When is a woman vice president not good for women?

I feel like I'm piling on Gov. Sarah Palin. I'm not out to attack her, I promise...But when polls show that women are starting to lean toward voting for the John McCain/Sarah Palin ticket, I just feel like a little education is in order. If you're all about voting for Sarah Palin, that's your right. Just make sure you're doing it for the right reasons.

Right reasons to vote for McCain/Palin: I'm a hard-right conservative who is totally cool with spending taxpayers' money on shooting wolves from airplanes (how sporting), but not on shelters for young pregnant women who aren't lucky enough to have, say, the governor for a mother. I don't believe that human activity has any effect on climate change, so we shouldn't worry about changing our behaviors - like investing in alternative energies.

Wrong reasons to vote for McCain/Palin: She seems really cool. I'd like to bone her/hang out with her (depending on your gender and orientation).

And then there's this: among the measured decisions Palin had to make in her demanding position as mayor of that town was that rape victims should pay for their own rape kits. This isn't a question of fiscal responsibility - it's a law-and-order issue. A rape victim cannot file charges without a kit collected by a specially trained sexual assault response (SART) nurse, which are usually only stationed in emergency room. You can't go to your family doctor. Unless evidence is collected in the ER by a SART nurse, it won't be considered valid, or uncontaminated, because the chain of custody can't be certified.

So now you're in the ER, where my insurance would charge me $150 just to walk through the door. But what if a rape victim doesn't have insurance? She not only pays for the processing of the kit, she pays for the other normal ER costs. (Of course if you don't have a job that provides insurance, you're most likely getting paid by the hour. If you have to take time off work, that's even more money you're losing.) See, when my car was broken into, I don't recall the cops sending me a bill for the fingerprint processing. But that's what rape victims have to deal with in many places.

We have crime - a crime that will affect one in five women at some point in their lives - not being reported because a victim doesn't have insurance? This isn't some Goddess circle/hairy legged feminist issue - it's a criminal justice issue. Maybe there's a reason Alaska's rates of sexual assault and domestic violence are so much higher than any other state...