Samantha Bee on: Women MUST ALLOW RAPISTS TO SEE THE CHILD in many states

http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/04/10/daily-show-parental-rights-rapists

As if suffering the trauma of sexual assault weren’t a horrific enough burden for the roughly 293,000 women raped each year in the U.S., the women impregnated as a result may be forced to spend additional time with their attackers. In nearly 20 states, a victim may have to face her assailant again, long after a criminal trial has passed, during a custody battle.

No national law exists to protect women from sharing custody with their rapists—a fact that The Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee had trouble stomaching without stopping for intermittent snuggles with cuddly animals.

“If you are the victim of rape and you conceive a child, then you should be able to terminate your rapist’s parental rights,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., told Bee on Wednesday night’s episode.  

Wasserman Schultz attempted to remedy this injustice with the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act in 2013. Despite bipartisan support, from both anti- and pro-choice groups, the bill did not even receive a hearing. That’s because it included $25 million spent over five years to grease the wheels with states by monetarily incentivizing them to alter their individual constitutions with an amendment allowing women to terminate rapists’ custodial rights.                         

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Wasserman Schultz hasn’t given up, and she’s confident that her newest version of the bill, assigned to a congressional committee in March, has a better shot at passing.

What Bee can’t comprehend is why a relatively small amount of money—by government standards—prevents protecting survivors and their children, or why states need money to make the change in the first place.