“Honest rape.”

Look, I get the point of what Ron Paul was saying — that there’s a hypothetical “dishonest” rape victim who is scared of her daddy whipping the shit out of her if she admits that she screwed her boyfriend, and so she’ll claim that she was raped in order to get the abortion without the beating. When parsing and re-interpreting The Man’s words like it’s some biblical text originally written in Sanskrit, that is what The Ron Paul People claim he meant by “honest rape,” right? The imaginary woman who lies about getting raped for reasons that are understandable, but still dishonest.

But here’s the subtext that comes along with that: If you insist that Ron Paul has the right to police women’s sexuality* by requiring a distinction between honest rape and dishonest fucking — because that’s what it comes down to under a kind interpretation with the most possible context, right? — then you’re helping to create the world where women feel the need to lie to avoid their beatings. You’re actively stigmatizing all sexually active women except those who have been robbed of their agency by force, by instituting what amounts to purity tests. And it’s pretty hard to square that with the shouts of Liberty! and Re-Love-Ution.

*I’m aware that transgender men also need abortions sometimes, but I strongly suspect the difference between transgender men and women is not something Dr. Paul takes into consideration.