside— ​“to argue that the gov­er­nor isn’t sup­port­ive of vic­tims is, on its face, absurd,” said spokesman Rob God­frey; which, good try there, Robert — it’s worth­while to look at the governor’s actu­al expla­na­tion. Name­ly: That sex­u­al assault, and domes­tic vio­lence, don’t have much to do with health.

Which is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion. Domes­tic vio­lence is, in our com­mon line of think­ing, a, well, an inter­per­son­al prob­lem. A sad one, sure, one that you sure hope doesn’t befall any­one that you know. But the word we hear, when we hear the term ​“domes­tic vio­lence,” tends to be ​“domes­tic.” Sex­u­al assault is, like­wise, some­thing we think of as sex­u­al. And, as the relent­less assault on repro­duc­tive ser­vices proves, we don’t think sex has much at all to do with health.

But this is com­plete­ly untrue. Sex­u­al assault can result in post-trau­mat­ic stress, eat­ing dis­or­ders, anx­i­ety dis­or­ders and depres­sion. Rape, specif­i­cal­ly, is fre­quent­ly com­pli­cat­ed by lat­er alco­hol or drug depen­den­cy, accord­ing to some stud­ies. This is to say noth­ing of STDs, or preg­nan­cy, or injuries occur­ring con­cur­rent with the assault. All of these are stark­ly med­ical prob­lems to have. And as for domes­tic vio­lence: Well, there’s the vio­lence por­tion to deal with. Three-quar­ters of abused peo­ple who report the assault also seek care in emer­gency rooms. In fact, domes­tic vio­lence is the lead­ing cause of injury to women in the Unit­ed States, and the num­ber one cause of emer­gency room vis­its by women.

And when you con­sid­er the rates at which these things hap­pen — one in five women report hav­ing been raped; one in four report being phys­i­cal­ly assault­ed by a domes­tic part­ner — then what we have is a mas­sive epi­dem­ic, affect­ing like­ly one-eighth of the pop­u­la­tion (these assaults are under-report­ed), which very fre­quent­ly requires both emer­gency and long-term health care. That costs mon­ey. That needs to be fund­ed. If one-eighth of the pop­u­la­tion con­tract­ed chron­ic pain from work­place injuries, would we find that to be a per­son­al sub­ject, unre­lat­ed to health care?

There’s a good rea­son to frame domes­tic vio­lence and sex­u­al assault as pub­lic health crises. There are many, in fact. And one of the bet­ter rea­sons is this: These per­son­al prob­lems, these things one ought to keep qui­et about, these messy, domes­tic, sex issues… well, they just sound so wom­an­ly, don’t they? So icky. So touchy-feely. So much bet­ter, as with all female things, when they are kept qui­et. When you talk about painful rela­tion­ships, when you talk about vio­lence con­nect­ed to sex, peo­ple tend to zone out. They tend to push it off, into a men­tal pink ghet­to, where girls talk about the prob­lem of being girls.

Domes­tic­i­ty, sex: These are asso­ci­at­ed with women. And women are, in fact, more at risk of being vic­tim­ized in those spe­cif­ic are­nas. But to think of the issues in this way seg­re­gates them, and keeps them stig­ma­tized. Not everybody’s got girl prob­lems. But there’s one thing every­body has. Every­body has health.