The Party of Rape

There is a feminist theory that the oppression of women is the model for all other forms of oppression. If men are willing to abuse women they are intimate with, even to turn intimacy into abuse, goes the theory, who will they not abuse?

And so, in the United States. A 10-year-old rape victim sought and was granted an abortion. And what is the response of the reactionary right wing in the United States? To blame the doctors who diagnosed her and who aborted the pregnancy. To blame her. To object that her rapist ought not have been in the United States. Anything but accept the responsibility for putting that girl in a horrible position or acknowledge that there are men who rape children and that this has been done before and will be done again. The girl and her doctors have come in for enormous harassment, while the antiabortion Republicans did not trouble itself to find out anything about her rapist.

And this is what the Republican Party is now fighting for: the right to abuse the victims of rape and the women who defend them, while ignoring their rapists. And, indeed, if they will fight for that, what form of oppression will they shun?