On rape kits and Sarah Palin

I caught wind of the 'Mayor Palin charging women for their own rape kits' story on Feministing a couple days ago, but wasn't entirely convinced by the 2000 article in question that Palin was involved in the passage of the statute forcing rape victims to cover the cost of a forensic kit or even had it brought to her attention during her tenure as governor.

So I figured I'd hold my tongue since the evidence wasn't all there - you know, the whole "the difference between us and our enemies is how we treat our enemies" principle that keeps leading Democrats to noble defeat? But (former Alaska Gov.) Tony Knowles is out there on the press circuit now and happy to make the association, and since he's the guy that actually overturned the abhorrent law, I'm going to follow his lead and say, at least, the following:

How blessed is Sarah Palin's life that every single woman and girl in her life has remained untouched by sexual violence? To my mind, there is no other possible explanation for how Mayor Palin could have countenced this sort of victim-blaming travesty of a law. No woman (and, I'd hope, no man) who counted a survivor among their relatives, friends, or even aquaintances could allow this to stand.

When I used to give sexual assault awareness presentations in college, we'd describe the process of a rape kit to our skeptical peers who believed in the myth of the regretful girl who woke up the next morning and called consensual sex rape. No "faker" would endure the evidence collection, we'd explain, because there exists no forensic procedure more invasive or humiliating to a crime victim, who is stripped, photographed, inspected, and subjected to the swabbing, scraping, and plucking of her most intimate areas - all this after she's survived the most violating crime imaginable. The idea that a woman could survive a rape, survive a rape kit, and then be slapped with the bill for the privilege makes me ill.

I can't begin to fathom how Sarah Palin could have lived with this law. I afford her the courtesy of my initial assumption of her ignorance for no reason other than I can't stomach the alternate possibility.