Here’s Republican State Representative Cathrynn N. Brown of New Mexico.

The NRA and the Right to Life People love her.

And she loves them back!

She showed her love to this life-loving lot by introducing HB 206, which bans a Woman from getting an abortion if done to hide evidence of a rapist’s crime. That is, the crime of “tampering with evidence” would (now) “include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime.”

This is one of those sneaky bills where she can argue “oh noes, it’s only tampering if the rapist wants to destroy the evidence of rape.” But of course, it applies to anyone, not just the rapist. And it would de facto insert a requirement for abortion providers to discern intent and intimidate (further) women made pregnant by rape (because Women need yet another worry after being raped, apparently). Bills like Brown’s Tampering legislation bring us one step closer to eradicating what little rights we have left around reproductive health.

This bill, it chills.

Brown does, in fact, deny this. And she’s “horrified” that people read the bill as written.

“It has been speculated that this legislation is intended to criminalize rape victims. This is a misinterpretation of the intent of the legislation.

‘House Bill 206 was never intended to punish or criminalize rape victims,’ said Rep. Brown. ‘Its intent is solely to deter rape and cases of incest. The rapist—not the victim—would be charged with tampering of evidence. I am submitting a substitute draft to make the intent of the legislation abundantly clear.'”

Brown is a lawyer.  You think she would have gotten it “abundantly clear” the first time she reviewed it.  Of course, she doesn’t seem to practice law outside of being a legislator introducing woman-hating legislation.

Brown is also sponsor of HB 103, which makes it harder for people to vote by imposing stricter identification requirements on voters (query whether this legislation negatively impacts transgender people).

Brown has held office since 2011, receives significant money from oil and gas interests, and only introduces woman-hating bills.

Like HB 299, which limited retroactive child support from 12 years to 3 years (because it’s really pro-life to limit the amount of financial support children get from their fathers).

She also supported a measure to affirm the enduring greatness of the U.S. Constitution and to provide that “all commemorations of constitution day that take place in New Mexico schools inform students that their constitutional rights are protected and are non-negotiable (UNLESS YOU ARE A WOMAN IMPREGNATED BY A RAPIST).”

In the 40th year since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade , Women still must justify our ability to control what happens to our own bodies. Women still must assert that we are more than property, more than mere wombs waiting to carry a rapist’s baby. Women are still not “equal,” if equal means freedom from rape and freedom from having to subsume our own wants, needs, desires, fears and wombs to Men.

Any legislation that infringes on a Woman’s ability to have an abortion reaffirms that Women are property, and that is far from “equal.”

It is 2013. Women are far from “equal.”