February 01, 2011 10:10 PM UTC

A Case of "Buyer's Remorse" in Cory Gardner's Future?

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

There’s a very interesting fight building in Congress around recently-introduced legislation that would tighten federal funding restrictions on abortion procedures. The bill, H.R. 3, is sponsored by over 170 mostly GOP members of Congress, including Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman, Doug Lamborn, and freshman Rep. Cory Gardner—Scott Tipton is not listed among the bill’s cosponsors, and we haven’t seen a reason yet why not.

A story over at the unapologetically liberal Mother Jones Magazine about H.R. 3 is getting a lot of circulation, focusing on one key change that this bill makes–to the definition of rape, in reference to the exclusion in the abortion funding ban for victims of rape and incest.

For years, federal laws restricting the use of government funds to pay for abortions have included exemptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. (Another exemption covers pregnancies that could endanger the life of the woman.) But the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” a bill with 173 mostly Republican co-sponsors that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has dubbed a top priority in the new Congress, contains a provision that would rewrite the rules to limit drastically the definition of rape and incest in these cases. [Pols emphasis]

With this legislation, which was introduced last week by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to “forcible rape.” This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible. For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion…

This proposed change comes uncomfortably close to the circumstances surrounding a bombshell story that upended the Colorado Senate race last year between Michael Bennet and Ken Buck–a “non forcible” case of alleged date rape from 2005 that Buck infamously had declined to prosecute, and proved resonant enough among women to turn them out to vote against Buck in unprecedented and tide-turning proportions. This was the decisive moment of the most costly and hard-fought Senate race in America in 2010. Whatever becomes of Sen. Bennet, we’ll be talking about this epic race, and the role women voters played in ending it, for years.

A lesson worth learning, right? We apparently ask rhetorically?

We don’t know any plainer way to say it: the gut-wrenching TV spots cosponsorship of this ill-advised bill invites next year are going to hurt. Perhaps all of them, but freshman Gardner, a prime target once the redistricting dust settles, really should have read the fine print.