Deja Vu: GOP Rep Says Pregnancy Rates for Rape Victims Are 'Very Low'

“Legitimate” rape is so 2012. Now we have “rare” rape, care of Republican Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, who proved today that the trend of old GOP bigots who think women can only get pregnant from consensual sex will never go out of style!

Franks wants to unconstitutionally ban abortions after 20 weeks, and his bill, The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (it’ll take you four months just to spit that clunker of a title out) has no exceptions for rape or incest. He defended his belief that only women facing death should get an abortion after 20 weeks in front of the House Judiciary Committee today by explaining that it’s common knowledge that women hardly ever get pregnant after rape.

“Before, when my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject — because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low. But when you make that exception, there’s usually a requirement to report the rape within 48 hours. And in this case that’s impossible because this is in the sixth month of gestation. And that’s what completely negates and vitiates the purpose for such an amendment.”

The exceptions for rape and incest proposed by two Democrats who didn’t straight-up oppose the bill (ugh, why) could easily be “extrapolated into abortion on demand,” he said. Abortion on demand sounds pretty ideal to us.

We don’t know where Franks is getting his info — Todd Akin, we guess — but experts agree that rape doesn’t lower the incidence of pregnancy, and one study by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that more than 30,000 U.S. pregnancies result from rape each year. Lazy sluts, every one of them!

The bill passed the committee today and will likely go to the floor for a full vote next week.