Politicians, including a Democrat and a woman, are keeping the ridiculousness going. If we listen to lawmakers, we learn that fetuses are organs and that women are too skittish to carry guns.
On Feb. 15 Colorado Representative Joe Salazar (in this video) suggests that women should not carry a concealed weapon lest they "pop" someone when believe they are in danger when they actually are not. That's why we have "call boxes and whistles" he says.
This is reminiscent of arguments a century ago that women shouldn't vote because women would have too much control, putting the government under "petticoat rule." Women with guns--whoa! What kind of "rule" would that be? Even some Democratic men fear the idea.
Alice Duer Miller, in her satirical response to arguments against women's suffrage, argued that men "are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this." [Perhaps men are too emotional to have guns!]
Meanwhile, across the country in Alabama, Republican Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin, in an effort to curb abortion by placing extra restrictions on abortion clinics, stated that a fetus is the "largest organ in the body," making its removal a major surgery, thus worthy of more restrictions. These restrictions would close clinic doors, because, according to the Montgomery Advertiser, they would:
. . . require physicians at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at local hospitals; require clinics to follow ambulatory clinic building codes and make it a felony -- punishable by up to 10 years in prison -- for a nurse, nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant to dispense abortion-inducing medications.
While it is ironic that McClurkin's statements go against common Republican personhood arguments, as HuffPo points out. Still, it's scary that a lawmaker (not to mention a woman) believes a fetus is an organ. How do the dangerously uninformed get elected to public office?
Comments