In the era of Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, and Fox News' Michelle Malkin, it seems the GOP has been embracing women more than ever.


Unfortunately, a recent Senate vote shows that, when it really matters, misogyny is not unwelcome in Republican circles.


I was absolutely shocked when I found out that 30 Republican senators, all of them male, opposed an amendment in the recent defense appropriations bill to restrict federal funding from government contractors who essentially silence rape victims. More specifically, the contractors in question include unfair, seemingly innocuous clauses in their employees' contracts that require disputes to be taken to arbitration instead of a court of law. This clause is, on increasingly more frequent occasions, perverted to include cases of rape or assault. Though the amendment passed, the large block of opposition is frightening. The amendment, proposed by Senator Al Franken (D-MN), was inspired by the story of Jamie Leigh Jones, a female employee of a former subsidiary of Halliburton, KBR.

When working in Iraq in 2005, Jones was gang-raped and severely beaten by seven of her co-workers. She had been drugged, and when she regained consciousness the next morning, she awoke to a nightmare. Lying next to one of her rapists, she was bloody and beaten so badly that she would later need reconstructive surgery for her breasts and pectoral muscles. After being treated by an Army doctor, she was placed under guard in a shipping container, essentially treated like the criminal and not the victim. Over the next four years, KBR clung to the arbitration clause in Jones' contract, forcing her to fight to even allow her rape to go to court. She finally won her case in September of 2009, but after a long and painful process in which the company “lost” crucial forensic evidence and repeatedly claimed that the sex was consensual. This victory was bittersweet for Jones, who says, "Four years to fight to get in court is not a day in court."

So why is the GOP (or at least a large block of it) protecting these government contractors? Objections to the amendment included the idea that the government should not interfere in private contracts. The basis for this objection, however, is frankly nonexistent. The amendment clearly states that government funding will not be allocated to companies that would deny rape victims their right to prosecute their attackers. In short, it does not prohibit such practices; it only restricts federal dollars to companies who do this.

I am deeply disappointed in the integrity of our nation's politicians. It is a sad day for women everywhere when the majority of Republican senators vote to protect government contractors at the expense of true justice for rape victims.