Rape

"Rape is a crime and Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas."

"Perhaps it is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused and, in reality, it is she who must prove her good reputation, her mental soundness, and her impeccable propriety."

"There was a young fellow named Scott Who took a girl out on his yacht, But too lazy to rape her He made darts of brown paper Which he languidly tossed at her twat."

"If an accused man believed the woman had consented, whether or not that belief was based on reasonable grounds, he could not be found guilty of rape."

"Rapists often recall being intensely angry, depressed or feeling worthless for days or even months leading up to the rape. Very often the rapists say that the trigger for the rape was when a woman made them angry, usually by rebuffing a sexual overture. The men experienced the rebuff as an insult to their manhood that intensified their emotional misery."

"Societies with a high incidence of rape ... tolerate violence and encourage men and boys to be tough, aggressive, and competitive. Men in such cultures generally have special, politically important gathering spots off limits to women, whether they be the Mundurucu men's club or the corner tavern. Women take little or no part in public decision making or religious rituals: men mock or scorn women's practical judgment. They also demean what they consider women's work and remain aloof from childbearing and rearing. These groups usually trace their beginnings to a male supreme being."

"The way society trains its boys and girls to think about themselves and each other determines to a large extent how rape-prone or rape-free that society will be."

"The best depictions don’t just leave it at the dramatic device of the rape itself. They use it to tell a deeper story about recovery and what effect it has on that person."

"My purpose in this book has been to give rape its history. Now we must deny it a future"

"Rape is a culturally fostered means of suppressing women. Legally we say we deplore it, but mythically we romanticize and perpetuate it, and privately we excuse and overlook it (because we always find a way to blame the woman for letting it happen). In other words, rape is awful— except in war, where the enemy's women are part of the plunder; except in marriage, where a man is entitled by law to have sexual relations with his wife even if against her will; and except in extenuating circumstances where the mere presence of a wornan is cause for a man to rape her."

"Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe. From prehistoric times to the present, I believe, rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear."

"In medieval times, opportunities to rape and loot were among the few advantages open to...soldiers, who were paid with great irregularity by their leaders...When the city of Constantinople was sacked in 1204, rape and plunder went hand in hand, as in the sack of almost every ancient city....Down through the ages, triumph over women by rape became a way to measure victory, part of a soldier's proof of masculinity and success, a tangible reward for services rendered...[and] an actual reward of war."

"[R]ape by a conqueror is compelling evidence of the conquered's status of masculine impotence. Defense of women has long been a hallmark of masculine success. Rape by a conquering soldier destroys all remaining illusions of power and property for men of the defeated side. The body of a raped woman becomes a ceremonial battlefield, a parade ground for the victor's trooping of the colors. The act that is played out upon her is a message passed between men - vivid proof of victory for one and loss and defeat for the other."

"Þe fyfþe ys mochë for to drede, To rauysħ a womman here maydenhede, Þat ys to say, a-ȝens here wylle, But ȝyf she grauntë weyl þar-tylle; And, þogh she to hym consente, He ys holde to here auaunsement; For ȝyf she ȝyue here to folye, She kan nat leuë tyl she deye; And he þat brogħt here to þat bysmere, For here foly he shal answere."

"Þe syxtë reyseþ gretë stryfe, To rauys anouþer mannys wyfe; For aȝens God hyt ys euyl dede, And to þe worlde also mochyl drede. Ȝyf hyt be aȝens here wyl, Þe more he douþ hym seluen yl."

"Along with other forms of sexual assault, it belongs to that class of indignities against the person that cannot ever be fully righted, and that diminishes all humanity."

"When she tired, I loosened up a little, to let her blow. Yes, it was rape, but only technical, brother, only technical. Above the waist, maybe she was worried about the sacrilegio, but from the waist down she wanted me, bad. There couldn’t be any doubt about that."

"[A] product of a living organism (the rapist) is used to attack a biological system (the reproductive system) in members of the enemy population. Although this attack need not produce illness, it is designed to produce social chaos … . Sperm so used becomes a social and psychological toxin, poisoning the futures of victims and their communities by producing children who, if they survive, will remind whoever raised them of their traumatic origins in torture. … Unlike bacteria and viruses, sperm is easily containable, storable, preservable, and deliverable by means of men's bodies."

"People will say "you can't joke about rape. Rape's not funny." I say "fuck you, I think it's hilarious! How do you like that? I can prove to you that rape is funny. Picture Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd.""

"Rape is not a sexual crime. It is not sexual. Rape is a violent crime... it's a violent crime, where you cum at the end. It's no different than if you robbed a liquor store... and then came."

"Rape is the forcible violation of the sexual intimacy of another person. It does injury to justice and charity. Rape deeply wounds the respect, freedom, and physical and moral integrity to which every person has a right. It causes grave damage that can mark the victim for life. It is always an intrinsically evil act. Graver still is the rape of children committed by parents (incest) or those responsible for the education of the children entrusted to them."

"He saugh a maydè walkinge him biforn, Of whichè mayde anon, maugree hir heed, By verray force he rafte hir maydenheed."

"It’s in the Ten Commandments to not take the Lord’s name in vain. Rape isn’t up there, by the way. Rape is not a Ten Commandment. But don’t say the dude’s name with a shitty attitude."

"You cannot rape your spouse. And there’s very clear case law."

"Forbear, design no hasty Rape On such a green, untimely Grape."

"As long as there is rape... there is not going to be any peace or justice or equality of freedom. You are not going to become what you want to become or what you want to become. You are not going to live in the world you want to live in"

"Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist bothers to buy a bottle of wine."

"Rape is no excess, no aberration, no accident, no mistake—it embodies sexuality as the culture defines it. As long as these definitions remain intact—that is, as long as men are defined as sexual aggressors and women are defined as passive receptors lacking integrity—men who are exemplars of the norm will rape women."

"Look you, gentlemen, 'tis Grillon, the fierce colonel; he that devours our wives, and ravishes our children."

"Against her will fair Julia to possess, Is not to enjoy, but ravish happiness: Yet women pardon force, because they find The violence of love is still most kind: Just like the plots of well built comedies, Which then please most, when most they do surprise: But yet constraint love's noblest end destroys, Whose highest joy is in another's joys: Where passion rules, how weak does reason prove! I yield my cause, but cannot yield my love."

"Love never fails to master what he finds, But works a different way in different minds, The fool enlightens, and the wise he blinds. This youth, proposing to possess and 'scape, Began in murder, to conclude in rape."

"I want to see this men's movement make a commitment to ending rape because that is the only meaningful commitment to equality. It is astonishing that in all our worlds of feminism and antisexism we never talk seriously about ending rape. Ending it. Stopping it. No more. No more rape. In the back of our minds, are we holding on to its inevitability as the last preserve of the biological? Do we think that it is always going to exist no matter what we do? All of our political actions are lies if we don't make a commitment to ending the practice of rape. This commitment has to be political. It has to be serious. It has to be systematic. It has to be public. It can't be self-indulgent."

"I don’t believe rape is inevitable or natural. If I did, I would have no reason to be here. If I did, my political practice would be different than it is. Have you ever wondered why we women are not just in armed combat against you? It’s not because there’s a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence."

"Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relations with men, in their relations with women, all men are rapists, and that's all that they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes."

"It is not rape if she consents even if her will is weakened, unless fraud or threats are used to that end. Seduction is not rape."

"The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. “My lords,” he said, please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.” “No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.” But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.” Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”"

"Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?"

"I don't want to know about the constitution of the rapist—I want to kill him! I don't care if he is white or black, if he is middle-class or poor, if his mother hung him from the clothesline by his balls: I only want to kill him! Any woman who has been raped will agree."

"Most rapes don't involve any injury whatsoever. We are told that it is a sexually violent crime... [that] it is one of the most violent crimes in the world. Most rape is just lazy, just careless, insensitive. Every time a man rolls over on his exhausted wife and insists on enjoying his conjugal rights he is raping her. It will never end up in a court of law. Instead of thinking of rape as a spectacularly violent crime, and some rapes are, think about it as non-consensual - that is, bad sex. Sex where there is no communication, no tenderness, no mention of love. If we are going to say 'trust us, believe us', if we do say that our accusation should stand as evidence, then we do have to reduce the tariff for rape."

"What the hell are you saying? Something that leaves no sign, no injury, no nothing is more damaging to a woman than seeing your best friend blown up by an IED [improvised explosive device]?"

"In no state can a man be accused of raping his wife. How can any man steal what already belongs to him? It is in the sense of rape as theft of another man's property that Kate Millett writes, "Traditionally rape has been viewed as an offense one male commits against another — a matter of abusing his woman.""

"Rape is a form of mass terrorism, for the victims of rape are chosen indiscriminately, but the propagandists for male supremacy broadcast that it is women who cause rape by being unchaste or in the wrong place at the wrong time — in essence by behaving as if they were free."

"Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault."

"Is it not lawful to do this wrong [rape], even if it is sometimes lawful to kill women....If a woman fights, why should she not allow war to be made upon her? ... But there is no reason why she should suffer so signal an insult [as rape]."

"The husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract."

"Raping a woman who did not belong to any man was not considered a crime at all, just as picking up a lost coin on a busy street is not considered theft."

"To say that a husband 'raped' his wife was as illogical as saying that a man stole his own wallet."

"As of 2006, there were still fifty-three countries where a husband could not be prosecuted for the rape of his wife."

"Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order. One may, indeed, admit the possibility of a retribution lurking in the present catastrophe. Doubtless some of Tess d’Urberville’s mailed ancestors rollicking home from a fray had dealt the same measure even more ruthlessly towards peasant girls of their time. But though to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children may be a morality good enough for divinities, it is scorned by average human nature; and it therefore does not mend the matter."

"Women quickly learn that rape is a crime only in theory; in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women's experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men."

"Rape culture = needing Cosby to admit he’s guilty before we believe it. If that’s the standard, almost no one would be guilty of rape."

"History, sacred and profane, and the common experience of mankind teach that women of the character shown in this case are prone to make false accusations both of rape and of insult upon the slightest provocation for ulterior purposes."

"Rape is often presented in television plotlines, where it has far-reaching and lasting consequences for the affected characters. But critics of Game of Thrones fear that rape has become so pervasive in the drama that it is almost background noise: a routine and unshocking occurrence."

"Nay, my brethren, nay, I pray you, do not so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly. Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing."

"The difference between a ‘good time’ and a ‘rape’ may hinge on whether the girl’s parents were awake when she finally arrived home."

"They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah."

"Rape is not aggressive sexuality, it is sexualized aggression."

"Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated."

"Rape is loss. Like death, it is best treated with a period of mourning and grief. We should develop social ceremonies for rape, rituals, that, like funerals and wakes, would allow the mourners to recover the spirits that the rapist, like death, steals. The social community is the appropriate center for the restoration of spirit, but the rape victim is usually shamed into silence or self-imposed isolation."

"Witness the Streets of Sodom, and that night In Gibeah, when the hospitable door Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape."

"Why should murder be so over-represented in our popular fiction, and crimes of a sexual nature so under-represented? Surely it cannot be because rape is worse than murder, and is thus deserving of a special unmentionable status. Surely, the last people to suggest that rape was worse than murder were the sensitively reared classes of the Victorian era … And yet, while it is perfectly acceptable (not to say almost mandatory) to depict violent and lethal incidents in lurid and gloating high-definition detail, this is somehow regarded as healthy and perfectly normal, and it is the considered depiction of sexual crimes that will inevitably attract uproars of the current variety."

"Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice. And what a practice. The violation of an individual woman is the metaphor for man's forcing himself on whole nations [...], on nonhuman creatures [...], and on the planet itself [...]."

"Go into court on a rape — it's like stepping into a refrigerator with the light off. All the men are thinking of their daughters; all the women are sitting with their knees jammed together!"

"A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No one to blame but herself. She displayed her beauty to the entire world, strapless, backless, sleeveless, nothing but satanic skirts, slit skirts, translucent blouses, miniskirts, tight jeans: all this to tease man and appeal to his carnal nature. Would you put this sheep that you adore in the middle of hungry wolves? No... It would be devoured. It's the same situation here. You're putting this precious girl in front of lustful, satanic eyes of hungry wolves. What is the consequence? Catastrophic devastation, sexual harassment, perversion, promiscuity."

"Rape isn’t an isolated brief act. It damages flesh and reverberates in memory. It can have life changing, unchosen results – a pregnancy or a transmitted disease”, Ms. Mlambo-Ngcuka stressed, adding that consequences of a one-time act can sprawl into damaging long-term effects."

"It is vital... to establish facilities for providing sexual comfort to the soldiers as soon as possible."

"The message to people raped by intimate partners or raped while unconscious is clear: don’t report; don’t prosecute. Even if you’re demonstrably telling the truth, we still won’t offer appropriate punishment. Unless you were raped by a violent stranger down a dark alley, with the bruises to show for it, your rape doesn’t count. (And, even then, what were you doing in the alley?)"

"The haughty fair, Who not the rape ev’n of a god could bear."

"It is in female psychology to wish, to some extent, to be overcome by a superior male."

"Men rightly observe that a conjugal act imposed on one's partner without regard to his or her condition or personal and reasonable wishes in the matter, is no true act of love, and therefore offends the moral order in its particular application to the intimate relationship of husband and wife."

"Wer’t possible that my ambitious sin, Durst commit rapes upon a ', I might have lustfull thoughts to her, of all Earths heav’nly Quire the most Angelicall."

"As long as male domination exists, rape will exist. [...] Rapists will not voluntarily stop raping women, but women revolting and men made conscious of their responsibility to fight sexism will collectively stop rape."

"Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her."

"A mutual and satisfied sexual act is of great benefit to the average woman, the magnetism of it is health giving. When it is not desired on the part of the woman and she has no response, it should not take place. This is an act of prostitution and is degrading to the woman’s finer sensibility, all the marriage certificates on earth to the contrary notwithstanding."

"We need more rape jokes. We really do. I love that some people applauded that. Needless to say, rape, the most heinous crime imaginable. Seems it’s a comic’s dream, though. Because it seems that when you do rape jokes that like the material is so dangerous and edgy. But the truth is it’s like the safest area to talk about in comedy. Cause who’s going to complain about a rape joke? Rape victims? They don’t even report rape. I mean, they’re traditionally not complainers. Like the worst maybe thing that could happen, and I would feel terrible, is like after a show maybe somebody comes up to you and is like, “Look I’m a victim of rape, and as a victim of rape I just want to say I thought that joke was inappropriate and insensitive and totally my fault and I am so sorry.”"

"Does Djilas, who is himself a writer, not know what human suffering and the human heart are? Can't he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a wench or takes some trifle?"

"So now how am I going to live with him? As what? Is this still a husband? Is it a wife? If he can be raped, who is protecting me?"

"We do not discount the seriousness of rape as a crime. It is highly reprehensible, both in a moral sense and in its almost total contempt for the personal integrity and autonomy of the female victim and for the latter's privilege of choosing those with whom intimate relationships are to be established. Short of homicide, it is the "ultimate violation of self." It is also a violent crime because it normally involves force, or the threat of force or intimidation, to overcome the will and the capacity of the victim to resist. Rape is very often accompanied by physical injury to the female and can also inflict mental and psychological damage. Because it undermines the community's sense of security, there is public injury as well."

"He will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister: for rapes and ravishments he parallels Nessus."

"The moon, methinks, looks with a watery eye, And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, Lamenting some enforcèd chastity."

"Rape, call you it, my lord, to seize my own, My truth-betrothèd love and now my wife? But let the laws of Rome determine all; Meanwhile I am possess'd of that is mine."

"You are both decipher'd For villains mark'd with rape."

"Show me a villain that hath done a rape, And I am sent to be revenged on him."

"What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause, If your pure maidens fall into the hand Of hot and forcing violation? What rein can hold licentious wickedness When down the hill he holds his fierce career?"

"Take pity of your town and of your people, Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command; ... If not, why, in a moment look to see The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters."

"Let fair humanity abhor the deed That spots and stains love's modest snow-white weed."

"What win I if I gain the thing I seek? A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy. Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to get a toy?"

"Pure Chastity is rifled of her store, And Lust, the thief, far poorer than before."

"No man inveigh against the wither'd flower, But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill'd. Not that devour'd, but that which doth devour, Is worthy blame."

"Any lawyer who says there's no such thing as rape should be hauled out to a public place by three large perverts and buggered at high noon, with all of his clients watching."

"Women are terrified of being raped, but somewhere in the back of every womb there is one rebellious nerve end that tingles with curiosity whenever the word is mentioned... Raped women have been divorced by their husbands — who couldn’t bear to live with the awful knowledge, the visions, the possibility that it wasn’t really rape."

"Thou hast a daughter, thou hast a wife too; So most of you have, soldiers; why might not this Have happen'd you? Which of you all, dear friends, But now, even now, may have your wives deflower'd, Your daughters slav'd, and made a lictor's prey? Think them not safe in Rome, for mine liv'd there."

"Rape is like bad weather: if it's inevitable, you might as well relax and enjoy it."

"He expressed some of his desire by a grunt. If he only had the courage to throw himself on her. Nothing less violent than rape would do. The sensation he felt was like that he got when holding an egg in his hand. Not that she was fragile or even seemed fragile. It wasn’t that. It was her completeness, her egglike self-sufficiency, that made him want to crush her."

"Coercion within marriage or concubinage might be repugnant, but it remained fundamentally legal."

"The followers of Imam Abu Hanifah said: "The right of the sexual pleasure belongs to the man, not the woman, by that it is meant that the man has the right to force the woman to gratify himself sexually."

"...marital rape is an oxymoron; rape (ightisab) is a property crime that by definition cannot be committed by a husband."

"Though I believe in the strongest possible terms that meaningful consent is a prerequisite for ethical sexual relationships, I am at a loss to find this stance mirrored in the premodern Muslim legal tradition, which accepted and regulated slavery, including sex between male masters and their female slaves....I recall no instance in any Maliki, Hanafi, Shafii, or Hanbali text from the 8th to 10th centuries where anyone asserts that an owner must obtain his female slave’s consent before having sex with her. Indeed, I am aware of no case where anyone asks whether her consent is necessary or"

"For premodern Muslim jurists, as well as for those marginal figures who believe that the permission still holds, the category "rape" doesn't apply: ownership makes sex lawful; consent is irrelevant."

"Thus, marital rape is literally uncriminalizable under dominant interpretations of shari‘a."

"The last solution offered by Al-Kasani is especially disturbing, since it forces a wife to engage in non-consensual sex. If a wife's nushuz consisted of her sexual refusal, then her husband could have sex with her against her will. According to al-Kasani, marital rape was legally permissible."

"Al-Nasafi added an undeniable shade of violence to his discussion on marital rape. While he argued that a necessary condition of hitting one's wife is to leave her intact or sound, soundness is not a cindition for sex. so if a wife dies while her husband is having sex with her, he is not liable."

"A woman went out to pray at the time of the Prophet, and she was met by a man who attacked her and had his way with her. She screamed and he went away. Then another man passed by and she said: “This man did such and such to me.” A group of the Muhājirīn came by, and she said: “That man did such and such to me.” They caught the man who she thought was the one who had attacked her, and brought him, and she said: “Yes, this is the one.” They brought him to the Messenger of Allah, and when he issued orders concerning him, the one who had attacked her, stood up and said: “O Messenger of Allah, I am the one who attacked her.” He said to her: “Go, for Allah has forgiven you, and he said kind words to the man. [...] And he said concerning the man who had attacked her: “Stone him.” And he said: “He has repented in such a manner that if the people of Al-Madīnah repented like this, it would be accepted from them."

"It is otherwise where a woman, residing in the house of her husband, refuses to admit him to the conjugal embrace, as she is entitled to maintenance, notwithstanding her opposition, because being then in his power, he may, if he please, enjoy her by force."

"A man may gratify his passion with his female slave in whatever way he pleases. It is lawful for a man to perform the act of Azil (i.e. coitus interruptus) with his female slave without her consent, whereas he cannot lawfully do so by his wife unless with her permission. The reason of this is that the Prophet has forbidden the act of Azil with a free woman without her consent but has permitted it to a master in the case of his female slave."

"The fatal blot in Islam is the degradation of women. ... The Muslim soldier was allowed to do as he pleased with any infidel woman he might meet with on his victorious march. When one thinks of the thousands of women, mothers and daughters, who must have suffered untold shame and dishonour by this license, he cannot find words to express his horror, And this cruel indulgence has left its mark on the Muslim character."

"Sixteenth and seventeenth century Ottoman legislation on adultery and rape, for example, stipulated the frequent use of fines, moving away from the earlier emphasis on corporal punishment The hadd penalty for flogging or death for sexual crime *or even else severe tazir variations on this punishment) was for the most part replaced in this period by a scale of fines that depended on an individual's marital, religious, and economic status. This did not mean, however, that hadd punishments disappeared completely. As Leslie Peirce notes, the punishments articulated in the codes are “qualified .. with the brief statement provided the sharia punishment is not applied.'” Nonetheless, the basic assumption was that “the fine for adultery imposed on a rich Muslim was six times greater than that imposed on a poor Muslim and twelve times that imposed on a poor non-Muslim or a slave” Fines tied to both economic and political/religious status, in other words, replaced universal physical punishments applicable to everyone in the Muslim community."

"I should also emphasize that corporal punishment continued to play a role in the jurisprudence of the early modern period. As Judith Tucker notes in her analysis of seventeenth and eighteenth century legal structures in Ottoman Syria, for example, the shifting line between adultery and rape led many jurists to develop completely new types of physical punishment to respond to sexual crime. While noting that most judges did not make use of these prescriptions int heir actual adjudications, Tucker observes that, [t]he various evolving Ottoman criminal codes (kanun) authorized the Islamic judge to fine a perpetrator of simple za in lieu of applying the hadd penalty of the shari'a, but in the case of forced abduction and rape, whether of a woman, a girl, or a boy, the criminal code prescribed castration of the guilty."

"In this interpretation, in other words, zina as rape led to a severe, corporal tazir punishment that bore very little relationship to hadd adjudifications. At the same time, however, it was not just zina as rape, but rape along with abduction-the movement of perpetrator and his victim across space-that merited this particularly formidable response. The crime, that is, was conceived of as one that struck not just at sexual morality, but also at emerging notions of public and private space. And indeed, a second moment at which corporal punishment continued to be invoked was one that also revolved around questions of space. In this situation, however, the issue at stake was the respectability of the woman involved in the case. As Pierce argues, [I]f the mufti gave the category muhaddere [respectable] a definition, imperial law endowed it with material consequences. According to the statute books issues by the sultans, penalties for illegal behavior might differ according to whether a woman was muhaddere or not ...[i]n other words, the non-muhaddere woman might suffer a severe flogging and a substantial fine, while the parallel punishment for the muhaddere woman was the public humiliation of her husband the imposition of a comparatively lesser fine. By translating muhaddere as “respectable,” Peirce provides the literal translation (veiled, modest, concealed) with a significant social and legal meaning. At the same time, however, by choosing the word “respectable” in particular, she likewise gets at nascent modern notions of, of course, “respectability,” of the spaces in which respectable women travel, of where exactly women of what type move.33 Along with this new, sliding scale of fines linked to social status linked to corporal punishment,34 therefore, we can also see by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an interest on the part of the Ottoman government in defining not just the contract and copulation as they relate to sexual crime, but the sexual, moral, marital, economic, and political status of the individuals involved in them-especially to the extent that this status was manifested in movement across space."

"Obviously, the rhetoric of the public/private distinction that would underlies modern political behavior had not been constructed in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There does, however, appear to be a starting point set for an eventual movement in that direction. A hierarchy of sexual vulnerability (married women to young boys to unmarried women to adult men) is being formulated here and then linked to notions of physical mobility and space. Those who are more sexually vulnerable cannot venture out into public space; those who are less so can cross the public/private divide with more confidence. Likewise, those who are a threat are primarily defined as such because they are capable of carrying those who are threatened across spatial lines. And indeed, theoretically, at least, the crime that was rape occurred only as a result of a violation of these assumptions about space.38 Finally, for women but not for men,39 it was the precise act of entering into a contract (marriage, concubinage) that redefined both sexual vulnerability and physical mobility. It was indeed the contract above all that defined sexualized political space (“the public”) and politicized sexual space (“the private”)."

"In medieval early modern Islamic legislation on zina, therefore, a number of issues collide with one another, setting the foundation for eventual modern reinterpretations. Most fundamentally, sex law is intimately connected in this jurisprudence-as it is in the modern period-to both political identity and political space. At the same time, however, although there is a definite overlap between rape and adultery under the larger rubric of zina, the two remain relatively distinct-rape having to do with inappropriate copulation and adultery having to do with violating a contract. Likewise, for the most part sexuality and reproduction are emphatically separate-pregnancy irrelevant to adultery legislation and (male) sexual behavior the issue at stake in determining sexual crime. Nonetheless, there is also a starting point set here for an eventual conflation of rape and adultery as well as an eventual conflation of sexuality and reproduction. Indeed, by the time the early modern Ottoman codifications were being promulgated, these lines had been effectively blurred. Sexuality and reproduction remained to some extent separate, but with the collapse of hadd and tazir, sex crime became increasingly political and increasingly central to state structures. Likewise, sex crime became far more closely linked to emerging notions of the public and the private spheres-the primary difference between the seventeenth century and the nineteenth century being the seventeenth century emphasis on quasi private contracts and the nineteenth century emphasis on the emphatically public social contract. Moreover, these issues play almost the same role in medieval and early modern Catholic, French, and Italian law. There is, for example, a definite overlap in medieval France and Italy between rape and adultery-rape “defined as any sexual act outside of marriage and in particular applied to sexual intercourse with virgins, regardless of the aspect of violence.” At the same time, however, the punishment for adultery/rape-death and/or the obligation to settle a dowry on a deflowered virgin -sets up distinctions between the two that should at this point be familiar. The emphasis on the marriage contract, for example, once again creates a situation in which the punishment for raping a woman capable being contracted in marriage (i.e., a virgin) is far less severe than the punishment for raping a woman who could not be contracted in marriage (i.e., a married woman)."

"Complete legal capacity is only held in a person who has complete control of their body and mind. Slavery is premised upon the absence of control over the body, since it transfers control of the body and labour of the slave to another person, including sexual control. Therefore to ask the question pertaining to compulsion or consent of the enslaved person is to ask a question that does not have legal salience. Enslavement by definition removes the requirement for consent."

"Soldiers were incited to mass-rape the women in order to mutate the Hindu Bengali gene. This is what was said by Punjabi officers to Punjabi soldiers. This is what they did. In March 1971, West Pakistan invaded East Pakistan. Rapes and massacres took place. In one night alone, occupying soldiers, accompanied by Jamaat-e-Islami collaborators, invaded the student hostels at the university. Hundreds of students disappeared. Left-wing intellectuals were traced and shot. Sheikh Mujib was arrested and brought to a West Pakistani prison. His party went underground and prepared to resist. Pakistan's greatest poet, Faiz Ahined Faiz, wrote of 'eyes washed with blood'."

"Soldiers were told that Bengalis were relatively recent converts to Islam and hence not “proper Muslims”—their genes needed improving. This was the justification for the campaign of mass rape."

"The locals said there was widespread rape. This was confirmed by Sydney Schanberg of the New York Times, who, interviewing refugees in India, found that almost all of them were Hindus, who said that they were still specifically hounded by the Pakistan army. Schanberg remembers, “There were stories about rape by the Pakistani army, and those were true. Story after story. It was quite clear this had really happened.”"

"The stories were so extreme I didn't know what to think. The lecture we'd been given about the dangers of rape during freshman orientation week at Radcliffe had initially seemed as unbelievable. I had never even heard of rape until I came to America and the very possibility of it kept me from going out alone at night for the next four years. After the lecture, the possibility of rape at Harvard was real to me. The rape of East Bengal was not. I found security in the official jingoistic line in our part of the world that the reports in the Western press were 'exaggerated' and a 'Zionist plot' against an Islamic state."

"...Some army officer raided Rokeya Hall on 7 October 1971. Accompanied by five soldiers, Major Aslam had first visited the hostel on 3 October and asked the superintendent to supply some girls who could sing and dance at a function to be held in Tejgaon Cantonment. The superintendent told him that most of the girls had left the hostel after the disturbances and only 40 students were residing but as a superintendent of a girls' hostel she should not allow them to go to the cantonment for this purpose. Dissatisfied, Major Aslam went away. Soon after the superintendent informed a higher army officer in the cantonment, over the telephone, of the Major' s mission. However, on 7 October at about 8 pm. Major Aslam and his men raided the hostel. The soldiers broke open the doors, dragged the girls out and stripped them before raping and torturing them in front of the helpless superintendent. The entire thing was done so openly without any provocation, that even the Karachi-based newspaper, Dawn, had to publish the story, violating censorship by the military authorities. In seven days after liberation about 300 girls were recovered from different places around Dacca where they had been taken away and kept confined by the Pakistani army men. On 26 December altogether 55 emaciated and half-dead girls on the verge of mental derangement were recovered by the Red Cross with the help of the Mukti Bahini and the allied forces from various hideouts of the Pakistani army in Narayanganj, Dacca Cantonment and other small towns on the periphery of Dacca city."

"When asked if the usual figures of the number of women raped by the Pakistani Army, 200-400,000, are accurate, Dr. Davis states that they are underestimated: ...Probably the numbers are very conservative compared with what they did. The descriptions of how they captured towns were very interesting. They’d keep the infantry back and put artillery ahead and they would shell the hospitals and schools. And that caused absolute chaos in the town. And then the infantry would go in and begin to segregate the women. Apart from little children, all those were sexually matured would be segregated..And then the women would be put in the compound under guard and made available to the troops...Some of the stories they told were appalling. Being raped again and again and again. A lot of them died in those [rape] camps. There was an air of disbelief about the whole thing. Nobody could credit that it really happened! But the evidence clearly showed that it did happen."

"Like the Japanese during World War II and the Red Army in its victorious march through Eastern Europe in 1945, the West Pakistanis were singularly devoted to raping any women in sight. Many were repeatedly raped in their homes or on the streets and then killed. Many were taken to military installations where they were kept and raped repeatedly, in some cases until they died. According to one report, for example, 700 naked women were liberated from the army cantonment at Moinamati. Of those women that survived the war, perhaps 200,000 or more may have been raped, at least according to a postwar figure that gained wide currency."

"When mass rapes occurred in the course of aggressive war in Bangladesh and later in Bosnia, Mother Teresa in the first case and the Pope in the second made strenuous appeals to the victims not to abort the seed of the invader and the violator."

"[Aubrey Menen, sent on a reporting assignment to Bangladesh, reconstructed the modus operandi of one hit-and-run rape:] ...And so on, until all the six had raped the belle of the village. Then all six left, hurriedly. The father found his daughter lying on the string cot unconscious and bleeding. Her husband was crouched on the floor, kneeling over his vomit."

"A stream of victims and eyewitnesses tell how truckloads of Pakistani soldiers and their hireling razakars swooped down on villages in the night, rounding up women by force. Some were raped on the spot. Others were carried off to military compounds. Some women were still there when Indian troops battled their way into Pakistani strongholds. Weeping survivors of villages razed because they were suspected of siding with the Mukti Bahini freedom fighters told of how wives were raped before the eyes of their bound husbands, who were then put to death."

"The Reverend Kentaro Buma reported that more than 200,000 Bengali women had been raped by Pakistani soldiers during the nine-month conflict, a figure that had been supplied to him by Bangladesh authorities in Dacca. Thousands of the raped women had become pregnant, he said. And by tradition, no Moslem husband would take back a wife who had been touched by another man, even if she had been subdued by force."

"Galvanized for the first time in history over the issue of rape in war, international aid for Bengali victims was coordinated by alert officials in the London office of the International Planned Parenthood Federation."

"Bengal was a state of 75 million people, officially East Pakistan, when the Bangladesh government declared its independence in March of 1971 with the support of India. Troops from West Pakistan were flown to the East to put down the rebellion. During the nine-month terror, terminated by the two-week armed intervention of India, a possible three million persons lost their lives, ten million fled across the border to India, and 200,000, 300,000 or possibly 400,000 women (three sets of statistics have been variously quoted) were raped. Eighty percent of the raped women were Moslems, reflecting the population of Bangladesh, but Hindu and Christian women were not exempt. As Moslems, most Bengali women were used to living in purdah, strict, veiled isolation that includes separate, secluded shelter arrangements apart from men, even in their own homes."

"Hit-and-run rape of large numbers of Bengali women was brutally simple in terms of logistics as the Pakistani regulars swept through and occupied the tiny, populous land, an area little larger than the state of New York. (Bangladesh is the most overcrowded country in the world.) The Mukti Bahini “freedom fighters” were hardly an effective counterforce. According to victims, Moslem Biharis who collaborated with the Pakistani Army—the hireling razakars—were most enthusiastic rapists. In the general breakdown of law and order, Mukti Bahini themselves committed rape, a situation reminiscent of World War II when Greek and Italian peasant women became victims of whatever soldiers happened to pass through their village."

"Rape in Bangladesh had hardly been restricted to beauty. Girls of eight and grandmothers of seventy-five had been sexually assaulted during the nine-month repression. Pakistani soldiers had not only violated Bengali women on the spot; they abducted tens of hundreds and held them by force in their military barracks for nightly use. The women were kept naked to prevent their escape."

"Khadiga, thirteen years old, was interviewed by a photojournalist in Dacca. She was walking to school with four other girls when they were kidnapped by a gang of Pakistani soldiers. All five were put in a military brothel in Mohammedpur and held captive for six months until the end of the war. Khadiga was regularly abused by two men a day; others, she said, had to service seven to ten men daily. (Some accounts have mentioned as many as eighty assaults in a single night, a bodily abuse that is beyond my ability to fully comprehend, even as I write these words.) At first, Khadiga said, the soldiers tied a gag around her mouth to keep her from screaming. As the months wore on and the captives’ spirit was broken, the soldiers devised a simple quid pro quo. They withheld the daily ration of food until the girls had submitted, to the full quota."

"The most serious crisis was pregnancy. Accurate statistics on the number of raped women who found themselves with child were difficult to determine but 25,000 is the generally accepted figure. Less speculative was the attitude of the raped, pregnant women. Few cared to bear their babies. Those close to birth expressed little interest in the fate of the child."

"A Catholic convent in Calcutta, Mother Theresa’s, opened its doors in Dacca to women who were willing to offer their babies for overseas adoption, but despite the publicity accorded to Mother Theresa, few rape victims actually came to her shelter. Those who learned of the option chose to have an abortion.... Planned Parenthood, in cooperation with the newly created Bangladesh Central Organization for Women’s Rehabilitation, set up clinics in Dacca and seventeen outlying areas to cope with the unwanted pregnancies."

"Mulk Raj Anand, an Indian novelist, was convinced of conspiracy. The rapes were so systematic and pervasive that they had to be conscious Army policy, “planned by the West Pakistanis in a deliberate effort to create a new race” or to dilute Bengali nationalism, Anand passionately told reporters."

"The story of Bangladesh was unique in one respect. For the first time in history the rape of women in war, and the complex aftermath of mass assault, received serious international attention. The desperate need of Sheik Mujibur Rahman’s government for international sympathy and financial aid was part of the reason; a new feminist consciousness that encompassed rape as a political issue and a growing, practical acceptance of abortion as a solution to unwanted pregnancy were contributing factors of critical importance. And so an obscure war in an obscure corner of the globe, to Western eyes, provided the setting for an examination of the “unspeakable” crime. For once, the particular terror of unarmed women facing armed men had full hearing."

"Extra judicial killings cannot be accepted in a country of law."

"The action taken by Hyderabad Police is praiseworthy. In Uttar Pradesh rape is happening every day, be it young girls or aged women, nobody is being spared."

"So the predators have become the prey! Now this is called true poetic justice!"

"Enforced childbirth is slavery[.]"

"The baby is a gift, given by life itself. But to be a gift a thing must be freely given and freely received. A gift can also be rejected. A gift that cannot be rejected is not a gift, but a symptom of tyranny."

"Laws that prevent people from making their own decisions about whether to continue a pregnancy or have an abortion amount to forced pregnancy. Outright abortion bans aren’t the only way to force a pregnancy — even when Roe v. Wade was still technically intact, laws pushed abortion out of reach across the country. Long-term consequences include: * Long-lasting health consequences as well as life-threatening complications like eclampsia (which can lead to seizures or comas) and postpartum hemorrhage * Increased levels of poverty for people turned away from the abortion care they need and an inability to cover basic needs like food, housing, and transportation * Ongoing contact with and violence from an abusive partner Policies that force people to remain pregnant and give birth are unconscionable, cruel, and dangerous. Lives and futures are at stake."

"Our fight will continue until we can put an end to laws that force people to carry pregnancies against their will and deny them the fundamental right to control their own bodies."

"In 1993 the United Nations (UN) Commission on Human Rights (replaced in 2006 by the UN Human Rights Council) declared systematic rape and military sexual slavery to be crimes against humanity punishable as violations of women’s human rights. In 1995 the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women specified that rape by armed groups during wartime is a war crime. The jurisdiction of the international tribunals established to prosecute crimes committed in the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda both included rape, making these tribunals among the first international bodies to prosecute sexual violence as a war crime. In a landmark case in 1998, the Rwandan tribunal ruled that “rape and sexual violence constitute genocide.” The International Criminal Court, established in 1998, subsequently was granted jurisdiction over a range of women’s issues, including rape and forced pregnancy. In a resolution adopted in 2008 the UN Security Council affirmed that “rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide.”"

"The women who bear children and the medical experts who assist them testify that pregnancy and childbearing are indeed labor. The fact that many women enter into such labor voluntarily and joyfully does not alter the fact that other women, under other circumstances, find childbearing too arduous, become pregnant through no choice of their own, and are then forced to complete the pregnancy to term by compulsion of state laws prohibiting voluntary abortion. It is the purpose of the Thirteenth Amendment to prohibit a relationship in which one person or entity limits the freedom of another person. In the absence of a compelling state interest or due conviction for a crime, the state’s forcing the pregnant woman through unwanted pregnancy to full term is a denial of her Thirteenth Amendment right to be free from “a condition of enforced compulsory service of one to another.” This is the very essence of involuntary servitude in which the personal service of one person is “disposed of or coerced for another’s benefit.”"

"Forced pregnancy is defined as when a woman or girl becomes pregnant without having sought or desired it, and abortion is denied, hindered, delayed or made difficult. Some of these pregnancies are caused by a lack of sexual education, access to contraception, or mistake, but many of them, especially among young girls, are caused by sexual violence, often perpetrated by relatives or acquaintances. When abortion is illegal or inaccessible, often young girls’ lives are at risk through clandestine abortions or having to give birth. Being so young, most are neither physically nor emotionally mature enough to carry a pregnancy to full term, give birth, or become mothers. And yet, without access to safe and legal abortion, they are forced to do so, compounding the harm from the sexual violence they’ve already suffered."

"The Commission on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women Committee and the Committee on the Rights of the Child has cataloged forced pregnancy as a harmful practice that gravely affects the rights of girls. The U.N. Human Rights Council has recognized that denial of abortion in cases of rape inflicts such psychological and physical trauma that it can amount to torture under international law."

"Black women’s sexual subordination and forced pregnancies were foundational to slavery. If cotton was euphemistically king, Black women’s wealth-maximizing forced reproduction was queen. Ending the forced sexual and reproductive servitude of Black girls and women was a critical part of the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments. The overturning of Roe v. Wade reveals the Supreme Court’s neglectful reading of the amendments that abolished slavery and guaranteed all people equal protection under the law. It means the erasure of Black women from the Constitution. Mandated, forced or compulsory pregnancy contravenes enumerated rights in the Constitution, namely the 13th Amendment’s prohibition against involuntary servitude and protection of bodily autonomy, as well as the 14th Amendment’s defense of privacy and freedom. This Supreme Court demonstrates a selective and opportunistic interpretation of the Constitution and legal history, which ignores the intent of the 13th and 14th Amendments, especially as related to Black women’s bodily autonomy, liberty and privacy which extended beyond freeing them from labor in cotton fields to shielding them from rape and forced reproduction. The horrors inflicted on Black women during slavery, especially sexual violations and forced pregnancies, have been all but wiped from cultural and legal memory. Ultimately, this failure disserves all women."

"The fall out is also reaching the children of the kidnapped brides. The Duke University study found that ethnic babies in Kyrgyzstan are smaller than average. Smaller birth weights have been linked to a higher risk of disease. It was unclear why these babies were smaller, but it was likely due to the psychological trauma suffered by the mother from being in a forced marriage, said economics professor Charles Becker, who co-authored the Duke University study."

"Kyrgyzstan has the highest maternal mortality rate in Central Asia — the large number of underage girls giving birth following forced marriage is one factor in this."

"I am heartbroken that we may now be destined to learn the painful lessons of the time before Roe was made law of the land — a time when women risked losing their lives getting illegal abortions. A time when the government denied women control over their reproductive functions, forced them to move forward with pregnancies they didn’t want, and then abandoned them once their babies were born."

"Allowing a state to take control of a woman's body and force her to undergo the physical demands, risks, and life-altering consequences of pregnancy is a fundamental deprivation of her liberty. And, once the Court recognizes that that liberty interest deserves heightened protection, it does need to draw a workable line, and viability is a line that logically balances the interests at stake."

"The Constitution provides a guarantee of liberty. The Court has interpreted that liberty to include the ability to make decisions related to child – childbearing, marriage, and family. Women have an equal right to liberty under the Constitution, Your Honor, and if they're not able to make this decision, if states can take control of women's bodies and force them to endure months of pregnancy and childbirth, then they will never have equal status under the Constitution."

""Forced pregnancy" means the unlawful confinement of a woman forcibly made pregnant, with the intent of affecting the ethnic composition of any population or carrying out other grave violations of international law. This definition shall not in any way be interpreted as affecting national laws relating to pregnancy;"

"Committing rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, as defined in article 7, paragraph 2 (f), enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence also constituting a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions;"

"Athletics “have become part of the fabric of America.” Nat’l Collegiate Athletic Ass’n v. Alston, 141 S. Ct. 2141, 2168 (2021) (Kavanagh, J., concurring). Women’s ability to “participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation”—including through high school, collegiate, and professional sports—“has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.” Casey, 505 U.S. at 856 (plurality opinion). Absent the right to access safe and legal abortion care, and the ability of “the woman to retain the ultimate control over her destiny and her body,” id. at 869, women’s sports would not be the enormous success they are today. Among other reasons, women’s ability to participate and excel in athletics would decline, severely impairing the vitality of sports in the United States. Further, women and girls would be deprived of the multitude of collateral benefits that result from athletic participation, including greater educational success, career advancement, enhanced self-esteem, and improved health. Athletic prowess depends on bodily integrity. The physical body is a critical tool for athletes, and its condition determines elite athletes’ futures and livelihoods. High school and collegiate athletes use their bodies not only to compete, but also to secure higher education through recruiting opportunities and athletic scholarships that may be otherwise unobtainable. Professional athletes use their bodies for their livelihoods, including to access lucrative sponsorships and advertising opportunities. Amici depend on the right to control their bodies and reproductive lives in order to reach their athletic potential. Indeed, Amici are united in their belief that the physical tolls of forced pregnancy and childbirth would undermine athletes’ ability to actualize their full human potential."

"All athletes—men and women—have a narrow window of time to achieve their greatest athletic potential. This reality is magnified for women athletes for whom childbearing age coincides with their competitive peak in athletics. If the State compelled women athletes to carry pregnancies to term and give birth, it could derail women’s athletic careers, academic futures, and economic livelihoods at a large scale. Such a fundamental restriction on bodily integrity and human autonomy would never be imposed on a male athlete, though he would be equally responsible for a pregnancy."

"The demands of athletics and pregnancy are physically and emotionally intense. If women were to lose the agency to make individual, personal choices as to if, when, and how to balance these competing demands, many will be forced to sacrifice their athletic aspirations and pursuits. Compelled pregnancies would allow the State to “conscript[] women’s bodies into its service, forc[e] women to continue their pregnancies, suffer the pains of childbirth, and in most instances, provide years of maternal care.” Casey, 505 U.S. at 928 (Blackmun, J., concurring). Often this will be at the expense of women’s athletic careers, as well as their educational goals and professional livelihoods. Such “governmental intrusion” is “unique to the [woman’s] condition,” id. at 851–52, as only women’s bodies are essential for both athletic participation and pregnancy and childbirth. Depriving women of the opportunity to make autonomous choices about how to use their bodies—a matter “of the highest privacy and the most personal nature,” id. at 915 (Stevens, J., concurring)—would gravely harm equality in athletics, and elsewhere."

"The decision to become pregnant, thereby risking long-term health and career consequences, involves “the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy.” Casey, 505 U.S. at 851. The decision belongs to the individual to make. Forcing athletes to bear the unknowable risk of when and whether their bodies will recover from pregnancy and childbirth would violate their most fundamental liberties."

"If forced to carry pregnancies to term, many women would have no choice but to sacrifice playing their sport—a sacrifice not required of their male counterparts, despite their equal role in engendering a pregnancy. Absent the right to access safe and legal abortion care, women’s ability to participate and excel in athletics would inevitably decline and the movement toward gender equality in sports would reverse course."

"The right to bodily integrity and decisional autonomy is of heightened concern for women athletes who become pregnant from sexual violence. If forced to carry their rapist’s child to term, these women would not only be forced to make the same physical, emotional, and athletic sacrifices that would be required of all athletes who would have to endure compelled pregnancies, but they also would be re-traumatized by the repeated deprivation of control over their bodies—not only by their assailant, but also by the government. This intrusion can be acutely devastating for an athlete, given that control over her body is inextricably linked to her identity, career, and educational pursuits. The prospect of forced childbearing is particularly poignant for collegiate athletes, given that nearly one in five women are sexually assaulted during their time in college."

"[F]orced pregnancy is a deprivation of individual liberty (and this is what the privacy argument stresses), but that deprivation is selectively imposed on “women”-and women are a group that has traditionally been regarded as a servant caste, whose powers (unlike those of men) are properly directed to the benefit of others rather than themselves. Compulsory motherhood deprives women of both liberty and equality."

"When women are compelled to carry and bear children, they are subjected to “involuntary servitude” in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment. Abortion prohibitions violate the amendment’s guarantee of personal liberty, because forced pregnancy and childbirth, by compelling the woman to serve the fetus, created “that control by which the personal service of one man [sic] is disposed of or coerced for another's benefit which is the essence of involuntary servitude.” Such laws violate the amendment’s guarantee of equality, because forcing women to be mothers makes them into a servant caste, a group which, by virtue of status of birth, is held subject to a special duty to serve others and not themselves."

"Thus defined, it should be apparent that "involuntary servitude" includes coerced pregnancy. The pregnant woman may not serve at the fetus’ “command”-it is the state that, by outlawing abortion, supplies the element of coercion-but she is serving involuntarily for the fetus’ "benefit", and this is what the Court has said that the amendment forbids. If citizens may not be forced to surrender control of their persons and services, then women’s persons may not be invaded and their services may not be coerced for the benefit of fetuses. It is as simple as that. The injury inflicted on women by forced motherhood is lesser in degree than that inflicted on blacks by antebellum slavery, since it is temporary and involves less than total control over the body, but it the same “kind” of injury. When abortion is outlawed, a woman who does not want to carry her pregnancy to term must serve the fetus, and that servitude is involuntary. Some of those to whom I have made this argument have responded less with skepticism than with horror. They consider it a libel on motherhood, which, far from being like slavery, is an exhilarating, awe-inspiring, and joyous experience. It may not be out of place, therefore, to address this concern at the outset. The objection gathers whatever force it has by focusing on the experience of women who “want” to be mothers. The thirteenth amendment, however, does not apply to them. The servitude it prohibits is “involuntary”. The distinction between wanted and unwanted pregnancy is like the difference between wanted and unwanted sex. Can rape be defended on the grounds that sex is an exhilarating, awe-inspiring, joyous experience? Do arguments that focus on the degrading and violative aspects of rape constitute a libel of sex? Plantation slavery obviously cannot be justified on the grounds that many people find gardening deeply satisfying, but this objection is really no better than that."

"We fought a civil war to end slavery, and made its abolition the supreme law of the land. The central evil of slavery, as Justice Harlan observed, was that it placed one “class of human beings in practical subjection to another class.” That is precisely what a law that compels women to be mothers does. A law outlawing abortion therefore would betray one of the fundamental principles by which the American polity defines itself."

"Were fetuses to be given the full legal protection accorded to born persons, the resemblance between forced pregnancy and slavery might eventually become more apparent. In recent decades, medical science has found that a broad range of activities by pregnant women can have a negative effect of the fetus, “including failing to eat properly, using prescription, nonprescription and illegal drugs, smoking, drinking alcohol, exposing herself to infectious disease or to workplace hazards, engaging in immoderate exercise or sexual intercourse, residing at high altitudes for prolonged periods, or using a general anesthetic or drugs to induce rapid labor during delivery.” Note, “The Creation of Fetal Rights: conflicts with Women’s Constitutional Rights to Liberty, Privacy, and equal Protection, 95 Yale L..H. 599, 606-07 (1986) (footnotes omitted). There are two ways of using this information: by communicating it to women and trusting them to use it appropriately, or by regulating pregnant women’s behavior directly. The former approach only makes sense if pregnant women can be presumed to care about the welfare of their fetuses, and this presumption will be implausible if one and a half million women a year (that is, between quarter and a third of pregnant women) are pregnant against their wills. See Tierze, Forrest & Henshaw, supra note 130, at 475-76. The latter approach has already, in some cases,been carried to its logical conclusion of imprisoning the woman for the duration of her pregnancy. See e.g., 1989 Minn. Sess. Law Serv. P 290, Part. 5 (West) (statute authorizing involuntary civil commitment of women who abuse drugs during pregnancy). Recognition of fetal personhood might entail internment of pregnant women on a much larger scale."

"[F]orced pregnancy is different form the degrading, ill-paid jobs that the poor must do, because they are at least able to change employers. The pregnant woman, on the other hand, cannot exchange her burden for any other. Moreover, the Court has held that a state may not impose costs that make poverty an absolute barrier to the exercise of a constitutional right. Boddie v. Connecticut invalidated state rules that barred access to divorce for those who could not afford to pay filing fees. “[M]arriage involves interests of basic importance in our society,” the Court observed. Because “[t]he requirement that these appellants resort to the judicial process is entirely a state-created matter,” the Court concluded that “a State may not, consistent with the obligations imposed on it by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, preempt the right to dissolve this legal relationship without affording all citizens access to the means it has prescribed for doing so.” Since a tax on abortions would equally be “entirely a state-created matter,” a state could not demand such a tax of a woman who is too poor to pay it."

"[A] requirement that abortions be performed in hospitals may “force women to travel to find available facilities, resulting in both financial expense and additional health risk,” and thereby may “significantly limit a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion” by “impos[ing] heavy, and unnecessary, burden on women’s access to a relatively inexpensive, otherwise accessible, and safe abortion procedure.” As a consequence, some women will be unable to get abortions at all. What the state cannot do to all women, it cannot do to poor women. If government may not increase the cost of abortion directly, it may not do so indirectly-not, at least, without compensating those whom its action would otherwise render unable to afford abortions."

"[S]ince undesired pregnancy creates an involuntary servitude, the state must provide to those who desire it the means to terminate such servitude."

"Pakistan did not lag behind in crimes against women. There are at least 11 rape cases reported in Pakistan every day, with over 22,000 rape cases reported to police across the country in the last six years since 2015, according to official statistics. However, only 77 accused have been convicted, which comprises 0.3 per cent of the total figure.” The rape of Mukhtaran Bibi in Pakistan received international attention after it was reported to be politically sanctioned.” The group War Against Rape (WAR) has documented the severity of rape in Pakistan. According to women's studies professor Shahla Haeri, rape in Pakistan is 'often institutionalized and has the tacit and at times the explicit approval of the state. According to the late lawyer Asma Jahangir, who was a co-founder of the women’s rights group ‘Women's Action Forum, up to 72 per cent of women in custody in Pakistan are physically or sexually abused.” According to WAR, over 82 per cent of rapists are family members, including fathers, brothers, grandfathers and uncles of the victims."

"According to a 1990 study of rape in Pakistan , " the police is notorious for delays or outright refusals to register FIRs ."

"Yet despite such statements, rape in Pakistan is a weapon commonly used for revenge. According to human rights lawyers, 50 percent of reported rapes in the country are gangrapes, usually carried out when someone wants to take revenge ..."