Tennessee Legislator Says Rape And Incest Are ‘Not Verifiable’

Take a good look at this photo. This is Tennessee state Representative Sheila Butt, and she is the face of total ignorance in the Volunteer State.

On Tuesday, Ms. Butt (more on that name in a bit) decided to offer a motion to table an amendment which would have exempted victims of rape and incest from restrictions on having an abortion because, this rocket scientist claimed, rape and incest are “not verifiable.”

Yeah, I know. My jaw hit the ground on that one, too. If rape and incest can’t be verified, then how could anyone ever be charged with and found guilty of these crimes? Yet people are rightly convicted each and every day in this country, even in Tennessee.

Ms. Butt’s ignorance came to the fore during a discussion of a bill that would require women to wait 48 hours and receive counseling before they can get an abortion. Another amendment was offered that would have allowed a doctor to exempt patients from the waiting period for mental health reasons. Ms. Butt tabled the amendment and then stated:

“Putting this psychological harm bypass into the bill is really a loophole for the abortion industry. It allows someone who is going to profit from abortion to get the waiting period waived.”

Is it just me, or is this woman so extreme and so clueless that it makes your teeth hurt?


When the amendment came up to allow rape and incest victims to not be forced to endure the 48 hour wait time, Butt remarked:

“This amendment appears political. Because we understand in most instances, this is not verifiable. Let’s make sure that these women have the information and the understanding to act.”

You don’t think a woman knows when she has become pregnant through rape or incest, Ms. Butt? Just because you’re stupid as the day is long doesn’t mean everyone is the same. As for your suggestion of politics being a part of it, what in the world would you call your heartless actions?

The amendments were eventually tabled and the bill containing the new restrictions on a woman’s right to choose passed the state House by a vote of 79-18. It now goes to the Senate where is it also expected to pass. GOP Governor Bill Haslam has said he will sign the bill.

Now let me get back to the name of this ignorant and uncaring woman, Sheila Butt. It’s not often in this world that someone is so appropriately named based on their actions. However, Sheila, you are a 100 percent certified Butt.

And I mean that sincerely.

This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org.

52 thoughts on “Tennessee Legislator Says Rape And Incest Are ‘Not Verifiable’

  1. TN legislators are beyond idiots. Can’t any county in TN find people with at least a modicum of common sense to run for state government? We normal people have got to start stepping up to save our state. We’re getting as bad as Wisconsin or Texas. Stop worrying about people and their sex lives and pass some job bills or FIX MEDICAID!!! Try to help someone, how about?

    • Tennessee has been ridiculously gerrymandered. It may not be possible for rational, critical thinkers to gain office unless the DOJ declares our extreme gerrymandering illegal.

      • Gerrymandering has destroyed all chance of a fair election in almost every part of the state of Texas. What the jackasses don’t understand is that one day (soon) the white people will be in the minority anyway, so the few little white pockets won’t matter. That will be interesting to see.

    • Unfortunately us normal people have severe difficult running. Most of us lack the financial resources to do so.
      I think the bigger question is: Who’s the bigger idiot? Our legislators or the ones that keep electing them?

      • The problem is, the normal, rational people won’t get off their asses and vote, particularly in the elections between presidential elections. That lets the moron right predominate.

        NOT VOTING is exactly the same as voting FOR one of them.

        • Exactly. The people of Tennessee that do vote, vote against their own well being. We are becoming a joke along with Alabama. However, you are exactly right, people do not understand how important their vote is and stay home on election day.

      • It’s true most of us lack the money to run for office. It’s also true that most people and their families can’t stand up to the scrutiny of the election process. It’s brutal.

    • I hope for the sake of the citizens of Tennessee that you don’t get as bad as Texas. I never saw a bunch of people so worried about women’s bodies and what we do with them. The (almost all male) legislators just can’t keep their minds off what happens in our panties and reproductive systems. It would be funny if it weren’t so seriously bad for women and their families.

        • What about the bodies of the innocent children who died for the “right to choose?” Why should the living decide you should be born?

          • Those cancer cells are alive too, you shouldn’t be allowed to remove them.

            Same with that infected appendix

          • Yvonne: Are you serious;or are you a troll? Whether “children” exist is always the decision of the living..it’s called science and sex. No sex…no children. The last time I checked sex was prevalent among the living…and no-one else. Enough said.

        • Are you really asking why a living, breathing person should have the right to decide for herself what happens with her own body? Maybe because that’s a fundamental human right. Perhaps the MOST fundamental right any person has. And no bunch of zealots have the right to force their beliefs on others and tell women what they must do with their bodies. A fetus is not a child and there are no “innocent children dying” – not until they are born into a world that expects them to fend for themselves on arrival, anyway. If those who oppose choice were’t the same people intent on cutting all social safety nets for children born into poverty, THEN maybe they could call themselves pro-life. But the forced-birth crowd has demonstrated they are not concerned with caring for people, they’re concerned with societal control through the control of women.

    • *nominative.

      (I realize that this was probably just a typo/spell check fail. I only put the correction in for those that want to look up the term, not to be a martinet.)

    • Willful ignorance…. that hits the mark. No one is that ignorant by circumstance, unless they insist upon being so.

  2. Hello? As anyone bothered to see what Roe vs. Wade was all about??? A woman need only verify that she does not wish to carry a child to term. Whether she cannot report a rape or an incest. Or whether she has other objections, medical, physical, spiritual, what have you, reasons for not wanting to carry a child. In this world that is becoming more and more hostile toward women, and human beings in general, who would WANT to bring a child into it unless they were certain they could protect it and give it the love and nurturing it deserves??? Not to mention a woman’s right to object to giving birth to her father’s (uncle’s grandfather’s brother’s, whatever) grandchild and child at the same time!!! Unbelievable sickness and twisted perversion going on right heeeeah!

    • And you are an worthless pile of flesh, like the trollop in the article. Science is not your friend, and you should just check out now. Do the world, your family and humanity a favor. Cunts like you, deserve nothing less.

      • This MAGAT clearly has something to hide in his personal history. He’s trying to dissuade the potential jury pool. Wait for it: another evangelical with a history of personal degeneracy. Its what the jihadists do.

  3. Was it because she was told that when she was a victim herself (in which case there are many therapists and support groups who can help her heal), or is it because she’s never been hurt this way and has no clue?

  4. Sadly, I cannot add anything useful to the other comments because they have attempted to characterize the stunning ignorance and bigotry that MUST lie at the heart of this woman’s thinking. One is left wondering, over and over and over and over again, what parts of being fair to, and caring about our fellow humans the GOP legislators in TN (and TX and WI and more than a few others) do not get……besides ALL OF THEM? in all the years of trying to stop Roe v. Wade, the GOP and its supporters have NOT ONCE proposed that THEY ARE WILLING TO PAY for the care and educations of all the children who would be born were R v. W to be overturned or reversed. NOT ONCE. It’s not hard….SOMEONE has to PAY for the upkeep and care of the THOUSANDS of Children who would be BORN and thrust into Social Nets, Schools, Churches and Community Organizations for AT LEAST the first 18 years of their lives. I am not current, but I believe the last number I saw for the cost of raising a child from birth to age 18 is ~$450,000, and that does not include special, private, high quality education and social training. If the GOP EVER gets a leader who goes to a convention (State or, ideally, National as the one in 2016 upcoming) and speaks truth to Power with a fact-based estimate of the real $$ cost of raising all the children born as a result of the overturn of R v. W or laws that protect mothers, their partners and society from the stupidity of the no-mind bigots like Ms. Butt, THEN we MIGHT be able to make some progress on this issue. At the very least, we more open-minded, practical folks might hear the sucking wind of the air being drawn out of the meeting spaces in which GOP maggots are forced to SEE, for REAL and for TRUTH, the ACTUAL COSTS of their Stupidity and Bigotry. Me, I’ll be happy to watch people like Ms. Butt run for the back exits to avoid the Media, so she does not have to explain from where she plans to draw the $$Billions needed to pay for un-aborted babies! MUCH more likely, however, is that one of the IGNORANT SQUAD’s “Leaders” would call a press-conference for the morning at which s/he’d say with a solemn, straight face that ANOTHER PATH TO ACHIEVING THE GOALS OF THE PRO-LIFE movement is to EDUCATE PEOPLE TO NOT HAVE SEX SO OFTEN OR SO CASUALLY. It the “Baby Killers” would just not get pregnant, the whole Abortion Question would go away of its own accord, damn it. We Conservatives have SHOWN THIS repeatedly in states where the Schools have been persuaded to STOP TEACHING SEX ED, which any clear-minded, GOD-FEARING Person KNOWS causes young women in particular to be more promiscuous and to entice our young men to put their lives on the line MUCH EARLIER than they might otherwise choose to do this after they enlist in America’s BRAVE FIGHTING FORCES! RESPONDING TO THE ORDERS FROM THEIR COMMANDERS IN CHIEF TO PROTECT AMERKA FROM NATIONS KNOWN TO WANT TO ATTACK US AGAIN AND REPLICATE THE HORRORS OF 9/11. Instead of becoming parents way too soon, they would answer the call of their nation, as SO MANY FINE YOUNG People did under POTUS GEORGE W. BUSH! That NEARLY 5,OOO OF THEM PAID THE ULTIMATE PRICE IN A WAR SHOWN TO BE BASED ON FALSE PRETENSES IS A SADNESS WITH WHICH THE NATION WILL WRESTLE FOREVER. But, if the GOP can protect the unborn, the nation will be on the road to RIGHTIOUSNESS ONCE AGAIN!

    • Don’t forget, they have slashed the programs that help these soldiers after they come back home battered and broken. Their purpose is to destroy this country by making it a haven for the super rich and a hell for all of us who have made them rich.

    • Hi TP,
      Well, yes, there is the GOP “platform,”:such as it is which strives to serve the smallest identifiable demographic – rich, white, men. The unaborted would be born, for the most part, to couples with fewer resources, less efucation or leverageable connections, so the betting world would probably go Even Odds that they’d be forgotten fairly quickly as the Dyed in the Plaid GOP men resumed ignoring the now much larger crowds of the lesser-well off. As long as Someone keeps motivating the Democrats that THEY are the Nation’s future b/c too few good people have bought into the horifically shallow GOP “Values,” we shouldn’t see a GOP POTUS again any time soon. The ONE good thing about W’s tenure is that he is SO SHALLOW and Rudderless as a leader that even the most, distanced voters know the Nation CANNOT tolerate putting the Codes in the hands of a clueless puppet.
      Eventually, perhaps, enough progress is made that Citizens United is Reversed, taxes are made progressive and due from all, and the Billionaires get corraled into paying their share because the alternative (the anarchy of the patrician oligarchy) cannot be contrmplated as a viable option as the nation DEMANDS leadership instead of a repeat of the despicably disgusting core stances and contempt exhibited by Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, John McCain, Eric Cantor and Lindsay Graham, for Barack Obama and his amazing resilience from 2009-2016. On the heels of their Clown Car Routine, one can only wonder how ANY of the marauding hoarde of “candidates” for the GOP Nomination sees him/herself as qualified to succeed Obama.
      As you might have deduced, I cling to my Idealism…if only because my neck isn’t strong enough to hold the Yoke of the GOP’s cynical hypocrisy.
      Thanks for your,reply….I’m not a pundit, but I cling to my right to bloviate, mostly harmlessly. I enjoy engaging with the GOP apologists who are mostly closeted rednecks and racists. They almost never waste time thinking before they post, so the,piss and vinegar are strong enough to tie the rag to my pressure valve of a Friday, or even a weeknight, to bleed it, noting of course that one’s ability to do this is not nurtured in Texas b/c they do not believe their schools should be training their Yoots in Critical Thinking. Sad, but true, as far as I know. As Jon Stewart says so correctly, you can’t make this shit up…and on we go! The “Libtard” educated elite cannot give up this fight…b/c the GOP won’t be! The nation is too good and ever promising to be dragged through the GOP’s mud, bigotry, racism, sexism and indefensible obsession with the almighty dollar. Bonne Soir….

      • Dear Yvonne,

        The living should determine the future of unborn souls because so few people really believe it’s OK to consign ANYONE to a life s/he does not choose just because of the 1/1,000,000 chance that any other method of birth control than The Pill or an unaltered condom, both of which have BETTER than 1/1 MM odds, will fail! Humanity simply is not that cruel to each other. The narrow no-minds in the GOP and Fundamentalist cohorts do not seem to understand that the price of admission for their mean, bitter, destructive “solutions” to the abortion “problem” is the $$$$Billions needed to raise, feed, cloathe, educate, maintain the health of, protect, etc., etc., etc., all the people born of their “solutions.” As noted elsewhere, the short-minds have never ONCE shown they have thought about, never mind developed any strategy (ies) to address these logistical nightmares. I’m writing this the night Jon Stewart is retiring from “The Daily Show…” which means there’ll be one less intelligent voice calling the bluff of the no-mind doorknobs who continue to quaver in their church pews over what the abortion tragedy is doing to Amerka. The rest of us, meanwhile, are returning to our Tivo-ed programs that will insulate us from the drivel and crap that all 17 (as in SEVENTEEN, TEN plus SEVEN, TWENTY minus THREE, and 68 divided by 4) GOP “candidates” for their party’s nomination for POTUS will be spewing in their 59 scheduled “debates” between now and November, 2016. MAYBE, however, the ANTI-ABORTION AIRHEADS will be forced to cede the stage while the “candidates” devote themselves to pretending that ANY ONE OF THEM, never mind ALL 17 of them, is REMOTELY QUALIFIED to be POTUS. A “Debate” in AUGUST??????? REALLY???? Who was the rocket scientist behind THAT idea???? No, Really….having him/her explain his/her profound understanding of Amerkan Society to schedule a debate during these DOG DAYS Could be interesting!!!!!

        • Hi Nancoise – Um, if I knew that Answer, I’d be a genius. Sadly, I’ve proven too many times this is not the case. Opening the mind of one devoted to keeping it closed is similar to cracking the safe at Fort Knox..not worth the effort OR the results at the end of the day! Being nicer and kinder to people is SO much more rewarding, don’t you agree?

      • Sadly, Henry, it’s stupidity and meanness like yours that TRULY lies at the core of the GOP and Fundamentalist movements. I BET you’re never this mean to a neighbor or church friend! Nope….because to be that way, you’d be REQUIRED to take the heat, face on, for violating the Golden Rule so egregiously! BTW, I mean the Golden Rule that has words different from ” He who has the Gold Makes the Rules”, FYI. Have a nice life.

        • I believe many people have been conceived in rape because young girls were given in marriage to adult men for many centuries. So the excuse abortions is OK due to rape is wrong. It is wrong we care more the the loss of a lion than a human being being torn in the womb.

          • Yvonne: Who say so…you. So, if “birth” is sacred…then why is the birth of EVERY child not covered by tax supported insurance, so every “child” can have the benefit of unlimited medical care from day one? Explain in detail…and no Bible verses. Inquiring minds want to know.

          • Since the dawn of time, people were born and there was no insurance. Besides, in this country if you do not have insurance, Medicaid, pays for children. Abortion is an evil pure and simple. People can rationalize all they want. Is it any wonder, the suicide rate has been rising in this country since abortion was legalize.

  5. Another example of nominal determination ( the concept that your name determines your character)

  6. Clearly, either Ms. Butt has been raped or molested in the past…and liked it as a child and engaged willingly…or, Ms. Butt has engaged in child molestation herself against young boys and girls and is therefore one who seeks to legitimize rape and child molestation for her own self-service.

  7. I’m not a police officer holding a police report but I know more about this CRIME ,,,ARE THESE PEOPLE BORN THAT FCKN STUPID or are they working extra hard at it,,,I’m not a Scientist but I know more than what 97% of the worlds Scientist do,,I’m not a doctor but I play one in congress,,NO ONE IS THAT STUPID,,,they know they are flat out lying and the ones that are believing this garbage are the ones that are truly stupid,,,and they would like to make you stupider,,,,,

  8. The republicans only care about fetals, not babies because every child on welfare is another “free loader” as far as the are concerned. And we all know how excited they get about letting those “free loaders” have any benefits….like health care or education.

  9. Wow. She is vile. Has she never heard of fathers who have sex with their underage children? Brothers who sexually abuse their younger, underage sibling? People who sexually molest infants, FFS!

  10. Unfortunately, the quality of Tennessee’s leadership has been determined by their lax attitudes as far as incest goes. This resulting inbreeding has certainly had an effect on the IQ level of these people, and it is sad, sad, sad, to see this demonstrated so well.

  11. I shutter to think I am retiring to this State from, what I thought was land of the loons TX – this idiot might want to discuss her comments with Wes Michaels who was molested and then set on fire…he might enlighten her as she appears and sounds to be less than competent to use Google

      • So, Yvonne, because rape and incest have been with us for centuries, and people have been born of rape and incest in the past, you are saying that JUSTIFIES forcing women to give birth? I can’t wrap my head around that sort of “logic.” Just because something has happened doesn’t make it right, doesn’t mean it SHOULD happen.

        Though not in the way you meant it, in one sense you are correct that how someone is conceived is irrelevant to the issue of abortion. The real point here is that no woman should need an “excuse” (as you referred to it earlier) to choose for herself whether she will carry a pregnancy or not. Her body, her choice. No one else’s. Period.

  12. The issue of how someone is conceive is irrelevant. It is still an unique person with his or her own DNA. If you think of history, young girls when given in marriage and probably had great fear of the spousal act. A lot of humanity was probably conceived in rape.

    • A carrot also has its own DNA. That is hardly a compelling argument to safeguard the sanctity of carrots.

      Similarly, if you look at history, you will find that abortion and infanticide have been practiced fro millennia as a means of population control and a way of preventing and getting rid of unwanted children.

      Looking at history will only give great evidence that there has never really been a great deal of value placed upon human life or human dignity and the inhumanities of the past do not justify inhumanities in the present.

      The brain – the seat of consciousness – does not start to develop until the fifth week after conception. The mother, however, is a living, conscious human being. To suggest that her physical and mental well being is less important than something that *may* become a sentient being (up to 20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage before week 20) is, quite frankly, heartless.

  13. Abortions have been going on for centuries. Abortions should be safe, legal, and, most importantly, rare. That “rare” part can be tricky if we don’t have comprehensive sex education and access to birth control.

    • One problem is this….these people are not pro-life..they are pro- birth. After the birth of the child, they forget it.. No decent healthcare or schools or housing..no early education or preschool or no help to go to college. I saw these folks when I worked in Tennessee, but,it’s not only Tennessee or blacks or rurals….15 year olds having babies with a 30 year old soon to be grandmother and probably in 15 years another 15 y.o. Will join the same family group …13 year old having a baby while her father still denied she was pregnant. I am pro- life but a strong advocate for sex Ed and available birth control. No mother wants her daughter to become pregnant before she is ready to be responsible for the care of a child
      . most of us would prefer our children to abstain, but, if this doesn’t work, there is always “the pill”

  14. Bradford is misusing the term “verifiable” for his own bias at least as much as Butt. Hysteria from the “deep left” field is no better then from the right. Rape is not always 100% verifiable nor is it 100% unverifiable. That’s why there are court cases.

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