Pending Abortion Bill Seeks to Redefine Rape

H.R. 3, also known as the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act”, is a horrendous new piece of legislation that not only aims to make provisions like the Hyde Amendment permanent, but also wants to redefine what the government considers rape all together. Under the new law, women would only be able to seek an abortion covered by Medicare or Medicaid if they experience “forcible rape”, a concept that is neither defined in federal criminal code nor by the bill’s authors. That means that women who survive experiences of statutory rape, incest, or non-violent sexual assault (like an assault in which the perpetrator used drugs to incapacitate the victim) would no longer meet the legal definition of rape to qualify for abortion coverage.