ThinkProgress Logo

Health

Justice

CNN Contributor Dana Loesch Defends Virginia ‘State-Sponsored Rape’ Bill As No Different Than Consensual Sex

A depiction of the procedure

This week, a Virginia state House committee overwhelmingly approved a bill requiring women to receive an ultrasound before they can have an abortion. Because the majority of abortions happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, many women would have to undergo an invasive procedure “in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced,” as Dahlia Lithwick explained last week.

CNN contributor and Andrew Breitbart blogger Dana Loesch, however, sees no problem with a law that effectively legalizes state-sponsored rape, saying the procedure is no different than penetration that occurred during consensual intercourse that “resulted in the pregnancy,” as Little Green Footballs reported:

LOESCH: That’s the big thing that progressives are trying to say, that it’s rape and so on and so forth. [...] There were individuals saying, “Oh what about the Virginia rape? The rapes that, the forced rapes of women who are pregnant?” What? Wait a minute, they had no problem having similar to a trans-vaginal procedure when they engaged in the act that resulted in their pregnancy.

Listen:

Unfortunately, such a radical view isn’t unique to conservative talking heads like Loesch. According to Lithwick, an unnamed Republican delegate made the same argument in support of the bill, saying women consented to being “vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant.”

Politics

Cantor Can’t Explain Why Americans Oppose GOP Agenda

During an appearance on Fox News Sunday this morning, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) couldn’t explain why the public rejects large parts of the Republican legislative agenda and instead blamed Democrats for opposing it.

Asked why a recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed that 67 percent of Americans favor raising taxes on millionaires to reduce the deficit, and that 80 percent oppose cutting Medicare, Cantor could only say, “It is unfair that these individuals who want a better life and want more jobs and higher pay are not getting it.”

“What is not fair is that we are holding back the economy to grow because you are having Barack Obama working with the Democrats in the Senate, Reid and others, who are saying no to every time we want to grow the economy,” he added, without ever actually addressing the question. Watch it:

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up