House Passes “Redefining Rape” Bill, H.R. 3

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UPDATED: The House of Representatives passed the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” on a 251-175 vote Wednesday afternoon. The bill has been the subject of a lot of controversy over the possibility that it could redefine rape for the purposes of abortion law and force IRS agents to ask questions during audits about whether a woman who had received an abortion had been raped or was the victim of incest. However, the bill is almost certainly DOA in the Senate, which is run by Democrats and is more sympathetic to abortion rights. Even if H.R. 3 did pass the Senate, President Barack Obama has vowed to veto it.

I’ve been following the action live on Twitter. I’d put a Twitter widget here, but they generally aren’t very good (they either show old tweets ahead of new tweets or don’t refresh), so I’d encourage you to just follow me on Twitter.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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