From The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/09/abortion-forcible-rape-language-hr-3_n_820846.html
02/ 9/11
WASHINGTON — After significant public blowback, House Republicans last week promised to drop a controversial provision in their high-priority No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act that would redefine rape. But almost a week later, that language is still in the bill.
Last week, a spokesman for the bill’s principal sponsor, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), said, “The word forcible will be replaced with the original language from the Hyde Amendment.” The Hyde Amendment bans taxpayer dollars from being used for abortions, except in cases of incest and rape — not just “forcible rape,” as the Smith bill, H.R. 3, would have it.
But as The New York Times first noted on Wednesday, the “forcible rape” language remains. Ilan Kayatsky, a spokesman for New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the top-ranking Democrat on the House judiciary subcommittee focusing on constitutional issues, told The Huffington Post that while Nadler hopes the bill will soon be changed, they have been treating it as it’s written.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/09/abortion-forcible-rape-language-hr-3_n_820846.html
Women Born Transsexual 
February 9, 2011 at 3:03 pm
I am usually the last person to suggest that anyone deserves to be raped, but these jackass legislators certainly do, forcibly or not.
February 9, 2011 at 3:33 pm
When is rape forcible?
Is an s&m rape game that involves physical force “forcible”?
Is the seduction of a learning disabled woman “forcible”?
Is the use of Neuro Linguistic Programming techniques as an aid to sex “forcible”?
Is drug rape “forcible”?
Is drugging that involves physical contact but not penetration “forcible rape”?
Who’s definitions and fantasies are we looking at here?
February 9, 2011 at 3:48 pm
It comes down to non-coerced informed consent. An S/M game is consensual as long as both parties have agreed to it, including safe words etc. Rape involves penetration otherwise it is sexual assault not rape.
Drug rape is forcible.
February 9, 2011 at 4:09 pm
An interesting work: A Natural History of Rape http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/t/thornhill-rape.html
Another interesting aside on this issue is the legal conception of “competence.” Those who cannot consent are statutory rape victims, regardless of other circumstance. If a rape victim was compromised by drugs, she is incapable of giving consent. Interestingly the rapist, if under the influence of drugs to the same degree is still held accountable (no I am not saying they shouldn’t be, just that it is interesting). Rape is now a war crime, in time of war at any rate, but the incarceration for the purpose of rape, especially of political prisoners, is not classified as a crime, alas.
February 9, 2011 at 4:18 pm
I find some of the “Statutory Rape” laws truly screwed up, particularly those that make sex offenders of some on who may be only a few months different in age from the “victim”.
But I also despise “zero tolerance rules and mandatory sentencing” in most cases although I am willing to make an exception for Wall Street scumbags.
February 9, 2011 at 4:36 pm
Oh, I used to have such a concise list of those who would be “first up against the wall, come the revolution.” How my list has grown in this brave new century. There are fewer gray areas grayer than rape statutes/sentencing guidelines.
I remember the argument that dear old Clarence Darrow made against making rape or kidnapping capital crimes… it took away the incentive that the perpetrator might have to allow the victim to survive the crime. Interesting to note that the Romans expected a raped woman to kill herself and they were scandalized that the Christian women, when raped, did not. Also interesting to read that rape in Islamic law means to steal a woman from her rightful owner (not herself obviously). Law is indeed frequently bizarre.
I notice, too, that I failed to avoid referring to rape victims as “she” – itself a crime in these enlightened times.
February 9, 2011 at 7:57 pm
“Enlightened times” — would that they were.