Political story, surely too flabbergasting to be real?

[ciphergoth]

Greta Christina writes in the Blowfish Blog:

I care that, as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin was responsible for a policy in which rape victims had to pay for their own rape kits [ie pay for the costs of their own forensic examination following a rape, which is up to $1000].

(No, I’m not kidding. A policy that not only further victimizes the victims, but ensures that rapists of poor women will get away with it. And a policy, btw, that McCain also supports, with multiple votes in Congress.)

Is this for real? Is there some other side of the story I'm missing?

Comments

[ellemir.livejournal.com]

Makes me want to cry.
Is this for real?

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

It is for real. There has been some speculation as to why, but the state of Alaska passed a specific law to ban towns from doing this.

[ajva.livejournal.com]

One triumph of feminism is being able to totally trash a woman for her outrageously shitty policies. This is the 21st Century. Good.

Let's hope the majority of the American people spot the problem.

[ellemir.livejournal.com]

Some how I'm not feeling particularly hopeful

[simple-epiphany.livejournal.com]

Arrgh!? Most Republican policies at least try to hide their evil. It's not like I'm surprised that they support this, but that they're this open about it? Blimey.

[palmer1984.livejournal.com]

*is quite speechless*

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

This one's cropped up in a couple of places. Read the link carefully - it has most of the facts straight.

The facts, as I remember them (and I'm tired and drunk right now, so I may be forgetting something):

1) Sarah Palin's state did charge for rape kits. However, it appears that charge was usually levied at the health insurers of the victims, not the victims themselves. It is unclear whether victims without health insurance were charged.
2) Palin did not promote or introduce this policy, at least that anyone has documentation of. It merely occurred during her term of mayor. She may or may not have been aware of it. Common sense suggests she was at least peripherally aware, but we don't know.
3) When the next mayor (as I recall) legislated to remove this, Palin's chosen chief of police (but not Palin herself) spoke out in favour of the policy.

Unless something new has cropped up since I last looked at this, there's no smoking gun here. And given that one of the more successful PR tactics of the neocons has been to encourage opponents to overextend in their criticisms, then point out the overextension, by association invalidating all criticism, I'd be a bit careful with this one.

[palmer1984.livejournal.com]

McCain did support the policy in congress though.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

True, and that fact should be (after some research as to exactly what he supported) trumpeted to the hills. And personally, I'd be mildly astonished to hear that Palin didn't at least know about it. We just can't prove anything.

[fizzyboot.livejournal.com]

It merely occurred during her term of mayor. She may or may not have been aware of it.

If she wasn't aware of it -- in a small town of 7000 -- then she's incompetent.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

She was mayor for about six years; given the high rape statistics in Alaska that suggests there might have been about 30 rapes during that time.

[henry_the_cow]

The links from Elf Sternberg's journal provide more background.

This article (http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2000/05/23/news.txt) reports the Alaskan legislation to outlaw the practice. In the comments, various bits of background are revealed. A key one is that Palin fired the previous police chief and appointed the person who instigated this policy. So she was involved in the policy-making, although at one remove.

Among the other comments, it is suggested that other states has similar policies. One reason seems to have been to reclaim costs from health insurance companies, which seems dubious reasoning but not an attack on the victims themselves. I don't know how US towns are funded and whether this was an isolated case or standard practice.

Some of the other comments are not so generous. One obnoxious poster attempted to justify this as dissuading women (such as "the town ho") from making false accusations. Yuk.

Meanwhile, this article (http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2000/05/23/news.txt) conjectures that another reason for Palin supporting the policy was that the kits included emergency contraception, which the pro-life lobby view as abortifacients. The article doesn't provide any evidence to support this conjecture, although it seems to fit with what little I know about Palin's beliefs.

[lovingboth]

If you want to keep track of the stupid, elfs is a good read.

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

This (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/opinion/19clinton.html?em) is different but related.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

Feministing has a bunch of stuff on this.