Rick Santorum believes that allowing women to terminate the pregnancy which resulted from their rape would be to traumatize them twice. Wait, what?

Courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

"Would you allow no exceptions for cases of rape on incest?" Fox News host, Byron York asked. "Polls have shown that large majorities of Americans support some exceptions for abortion. Are your views too much, even for many conservatives to support?" 

"That child is an innocent victim," Santorum replied. "To be victimized twice would be a horrible thing. It is an innocent human life, genetically human from the moment of conception. We in America should be big enough to try to surround ourselves and help women in those terrible situations who have been traumatized already. To put them through another trauma of an abortion, I think is too much to ask. So I would absolutely stand and say that one violence is enough."

Now ladies I might need all of you weigh in here, because I am just one of those pathetic creatures burdened with a "Y" chromosome, but is there really ANY comparisons between the feelings associated with terminating an unwanted pregnancy and being forced to carry your rapists child to term?

Personally I would have to imagine that every day of those long nine months could potentially add layers upon layers of trauma to the initial pain of the assault.

It sounds as if Santorum, who believes that life begins as conception, feels this same way about the "morning after" pill. As if taking a precautionary medication to ensure that the potential of fertilization resulting from a violent insemination does not further burden the victim, can be compared to the act of rape.

Does Rick Santorum not have a wife, or sister, or daughter?

What is it about these people that makes them place the rights of a cluster of cells above that of every other already living person on the planet. 

They demand that the fetus be protected, yet they support the death penalty.

They demand that the fetus be protected, yet they have little problem sending our troops to kill people all over the world.

They demand that the fetus be protected, yet they argue against sending aid to places like Africa where famine is killing thousands of innocent people.

I will just never understand why the protection of a POTENTIAL life, can take precedence over the protection of an ACTUAL life.

And perhaps it is better that I NEVER understand that.

Senator Lisa Murkowski addresses sex trafficking in Alaska.

Courtesy of Alaska News:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said today that something must be done about the epidemic of domestic violence, sexual assault and sex trafficking among Alaska Natives and American Indians nationwide.

"The statistics on violence and assault are staggering, and whether it's one in three or one in four, any act of violence is unacceptable," Murkowski said in opening remarks at a Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing.

"I meet with far too many Alaskans who tell me things may be worse - there is so much whispered and silenced into the shadows, which damages not just the victims, but also their families," she said.

Murkowski's first question was to the Department of Justice, asking an associate attorney general, "Young women are being hunted. You've got predators waiting outside homeless teen shelters, going to events like the Alaska Federation of Natives conference. What is the Department of Justice doing to target these sex traffickers?"

I am very glad that Senator Murkowski is finally addressing this issue.


This has been one of Alaska's most terrible, and shameful secrets going back decades, and it is well past time that somebody well connected politically brought it out of the shadows and did something substantial to institute laws and educational programs to finally address the issue head on.

However I fear that Murkowki may not truly understand the depth of this problem. Here is how it was explained in a news report from December 2010, by the Fairbanks Newsminer:

Sex traffickers use a combination of mind games and beatings, promises and drugs to control girls, authorities said.

Alaska Native girls are commonly lured from their hometowns by friends or relatives who are already working as prostitutes. They invite the girl to come hang out and go shopping rent-free.

About one-third of the women arrested this year for prostitution in Anchorage are Alaska Native, according to Lacey's figures.

It was an Alaska Native girl who moved to Anchorage to stay with family at the age of 12 who helped point investigators toward another prostitution kingpin: Don Webster, also known as Jerry Starr, Goeden said.

Webster, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2008, had tried to recruit the girl, Goeden said.

The FBI agent got to know the teen during visits to a youth jail. The pair talked about how the girl ended up selling her body at age 14 in Anchorage.

"Her response to me was, 'I could be back home in the village where I could be having sex with my grandpa for free, or I could be here getting paid for me,'" Goeden said.

"I didn't know what to say. I had no idea how to respond to this little girl."

 That is not a problem which a few stricter laws, or a few more rural community sex education classes, will solve.  This is a problem with deep roots in how some in the native community view women, how these women often view themselves, and how outsiders take advantage of these vulnerabilities.

If Senator Murkowski is serious about tackling this problem she needs recognize that this is going to require serious money going toward education in rural communities, providing much easier access to specially trained and licensed counselors, and an increase in a law enforcement presence that can go to a village to remove a child who is being molested immediately and put them someplace where they feel safe and will talk about their rapist without fear of being placed back into their homes.

(For those who are interested, I also addressed this terrible problem in an earlier post entitled Alaska's Secret Shame.)

Finally! Levi's attorney answers charges of rape made in Bristol Palin's book against his client.

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch:

Johnston attorney Rex Butler disagreed with the part of the story that has Bristol so drunk she didn't know what was happening.

"That's obviously not true,'' he said.

Bristol's book clearly paints her as being "unaware that a sexual act'' was being committed on the night she lost her virginity.

As she tells the story, the last thing she remembers is sitting by a campfire laughing with friends after consuming a lot of wine coolers. The next thing she remembers is waking up in a tent with Levi's empty sleeping bag next to hers and the sound of friends "outside the tent laughing,'' according to the book. She then texts a female friend, who comes to Bristol's tent to inform her she is no longer a virgin.

Butler, one of Alaska's better known criminal attorneys, admitted that if true the story sounds a lot like rape, but he said the story isn't true. And he seemed a little perplexed that Bristol, who had a child with Johnston, would be telling it.

"That's not a good thing for her son to digest on down the road,'' Butler said.

"I don't think anyone would buy that,'' Butler said. The legal bar there is a high one. To prove Bristol's statement malicious, Butler would have to demonstrate she is telling a story she knows to be false. All Bristol would need to demonstrate is that she is telling a story that is true to the best of her recollection.

On the other, if her story is documentable -- if there are witnesses who can support the story as her book indicates -- Johnston could find himself the subject of a rape investigation.

Let me get this straight.  Levi's attorney for these last two years is PERPLEXED that Bristol would lie about Levi?  Has he been unconscious during most of this time?

I KNOW he has sat across from her during depositions.  Didn't he pick up on the fact that there was little she would NOT do to hurt Levi and his family when her attorney was trying to make Merecede cry and telling her to never speak to me again or risk never seeing her nephew again?

Do you know what perplexes me?  Why in the hell it took three days for Levi's legal counsel to finally put out a statement to defend his client against these allegations? He should have sent out a message on DAY ONE telling the media that this was absolute bullshit and threatening legal action against both her and her publisher.

Levi for God's sake, get yourself a REAL attorney who knows what in the hell he is doing, and start fighting back before this family leaves your bleached bones in the middle of a tundra somewhere!