Campaign AdWatch: Rape Victim Assails Palin On Choice

Women Against McCain-Palin have released this short, emotionally blunt advertisement in which a young woman relates how Sarah Palin's policies could have played out in her life, to her detriment.

"I was raped, and then I got pregnant. Sarah Palin believes the government should be able to force me to carry the pregnancy to term. Sarah Palin believes that the government should make that choice. Not me. Governor Palin, I didn't have a choice about being raped. But I should have a choice about this."

It's a fitting reminder of how McCain and Palin would extend the intrusive hand of government into affairs in which it should hold no sway. I'd also remind you that McCain thinks that the those who are concerned about the health and well-being of women are "extreme." I'd remind you that when McCain and Palin disclosed Palin's daughter's pregnancy, they took pains to state that Bristol "made the decision on her own to keep the baby," which makes no sense, since they do not in any way acknowledge that Bristol's choice in the matter, matters. I'd remind you that Sarah Palin believes that rape victims should bear the cost of investigating their own cases. And I'd remind you that when asked to consider what a rape victim should do, given Sarah Palin's antipathy to her plight, a die-hard McCain/Palin supporter said, "She should die." All of these things are worth remembering.

[WATCH.]

Comments

[berrycooda]

Do what you want. Do not have the baby and then blame S. Palin....T­hat is her belief, not the Gov't.

Then, if you don't have the baby, you will look back in a few years and probably wish you hadn't had
an abortion.

Roe vs Wade already established abortion rights...a­nd finding out years later, it was based on a lie.
However, the law still stands....­so have your abortion and quit trying to get your 15 minutes of fame
over a very tragic event for you.

Remember one thing, there are many women out there who would love to have a baby....
.Maybe you might feel better about your situation if you would let one of them adopt your baby
For some unknown twist of fate (or God's will) you have a choice to make about aborting a baby or
letting a loving family adopt it..... or keeping it yourself.
As soon as you hold that baby, you won't want to give it up, no matter what the circumstances of the pregnancy were.
So please don't use your situation to criticize S. Palin for her views on abortion.

[AmericanWay62]

Great ad. This is one of the few crucial points about the power the pseudo-Christian right wants to give to the federal government over women's own bodies.

Another good point, but not in this ad, is that the Republican platform has for almost 30 years stated that girls like Bristol Palin should have no choice in her situation. So Mama Sarah should not pat Bristol on the back for "making the right choice" after she had an accident. She should state in that whiny voice of hers that Bristol really had no choice. She won't, if her mother appoints one Supreme Court Justice.

[berrycooda]

She is not patting Bristol on the back...she is accepting the fact that the girl is pregnant, by the
boy she has dated for a few years and they both are in love and planning to marry.
Quit trying to make something smutty about it.

This is better than the remark Obama made that if one of his daughters had an accident and got
pregnant, why should they be PUNISHED with a baby.

So ....some people may look at it as punishment, but God gives babies to be loved not as punishment.

If S.Palin made her daughter get an abortion, you would be criticizing that.....j­ust admit you don't
like her and quit nit picking about everything she says and does.

[jdw1981]

Bristol was only in love with the idea of sleeping around... and it came back and bit her in the @ss.

[PT6]

Can you IMAGINE someone like Michelle Bachmann as President?

Sarah Palin is Bachmann in "Sheep's Clothes."

One Heartbeat Away from the President and HOLDING THE SAME BELIEFS AS BACHMANN!

I believe Bachmann motivated McCain to pick Palin!

Bachmann was a FISH CLEANER IN ALASKA when she was young!

Michelle Bachman and PALIN have Three STRONG BELIEFS:

1. Roe v. Wade must be OVERTHR0WN!
2. Creationi$­m/Intellig­ent Design should be FUNDED by Government and taught in SCHOOLS!
3. Church and State can be as ONE with Funding Flowing to Religiou$ Teachings and sixth grade Math and Science are enough to graduate High School!

[Tenderfoot]

The real irony is pro life is against birth control not that it would help in this case. Lets imagine a world where all men and women at the age of puberty had a type of birth control that couldn't be removed until legal marriage.I­'m just curious to see the reaction to this.

[Mewcatone]

janieloves6 I'm so sorry to hear your story, I can not imagine what you went through. I'd like to pose another hypothetical if you don't mind. Suppose we had a law that required all women who are raped to have an abortion? or required all women who are raped to give up their children for adoption. Right now you have the option to not have an abortion. Pro-Choice does not equate to Pro-Abortion what Pro-Choice does is tell women that they have a right to decided for themselves what to do with their own bodies. Just like you wouldn't want anyone telling you you must have an abortion, other women do not want to be told they must keep a child conceived out of rape. When we start restricting the rights of others, we open ourselves up to those very same restrictions.

[mergina]

I CANNOT imagine any woman wanting to deny a woman her rights to her own body. I just received my long awaited dvd of 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days, a masterful movie of just what a woman might have to do to obtain an abortion when it is illegal and you are forced into the back streets for one. A MUST SEE.

[betweenextremes]

I don't know about everyone else, but it feels incredibly creepy to me when an old man (or any man for that matter) talks about a young girl's reproductive choices.

[LiberalBuzz]

There are times when I am reminded of the violence so many men commit against women and I am embarrassed to be a man.

BUT Sarah Palin makes me embarrassed for the people of Alaska.

It takes a great deal of courage for this young woman to have come forward and speak as she did. I hope this ad gets wide coverage.

Obama/Biden 08!

[OldRedJoe]

Ashamed to be a man?

PLEEEZZEEEEE

[AmericanWay62]

So, OldRedJoe. How many women or teenagers have you raped?

[mysterygirl18]

That has to be one of the best ads I've seen that ad along with the Defenders of Wildlife ad should be played over and over again on tv...

http://www.myspace.com/wakeupnowpeople

[zanzig]

Seems to me that the larger crime might be the one committed against the child born of rape. I cannot think that if a woman/girl is forced to bear the child she is never going to be able to nurture that child with a whole heart. If the child is given up for adoption, and at some time in the future seeks to know of their birth, there could be serous repercussions. In either event the psychological probloems that lie ahead for that child could be huge.

[moongal6]

If you don't want an abortion, don't have one.
'Nuff said.
If someone else has an abortion, how could this possibly affect me?

[PAposter]

Exactly!

[janieloves6]

I, too, am a rape victim. I did not get pregnant, but I believe as a victim I can speak on this issue. For me, I know that I was the victim and not the perpetrator of violence. I was weak and powerless against a much more powerful aggressor. I hope that if I had become pregnant as a result of the crime, I would have had the courage to not turn around and become the perpetrator of a crime against another innocent victim.

[Ethics101]

Terminating a pregnancy is not a crime.

[schatsie]

If terminating a pregnancy is a crime, so is having a miscarriag­e...NOT... the fact that one in 4 women who have been raped or incested become pregnant is a real issue on TWO FRONTS...a­nd the first is that this culture devalues women to the extent that they DO NOT CARE if our streets are SAFE therefore allowing rapists to freely commit their crimes.

[pumpkin]

I'm so sorry you were violated in such a horrible manner and I fully support your hypothetical choice to continue a pregnancy after being raped.

Please respect that other women might make a different choice from you.

[PAposter]

I think the real crime would be to bring a soul into this world, that had been created from such violence and horror. That is a soul that would be tortured throughout life, with or without your love. As a result, each of you would suffer great heartache.

As a Catholic who wishes there were less abortions, I believe women and their partners should have the legal right to end a pregnancy. I firmly believe that God allows all souls in the world that wish to be here. However, with life there is no guarantee of internal peace, but in death there is the is the promise of eternal peace.

[izAriver]

"...I didn't have a choice about being raped. But I should have a choice about this." '

I don't want to hear anymore repub crap over "less government". Talk about hypocritical.

[BlackWidowPilot]

The hypocrisy of the self-appointed "party of conservative Christian family values" is of epic proportions, citizen:

http://www.armchairsubversive.org

"Party of conservative Christian family values" only if one means the court of Roman Emperor *Caligula,* but that's about it.

This brave young woman underscores why a women's right to choose what she does with her own body must remain sacrosanct under the Rule of Law.

Leland R. Erickson

Citizen

[AmericanWay62]

Two important hypocrisies here.
One, the Christian Right is neither Christian nor right. Most of them worship the Old Testament God of vengeful wrath, military might, and glory, etc. Right down John McCain's warmongering alley. Some, like Mayor Palin back in her Wasilla Assembly of God (it's Pentecostal not Evangelical), are focused almost entirely on speaking in tongues and the book of Revelation. I am afraid they would see her quick ascendancy to VP or, God forbid, President as a sign from God that she should go ahead and start Armageddon. The Christian Right's political agenda is at odds with Christ's actual teaching of love, acceptance of outsiders, tolerance of the Roman govt, ministry to the poor and imprisoned and equal access to women, children, lepers and other outcasts.

The second is the idea that Conservatives are for small government. That may be true when it comes to letting businesses do whatever they want (until they need to be bailed out, then a huge govt. is just fine). But Social Conservatives are for Big Brother telling you whom you cannot marry and that you must carry all babies to term, regardless of your situation, health, or risk to your life.

[ClareP]

I admire this young woman's courage in speaking out in this powerful ad. I hope it will be aired/distributed widely.

I can't help but feel that something is simply wrong emotionally and morally with people who doesn't get the trauma of rape and don't get how being forced to bear a child of rape would compound that trauma exponentially, making it virtually impossible to recover. And really, given all we know about the power of genetics, do we really want rapists to procreate?

[ImVotingforThatOne]

They are probably the same kind of people who would tell a girl that it was her fault that she got raped; that she "asked for it." Sick.

[Artfullyaware]

Read ClareP's message again, I think you misread it. She said she doesn't get how some people don't understand the trauma of rape, not that she herself doesn't understand.

[UnderdogSRD]

Powerful ad.