Sauce for the Gander

Since the TeaBaggers took over so many state houses in the US, the Fetus Lobby has been revelling in an orgy of abortion restrictions.

Lately, though, female politicians have been pushing back. The birth control idiocy going on now seems to have revved things considerably.

We've reported on a few of them. Mostly, they are amendments to draconian legislation aimed at women's reproductive health. The push-back is aimed at men's health and sexuality.

One from Virginia would mandate a physical including rectal exam for men wanting prescriptions for limp-dick syndrome. File that one under 'unnecessary medical procedures intended to punish and humiliate'.

Another from Georgia asserts a state interest in men's reproduction and bans vasectomies.

House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams added, “The Republican attack on women’s reproductive rights is unconscionable. What is more deplorable is the hypocrisy of HB 954’s author. If we follow his logic, we believe it is the obligation of this General Assembly to assert an equally invasive state interest in the reproductive habits of men and substitute the will of the government over the will of adult men.”

Similarly, a female state senator in Oklahoma proposed an Every Sperm Is Sacred amendment.

any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman's vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child.

And there's more. In Florida, state senator Eleanor Sobel introduced EIGHT amendments to what opponents are calling an 'omnibus anti-choice bill'.

In that bill are requirements for abortion providers to undergo regular ethics training and for clinics to be wholly owned and operated by licensed doctors.

Sobel's amendments are rather pointed.

In response to the ethics training provision of the bill, Sobel introduced an amendment requiring that a “legislator who offers to vote or who votes on legislation relating to human reproduction must annually complete a minimum of 3 hours of continuing education related to ethics.”

Much like a measure recently introduced in Georgia in response to anti-abortion legislation, Sobel also offered an amendment that regulates vasectomies and treatment for erectile dysfunction.

According to her amendment:

A vasectomy or treatment for erectile dysfunction may not be performed except with the voluntary and informed consent of the patient, or in the case of a mental incompetent, the voluntary and informed written consent of his court-appointed guardian. Except in the case of a medical emergency, consent to a vasectomy or treatment for erectile dysfunction is voluntary and informed only if the physician orally, in person, informs the patient of the nature and risks of undergoing or not undergoing the proposed procedure or treatment which a reasonable patient would consider material to making a knowing and willful decision at least 24 hours before the vasectomy is performed or the treatment is provided.

Sobel also introduced an amendment that would require that CPCs [crisis pregnancy centres, aka Fake Clinics] be “wholly owned and operated by one or more physicians who received residency training in performing dilation-and-curettage and dilation-and evacuation procedures or by a professional corporation or limited liability company composed solely of one or more such physicians.”

She didn't even get to present all her amendments, which were characterized as 'designed to waste time' by a ReThug.

Um. No. They are designed to mock and ridicule.

Weirdly, Sobel thought she was entitled to speak not only because she is a duly elected state senator, but because:

Sobel pointed out to the committee that she had the right to say something as “the only woman in the committee.”

Wow. One woman. An improvement over this though.



ADDED: Great minds and ganders.