NPR Ruins Day With Facts About Violence Against Women

 
 Everything was going fine today (3 mimosas for breakfast, followed by a margarita-laden lunch), and then this bad news had to be slapped in our earholes from NPR:  

Thirty-five percent of women around the world have been raped or physically abused, according to statistics the World Health Organization released Thursday. About 80 percent of the time this violence occurs in the home, at the hands of a partner or spouse.

Fuckin A, NPR, this is really shitty. Can’t you lull me back to sleep at 6: 40 am with Garrison Keiller reading another long poem about the red cat sleeping in the loft of a blue barn surrounded by …zzzzzz… Cause this is worse than reading WND comments, or even being forced to listen to Tucker Carlson read out highlights from the Daily Caller. THIRTY-FIVE PERCENT, people – that’s more than one in three women. Ugh, man. What do others think?

"For me personally, this is a shockingly high figure," says Karen Devries, an epidemologist from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Yeah, no shit, Karen. This should be goddam shocking for everyone, not just for you. Unfortunately, Congress had a few opportunities to try to help with this, but guess who got in the way (hint: the party that always looks to take the war on women global). Let’s wonksplain.

Violence against women has been a problem for a long time, and for a while there was momentum in Congress to address it. Back before he became the most heart-throbbingest VP EVAH, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Call Me Maybe?) introduced a bill called the International Violence Against Women Act, or IVAWA. Now since many Republicans can't even be talked into voting for a bill to protect womyns in the US , one can imagine the high hurdle to climb for this one. And unfortunately, the bill was full of facts and data and “input from more than 40 international and 150 U.S. based groups with relevant expertise,” according to Amnesty USA .

And you know the GOP and science, right? This was clearly a crucial mistake for the authors of the legislation, which would have "addressed violence against women and girls comprehensively by supporting health, legal, economic, and humanitarian assistance sectors and incorporating violence prevention and response into such programs."

The bill was introduced in the 110^th, 111^th, and 112^thCongress, but never made it to the floor for a vote. Once it made it out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is the legislative equivalent to second base: exciting, but not nearly where you hope to end up.

You know what the problem was? There was a concern that the International Violence Against Women Act would be a vehicle to somehow secretly provide a billion abortions, mwahaha. Because ANYTHING that might possibly improve the lives of women is probably a THREAT TO SACRED FETUSES, seeing as every woman has value solely because of the sacred-fetus chamber inside of her. Srsly, the bill had a part in it about women’s health, which is obviously seekrit code for creating a global abortionplex with taxpayer monies, even though several laws specifically prohibit international funding to be spent on providing abortions but this is GOP LOGIC, people. What, you didn’t know that?

For reals, it's apparently fine for womens to get beaten and raped to a horrifying degree, but any legislation that doesn’t kowtow to the batshit crazy right-to-lifers will immediately fail because sometimes fetuses masturbate and other whackadoodle fake science bullshit.

You might think that there would be some sense of urgency about this, considering another aspect of the study:

"The main message is that this problem affects women everywhere," Devries says. Because of the stigma associated with rape and abuse, "some of our findings may underestimate the prevalence."

So, great. THIRTY-FIVE FUCKING PERCENT might be a goddam UNDERESTIMATE.

But, hey, Congress, it’s fine. Say, isn’t Obamacare still around? Doesn’t that need to be repealed again? It’s been about a month since the last repeal , so go ahead, these women can wait. They don't even live here (Oh, wait, they live here, too, and you morons took for-fucking-EVER to reauthorize VAWA). What’s another broken arm or another bruise compared to repealing Obamacare for the 38^thtime?

So here is your homework, Glorious Readers. First, have a drink. Second, have another drink in honor of all the survivors out there. And third, pick up your phone and call your member of Congress and demand that they do something about this. Then go have another drink.

[ NPR / Amnesty USA ]