Report: GOP to back off redefining rape in abortion bill

House Republicans are backing off from controversial language that would have redefined rape in a bill that bans public funding of abortions, Politico reports.

The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which has 173 mostly Republican co-sponsors, would tighten the existing exceptions for Medicaid abortions to "forcible rape" from rape. Abortion advocates told Mother Jones they worried the "forcible" language would prevent women who had been drugged and raped, as well as women raped without the use of explicit physical force, from being able to access abortion services through Medicaid if they became pregnant.

"The word forcible will be replaced with the original language from the Hyde Amendment," Jeff Sagnip, spokesman for bill sponsor Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, told Politico today.

Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois, a Democratic co-sponsor of the bill, told the Lookout in a statement last week that he did not intend for "forcible rape" to redefine the existing taxpayer-funded abortion exceptions in the case of rape, incest and situations where the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother. Republicans had remained silent on the controversy until now.

Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, stoked the controversy further this week by claiming the bill would prevent young women who had been the victims of statutory rape from receiving Medicaid abortions.

Democratic politicians and women's rights activists have denounced the bill's narrowing of the definition of rape as an attack on women--suggesting, for example, that under the revised language, "date rape" would not qualify, in legal terms, as rape. Comedian Jon Stewart did a segment last night mocking the politicians for quibbling over the different kinds of rape, below:

(Smith: AP)