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GOP Candidate is Against Abortion in Rape Cases Because ‘Crime has consequences’
At a fundraiser, a Washington state Tea Party Republican candidate for the 1st Congressional District who has been avoiding answering questions about abortion was caught on tape by a liberal organization. On tape, candidate John Koster is asked if there are any situations in which he would agree with abortion, to which he responds by saying that incest is rare and as for rape, well, crime has consequences.
Listen here from Fuse Washington:
Asked if there are any situations in which he would agree with abortion, John Koster is heard saying to Fuse Washington, “I’m not going to make that decision. Incest is so rare, I mean, it’s so rare. But the rape thing, you know, I know a woman who was raped and kept the child, gave it up for adoption and doesn’t regret it. In fact, she’s a big pro-life proponent. But, on the rape thing it’s like, how does putting more violence onto a woman’s body and taking the life of an innocent child that’s a consequence of this crime, how does that make it better? You know what I mean?”
No, we don’t know what you mean, sir. We have no idea but we are scared.
Reminded by the Fuse activist, “Yeah, but she has to live with the consequences of that crime.” Koster replied, “Yeah, I know. I know crime has consequences, but how does it make it better by killing a child?”
Freudian slip? The female rape victim isn’t the criminal, so generally as a society, we don’t get behind the victims of crime paying the consequences. What next – robbery victims must pay the robber?
To sum up for Koster, women are not innocents, but children are. Crime has consequences for victims so why not pile on? Also, now that you’ve been raped, why not give away all power over your body to the Republicans, lest any more “violence” be “put” on your body (clearly a separate being from you, the person, who has rights).
Problems: Incest is not “rare.” Nor is child sexual assault. Nor is rape. Statistically, every two minutes someone is sexually assaulted in the U.S. 1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. 44% of victims of sexual assault are under the age of 18. Are they to be forced to carry a rapist’s baby?
57% of sexual assaults are never reported and 97% of rapists will never spend a day in jail. After hearing John Koster’s wisdom on the subject, you know why none of the above are rare. Ignoring the problem by pretending it is rare is not helping.
In 2010 Koster was endorsed by Sarah Palin and her stingy PAC donated $5,000 to him this go. In 2010, he supported getting rid of the Department of Education, privatizing part of Social Security, getting rid of the IRS and he thought we should withdraw from the United Nations. I think you can guess his views on climate change. He now claims that he’s more moderate.
Koster is also claiming that even though he has an eerily familiar record as a state legislator of voting no on budgets while working to restrict women’s rights, his views on abortion are personal and not really an issue.
Koster is proud of what he oddly refers to as his “pro-life” position. He is running against Democrat Suzan DelBene.
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23 Responses to GOP Candidate is Against Abortion in Rape Cases Because ‘Crime has consequences’
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Sally
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 8:11 am
Anyone who thinks Akin not mainstream GOP has now been proven wrong…these guys are everywhere. If the GOP is allowed back into power, Roe v. Wade will be gone. abortion (except for the rich white ladies who always had access) will be gone, contraception will be gone, and more young women will die or kill themselves. Meanwhile, rapists have more rights than their victims, children will continue to be hungry and uneducated in GOPand, and women whill be relegated to being broodmares not onl for their husbands (although what bright young woman will want to marry?) but for any stray erection she comes across. Oh, and Congressman, I expect Viagra to be removed from all insurance drug lists when you try to take away contracepties. No medical need for a middle aged and older man to be having sex, is there?
A Walkaway
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 10:53 am
“No medical need for a middle aged and older man to be having sex, is there?”
No need? Do you comprehend how that comes across to this older man?
If, God forbid, anything happened to my wife, I would like to have children. Why should I be punished because of cancer? After all, it can happen to anyone (thank God it was caught in time).
What in fucking hell is it with this Goddamned culture anyway, that restricts happiness and love to the young and beautiful, and denies it to the rest of us?
The goddamned dominionists stole 25 years of my life, and I’m trying to get it back. Now I feel that this goddamned American culture is trying to tell me “You’re too old to have dreams and to want a life!” (My wife also has dreams, but I think the Goddamned “Good Christians” have pretty much crushed most of them – I’m trying to encourage her to get her Master’s and even go for a PhD too… and to think about having some fun now and then – like somehow getting the money to have a real vacation – the last was in 2006, a whole week. Before that it was in the late 90s.)
Why am I only now dreaming of having a career? I’m 54, and only in the last few years – around 2005 in fact, did I even BEGIN to dream of having a career or a future. “Careers” were ranted and preached against – along with just about everything else, in the dominionist churches I made the mistake of trusting 33-34 years ago. The people I go to school with don’t seem to realize that there is little difference between me and them, except I’ve seen well over 25 years of living hell that they haven’t, and I’m trying to regain what was stolen.
Please think about what you say. It may be funny or “reality” to you, but it’s only hurtful to this person who has known little happiness and much pain.
Reynardine
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 12:29 pm
It wasn’t meant like that, I think. What is meant is that it is an utter injustice to deny birth control, abortion, prenatal care, and child support to women and then sponsor Viagra to these same misogynist politicians and their MRA followers so they are better able to rape and impregnate their hapless victims.
Sandra
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 7:56 pm
I Feel your pain but as a woman I understand and approve her pov also. The problem is that these misogynists are harming women, they treat rape like it was a walk in the park rather than the brutal, terrorizing nightmare that it really is. I wish more men would stand with us women and fight these bastids but since it mainly men who will be voting for these evil people, I have to wonder.
Good luck to you and your wife. Live life to the fullest.
A Walkaway
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 9:00 pm
I’ve known quite a few women who’d been raped… it’s part of the reason I hate the dominionist churches. You’re right about how they view rape and women in general. A woman is no more than a piece of meat in many of their eyes… and that’s how they brag too. (Someday they’re liable to catch me in a bad mood and without the time or resources to do with it, and it’s not going to be a pretty scene. Maybe it’s good that I only associate with liberals anymore.)
In fact, if a woman (or girl) ever says she was labeled a “Jezebel” by her church, you can pretty much bet that she was raped by some authority person as a little girl (maybe teen), and sought help from someone in that church. It’s such a common story that I expect it.
It’s so devastating that I’m surprised there aren’t more suicides because of it. When you add into the mix the blame game (You must have deserved it, you brought it on yourself, and similar assorted lies), and that may also explain why some women support those b*st*rds – very much like a case of Stockholm Syndrome.
The most important point that has to be repeated over and over, and cannot be emphasized enough – that the victim of rape is not responsible for OR has any blame in the situation whatsoever. That it’s purely the responsibility of the rapist- their guilt, and those who empower the rapist share in that guilt. The fact that the victim is blameless and innocent (and really a victim, which isn’t a bad thing, just reality)… that’s the message that counters the blame game.
Paws
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 8:24 am
This view point is not shared by just a few in the GOP – it’s shared by just about every single one of them. It’s the woman’s fault she was raped and so, she gets to deal with the consequences – ALL of the consequences. She doesn’t consent to be raped and she will be prevented from consenting to have the rapist’s child. SHE has no choice. SHE gets no say.
Let them hear on election day how we feel about their trying to take our consent away.
A Walkaway
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 11:01 am
The root philosophy is one of the early Calvinist heresies, “Suffering is caused by sin”, and that’s also the root of much of dominionism. Where they err is that they blame the sufferer instead of the person who did the action.
If you’re miserable or devastated (as rape does to a woman, according to the rape victims I’ve met and it’s obviously universal), well, you must have done something to deserve it (in their eyes). Maybe wore the wrong clothing (I guess God’s supposed to pick out your clothing for you and not obeying is “rebellion”), or took the wrong way home, or some stupid bullshit idea like that.
(Yeah, I’m in a bad mood this morning – I admit it. I woke to a flashback of finding the “Good Christians” had torched my workshop, and after that also was reminded a couple of times of that stupid “Suffering is caused by sin” crap!!! Having had the blame game put on us many times, I do tend to react violently to seeing the innocent get blamed. Thus, the Republican comments about rape REALLY set me off.)
Reynardine
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 8:39 am
Women are receptacles, and when receptacles get too soiled, they’re put in the trash.
D. W. Skinner
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 9:00 am
seriously if I saw this man in a street with a bus hurtling toward him, I’d buy a bag of popcorn and enjoy the show.
Diane
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 9:12 am
It is obvious these men still blame the women for their rapes.
The women still has to be punished for ‘her actions’.
Beaglemom
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 6:09 pm
It is so obvious to us women that men, primarily of the GOP persuasion, blame women for rape. The behavior of so many state legislatures dominated by white GOP males in the past few years and the speechifying of the most recent GOP members of the House of Representatives has all been about putting women back in their place. Where that is in their minds I do not want to know.
It wasn’t until some time in the 1970′s that women were considered “victims” of rape. I recall a much publicized trial around that time that addressed the issue of whether or not the woman had struggled enough against her assaulter who was armed with a knife and determined to rape her. Which he did. Obviously, in the primitive minds of many men, if a woman does not die during a sexual assault, she is the guilty party. it’s mind boggling to me and totally unacceptable to me, now a senior citizen.
singhx
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 9:15 am
This notion of no abortion except “in the case of”
(rape, incest, the mother’s life) verbiage became the political rhetoric of the GOP some time around The Regan. Everybody knows the Goldwater family help found Planned Parenthood; lots of “R’s” were one board until the $$ of the fundamentalist pushed, coerced, and probably blackmailed their way into the GOP platform.
And, the reason we are seeing this new wave of fanatics take to the podium preaching this new song and dance (no exceptions and now/she had it coming) is because fundamentalist were “loosing”their argument. They backed themselves into a corner after constant hammering on their hypocrisy dealing with conception…
They had no choice. They HAD to double-down! They had to go full-on backwards with pushing the motion that women are nothing but breeding stock. The fundamentalist could not defend “in the case of” and not continue looking “stupid”. So, they doubled-down, took it down another notch to incurably dumb and, we now have the most profoundly ignorant, brutal bunch of politicos trying to run the show today.
Fundamentalism is a disease that ruins every life, every county where is spread…and they talk about Stalin’s draconian principles of law and order or, Mao organizing the masses around the little Red Book as gospel…they want to bring back slavery and rape claiming it’s in their book of “law and order”!
FU*K them!
(Fornication Under Constant of the Konstitution)
singhx
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 9:22 am
…and Akin’s picture appears to me as if he has a demonic, self-loathing side of life; my “gaydar” went off immediately upon seeing that photo.
Shiva (Moderator)
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 10:18 am
it’s unbelievable how easily these people push aside a woman to get to the child. They remind me of someone who would kill 50 people to save one if that one would someday be a soldier for jesus.
We must get to the point where peoples rights come first and religious opinion is not considered unless all options are gone. That’s the Constitution we live under. Peoples rights. Most of which have been abused in any case. We have a Supreme Court that leans towards not thinking about peoples rights.
Abortion should not be a federal, state or even local situation. Every person should have the right of choice and that should not be interfered with. The GOP is intent upon interfering with the rights of women. Following that will be the rights of man and everyone else
A Walkaway
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 11:08 am
That reminds me of something I heard from the internet stalker I had problems with, as well as a dominionist troll (active Assemblies of God pastor of a big church) who was assisting him in the stalking and harassment.
They said that it was sin to give food to a starving person (who is starving to death), and that you should preach the gospel at him or her, even if it meant their death. Reason? If you preached the gospel, there was a chance they might “accept Christ” in the last instant before dying. If you fed them then there was a chance they might never accept Christ or even reject Jesus.
We were sinners because we advocated helping the poor. That was “empowering them to keep sponging off of people”.
They’d rather a whole country die, as long as it got preached at, rather than helping a single person in real life, in the fear that they might “reject Christ”.
That’s how fucking ass backwards those bastards are. (Like I said above, I’m in a bad mood today. This thread has got me REALLY angry.)
Shiva (Moderator)
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 11:29 am
Remember, its a message board, not the place to get angry. Deep breaths, meditate and go VOTE!
robyn ryan
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 1:21 pm
I think I figured it out.
Abortion rights, women’s second class status in an Abrahamic based culture, gay hating – the whole war on women thing.
They all have a common theme. The one and only thing a human can do that a monotheistic god can never do is reproduce. Ever. Impotent. Childless for eternity.
Reproduction becomes the symbol of man’s godhead and god’s inability to make another of himself. I suspect men hate and abuse women not only out of rage that women do naturally what men and their god can’t, but also because women are the only sure way to make god jealous. “I can abuse and kill what you can’t ever have. I am your better.”
Non-reproductive sex suggests that god may not care, need progeny or might be female and reproductively capable herself. Heresy!! Monotheism don’t need no stinking progeny…
God gets furious when you rub his virgin nose in his failings.
I mean, when you have to knock up a human to have a son, of course you’re a jealous god.
A Walkaway
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 8:44 pm
ROFLMAO! Good point.
Personally, I am uncomfortable with assigning gender when it comes to talking about the creator. I think it’s projection – either our wishes or our fears. I have to admit it’s also seems to be a natural thing… people tend to think of the creator as either a man or a woman. “Whatever floats your boat, as long as it doesn’t hurt others” should be the rule of thumb.
Unfortunately, for certain religious groups, it’s not.
singhx
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 7:25 pm
Shiva is right…calm down. All those “adrenal missals” shooting off from their “silo” wear down the immune system, hurt your kidneys, bladder and bath the hippocampus with corrosive cortisols…events like these can be “controlled” if we are “skilled” enough to control the trigger…and that’s all Akin’s is; a trigger creating a reaction hoping to exceed our ability to deal with his threats…
Only those who vote in his district control his political fate.
gallexie555
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 11:10 am
At a press conference in Toledo, Bob King, President of the United Automobile Workers, will announce that his union and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have filed a formal complaint with the US Office of Government Ethics in Washington stating that Gov. Romney improperly hid a profit of $15.3 million to $115.0 million in Ann Romney’s so-called “blind” trust.
Martin
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Murdochs media Fox CNN and many others have hired actors and they are bussed to Romney’s events BBC this morning did a story on why are Americans voting to destroy everything that we should be saying F#@k you your not taking my Social security my health care etc. America hes been conditioned to believe anything they see on TV and that’s how Romney is being sold to us. Wake the F*$k UP America! The whole world is in disbelief!
Rick Tucker
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 2:28 pm
I know this argument has been going on a long time. When I was a kid a pregnancy was described as a woman with child. But from a social and even biblical perspective that’s always been wishful thinking, so much so that women have been made to feel guilty when even their own body says, “not this time”. That’s what’s wrong with these contentions of fetuses, heck, zygotes as “children”. They’re not. A child is not magically whole from conception and human babies aren’t that much different from other species except in our sense of self importance and, ironically enough, religion and science.
The other thing to consider are all the kids who are brought into this life to suffer, and those were pretty much foregone conclusions based upon why the mother got pregnant, the life she led, and the dysfunction that was a part of her life since she was a child.
We keep assuming that a baby is cause for celebration, every time. We refer to the miracle of birth. There is NO miracle. It’s survival. That whole “miracle” thing is our conscious expectations and not facts. I’m a father. I was there when our kids were born. It feels special but the fact is that “special” feeling is the realization that this new responsibility changes our lives for good.
I’m a proponent of legal abortion for the simple reason that I don’t want to even hear of women dying in botched abortion procedures. I also think that children are special and should therefore be afforded the kind of love and care a truly ready and caring parent can and will provide. For those women who regret their abortions, I can’t and won’t speak to that except to say, don’t delude yourselves into thinking you were forced to do it because you know that’s not likely the case. And if it is you weren’t ready to be a parent anyway. If someone talks you into either decision against your own best instincts you should just stop having sex. Take the time to sort out what you want. Stop blaming others for your…
Elizabeth
Nov. 1st, 2012 at 6:03 pm
Dear Mr. Koster, I have lived and worked in your district. My work involved working with families. I can tell you, from personal experience, that incest and rape of minor children is not rare in Snohomish county. You have fashioned a perfect Christian family image that may be true for some of those in your church, but is NOT true for probably a major of the women in Snohomish County, especially the women of color and the poor women. Violence is a constant in too many of their lives. Mr. Koster, due to redistricting, I am no longer in your district, but I will continue to work against you and those like you who wish to live in your lovely fantasy land and refuse to acknowledge reality.