Nebraska GOP Guv Says Rape Victims Should be banned from Having Abortions

For a party that claims to believe in limited government–especially when it comes to healthcare–Republicans have a weird obsession with handing the government power over women’s wombs. Conservatives have spent a generation jerry-rigging Congressional and state legislative voting maps and pouring money into senate races in the hopes that they could figure out how to ban abortions, which absolutely no one is forcing them to get.

And now that subjecting the country to four years of Donald Trump’s madness seems to have paid off in a stacked Supreme Court that appears ready to obliterate Roe v. Wade, the white men who represent the GOPs status quo cannot wait to further insert themselves into women’s reproductive parts.

If that particular turn of phrase gave you a grotesque visual of a woman being physically violated, it might be because not even literal, actual rape is a bridge too far where at least one sitting Republican governor is concerned as it relates to abortion. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jeff Bezos’ rocket, which bears an uncanny resemblance to a small, white phallus, said yesterday that he wants an immediate, total ban on abortion in his state if the Court follows through on overturning Roe. That includes forcing women to carry pregnancies to term even if they resulted from rape or incest.

He said that out loud. On national TV. Without blinking.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone; again: imposing the fake moralism of the party of old, white men on a country that’s increasingly young, nonwhite and female has been Republicans’ siren song since the early 70s. “Pro-life” conservatism is a slogan that loses popularity at the end of gestation.

Once an unwilling or unprepared mother is forced to give birth, Republican priorities shift from protecting life to eviscerating social safety nets, clusterfucking education and ensuring that every hand that can hold a gun has a gun at all times. Nebraska’s state legislature last month narrowly failed to pass a bill allowing anyone of legal age to carry a concealed handgun with no background check or permit, and the state still condemns people to death even though nobody will sell it the drugs needed to carry out death sentences.

The cruelty, as always, is the point.