HB 386 in Louisiana is a horrible law.

My friend and Modern Liberals co-founder Manny Schewitz is a gun owner, and a liberal, and he also happens to live in Louisiana. When I found out that Republicans in his state’s senate have passed a 72-hour abortion waiting period, I asked him out of curiosity what the waiting period for a gun in Louisiana is. His short, one report was all I needed to know just how insanely jacked-up lawmakers in the Pelican State are about civil liberties.

“None,” was Manny’s reply.

So let’s get this straight, if HB 386 is signed by Louisiana’s governor, as he is expected to do, then that means in Louisiana a rape victim would have to wait three days to abort the pregnancy from her rape, while her rapist is free to buy as many guns as they’d like in the same three-day period. Moments like these make me do this:



Conservatives always swear up and down there is no “war on women” but how the fuck can you claim your policies don’t abuse females when you create an environment where a rapists has more access to a gun than his victim would have access to the ability to abort the pregnancy his attack caused? Oh wait I know how they can do it — because they have a completely skewed view of pregnancy, abortion, and life in general, that’s why. They genuinely believe that a rape is made “not so bad” if a pregnancy comes out of it, because they truly, deep-down believe that all human life is sacred and precious…until it’s born, and then it has to do everything on its own or it’s a giant asshole taker who ruins life for the rest of us, but you know, when it’s a fetus, it should get the full compliment of constitutional protections.

Some will always argue that abortions arising out of rapes are just not that common. I will always argue that a) that’s irrelevant because telling one rape victim she has to wait to have the spawn of her rapist sucked out of her is wrong and b) until rape is reported anywhere near at the level that it’s perpetrated, the “rarity” of abortions after rape can in no way be quantified. So again, we are left at square one: In Louisiana, rapists have easier access to weapons than rape victims have to remedy the horrid situation of being impregnated by your rapist.

Every time one of these new abortion laws is passed, I harp on the rape victim angle. Because while I personally find it repugnant that conservatives make some moral judgment on a woman who is having an abortion — because it’s truly none of our fucking businesses, regardless — it’s triply repugnant when they act as if either rape pregnancies don’t happen enough to care about them, or that a rape in any way, shape or form can have a positive outcome.





The thing is, I’m pro-choice to the Nth degree. That means if a rape victim chooses to the sunny side of her rape and carry that rape baby to full term, raise it, and love it, that’s great. I applaud her ability to make lemonade out of rape. But I think any man who says rape victims aren’t entitled to speedy abortions should have to tell rape victims this, to their faces. If they’re going to pass these laws, then Democrats need to push for amendments that force a Republican lawmaker to look every rape victim in the eye and tell her she was to wait 72 hours to to abort the pregnancy that she didn’t want, and is only there because a penis was forcibly shoved inside of her against her will.

Sorry for the graphic description there, but I kinda feel like it’s warranted. It’s as if conservatives just shut off their brains to the fact that rape is rape. That it’s not some mysterious act. They forget that it’s a horrible violation on the worst possible level. I wonder if any of the men who write these laws had been raped themselves if they’d even remotely come near the subject again. All they do is focus on that baby, forgetting everything else that had to happen to bring that “baby” into the picture.

I’m not even going to bother going into why their views on abortion are inconsistent with their views on the death penalty. Or their views on eating meat and killing animals. Or their views on war. I’m just not going to waste my effort again. All I wanted to do, really, is bring attention to this stupid fucking bill that a Democratic governor is expected to sign, and the fact that it effectively means rapists’ Second Amendment rights take precedence over their victims, and that’s exactly where I’m going to leave it.

Who needs a mind-altering substance…can you share?

