1 in 5 women get raped?

A Republican state lawmaker called childbirth resulting from rape "beautiful" Thursday while debating whether women who become pregnant from sexual assault deserve an exception from a strict anti-abortion measure.

"Obviously rape is awful," West Virginia Del. Brian Kurcaba (R) said during a committee hearing on a new abortion restriction, according to David Gutman, a Charleston Gazette reporter. "What is beautiful is the child that could come from this."

Kurcaba, a financial adviser, was elected to the House of Delegates in November.

The bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. State House Republicans revived the proposal after West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) vetoed it in 2014. The House Health Committee voted down an exception for rape and incest victims on Thursday and approved the bill for a full vote in the House.

Kurcada's comment about rape and abortion is similar to an argument made by U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock of Indiana in October 2012. "I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen," Mourdock said in a debate.

Mourdock lost the election to a Democrat weeks later, and the GOP's big losses in elections that year were largely attributed to controversial rape comments made by Republican candidates.

The most notorious remark that election season came from U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri.

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down," Akin said of pregnancy. "But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”

Is this juvenile behavior really necessary? Come on now, copying offensive pictures from the Internet isn't even original or clever. It's rehashing old jokes to bully someone because he doesn't agree with you.

I really wish this would stop.

There is a difference between being asleep and being unconscious

How come you're silent when nononono routinely posts considerably more crap and says blatantly offensive things about other posters here?

You trying to upset Hawkeye? He's getting a woody now, sitting and staring at it.

It is not funny and not even the slightest bit clever.

The question of this thread is about the statistic "1 in 5" that is thrown around by everyone from activists to politicians.

Surely you agree that even if the real number is actually lower than "1 in 5" that rape should still be a serious issue.

In Utah, Wondering What Rape Really Is
By Juliet Lapidos
February 4, 2015

Utah lawmakers on the brink of clarifying the state’s rape law meandered into a conversation about sex with an unconscious partner which, if nothing else, proves that state-level politics is the best place to find bizarre, unfiltered perspectives.

One section of the existing criminal code explains that sexual assault has occurred if “the victim has not consented and the actor knows the victim is unconscious, unaware that the act is occurring, or physically unable to resist.”

Representative Angela Romero, Democrat of Salt Lake City, proposed removing the “has not consented” line on the grounds that it was unnecessary and a potential loophole. If someone’s unconscious, it’s rape—because they cannot consent.

Utah’s legislative committee agreed. But Representative Brian Greene, Republican of Pleasant Grove, was uncomfortable.

“If an individual has sex with their wife while she is unconscious,” he argued, “a prosecutor could then charge that spouse with rape, theoretically.”

That, he continued “makes sense in a first date scenario, but to me, not where people have a history of years of sexual activity.”

Mr. Greene insisted that he was not “trying at all to justify sexual activity with an unconscious person,” an act he called “abhorrent.” He was simply uneasy with a law apparently establishing that sex with an unconscious person is “rape in every instance.”

Not justifying, just not OK with criminalizing — or something. He was merely looking out for all the married couples out there who have given each other advance permission to initiate sex even in the event of unusually deep REM sleep, alcohol-induced blackouts and comas.

Other Utah lawmakers, perhaps more aware that spousal rape is quite real and a serious problem, did not share his concern for these alternative relationships. Representative Brian King, another Democrat of Salt Lake City, said that if a person is unconscious, sex with him or her “is rape. Period. End of story.”

Holly Mullen of the Rape Recovery Center was similarly unwilling to carve out some kind of unconscious-sex exception. “Instead of dicing and parsing and saying, ‘Well, what about a wife if she’s asleep?’ just look at what is happening and the prevalence of sexual assault in our world,” she told The Salt Lake Tribune. “It’s a tool of power. That might be why they’re parsing. They don’t want to look at what is really going on around them.”

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/in-utah-wondering-what-rape-really-is/

My girlfriend, on my birthday, woke me up with oral sex. I was definitely unconscious when she started this sexual act.

Was I raped? (I certainly didn't feel like a rape victim.)