More dumbassery than you can shake a wire hanger at.
THIS JUST IN: part of your head just exploded.
In pushing this bill through, Republicans in Arizona relied on “statistics” showing that a high percentage of minority women are seeking abortions in clinics purposefully located in minority communities. Republicans also cited statistics demonstrating that some populations are seeking more and more abortions because they don’t like the sex of the fetus (really!? no the fuck they’re not.)
BREAKING: the rest of your head just exploded.
Essentially, this law attempts to turn abortion into a hate crime in order to lend an air of credibility to the absolutely bullshit theory that abortion is some sort of black genocide.
::sigh::
Here’s the thing about hate crimes: They are different from “regular” crimes in that proof of hate crimes require proof of a little somethin’ extra — prejudicial motivation.
For example: It’s one thing to assault a guy and steal his wallet. It’s quite another thing to assault a guy while calling him a homo and screaming about how you’re going to teach queers a lesson, and then steal his wallet. Both are crimes. The latter is fairly undeniably a hate crime.
Of course, the former may also be a hate crime; maybe the assailant only steals gay people’s wallets, and maybe he keeps a journal somewhere entitled Number of Queer Wallets Stolen. Suck it, Homos! which can be introduced as evidence against him. But unless a prosecutor can prove a prejudicial motivation beyond a reasonable doubt, no conviction for a hate crime will result.
In order to morph a run-of-the-mill assault — an act intended to cause an apprehension of harmful or offensive contact, and which causes apprehension in the victim that harmful or offensive contact is imminent — into a hate crime, a prosecutor must prove that the accused’s undisclosed intent was based upon prejudice.
So, not only does a prosecutor have to get inside the accused’s mind to prove intent, the prosecutor must then go one layer deeper into the accused’s mind to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that bias or prejudice formed the foundation for that intent.
If you’re confused, you should be. A hate crime is, essentially, the Inception of crimes — a crime within a crime.
With that in mind, I give you a brief rant: