Don't Let Republicans Redefine Rape - Oppose the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act"
We, the undersigned, wish to express our unequivocal opposition to House Resolution 3 (the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act"), and call on our representatives to vote against this bill. For years, federal law has forbidden the use of government funds to pay for abortions - except in cases of rape, incest, or when the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother. H.R.3 seeks to limit these long-standing exceptions by restricting the exception for pregnancies resulting from incest to cases in which the woman was a minor at the time her pregnancy began, and by limiting the exception for pregnancies resulting from rape to cases in which the pregnancy was a result of "forcible rape". Put simply, this bill would force a nineteen-year-old girl, pregnant as the result of a lifetime of incest, to somehow find the money to pay for her own abortion. And under H.R.3, a women could be drugged, intoxicated, threatened, coerced, mentally incapacitated, far under the age of consent, or otherwise incapable of providing consent at the time of her rape - as long as her rapist didn't use force, she would be left on her own to pay for the abortion she so desperately wanted. The women who run the highest risk of being raped are also the women who are least able to afford paying for an abortion out of their own pockets. We are shocked and appalled by the contents of this bill, and we therefore request that our elected representatives join us in our opposition of H.R.3.
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