i want to emphasize that this is a terrible, terrible bill, but...
going by the article you linked to, and a quick skimming of the bill text, i think saying that it's ‘redefining rape’ is misleading. it's saying that certain categories of rape are to be treated differently than others for certain legal purposes (availability of government abortion funding), but, although that is awful, it's not defining the other cases out of the ‘rape’ category. it's entirely possible that i'm misreading something, though.
η: take a formally analogous (although of course morally radically different) case: suppose that the federal government decides to provide citizens with property insurance. suppose further that, by legislation, this insurance doesn't cover property loss due to theft except in cases of ‘armed robbery’. we wouldn't say that that bill was ‘redefining theft’ in a way that excluded kinds of theft other than armed robbery.
no subject
going by the article you linked to, and a quick skimming of the bill text, i think saying that it's ‘redefining rape’ is misleading. it's saying that certain categories of rape are to be treated differently than others for certain legal purposes (availability of government abortion funding), but, although that is awful, it's not defining the other cases out of the ‘rape’ category. it's entirely possible that i'm misreading something, though.
η: take a formally analogous (although of course morally radically different) case: suppose that the federal government decides to provide citizens with property insurance. suppose further that, by legislation, this insurance doesn't cover property loss due to theft except in cases of ‘armed robbery’. we wouldn't say that that bill was ‘redefining theft’ in a way that excluded kinds of theft other than armed robbery.