State Senator Judy Eason McIntyre—who is not my state senator, incidentally; missed it by a couple of miles—carried a sign at a rally. The sign had the F-bomb on it. “If I wanted the government in my womb, I’d fudge [only it wasn’t fudge] a senator.”

It wasn’t actually her own sign. Someone else had brought it. But she posed for pictures with it, presumably because she is a senator and that’s sort of funny. I mean, you probably had to BE there, but I could imagine it being sort of funny in context, you know? Here’s a senator, and here’s a caption with a startling reference to senators. Kind of like an LOLcat, only in reverse, and about elected officials. There was a caption walking around and she stuck herself under it, and much chuckling ensued.

Anyway, this happened at a rally at the state capitol to show opposition to Oklahoma fetal personhood legislation. Personhood USA, the national group behind a lot of the state personhood measures, responded by issuing a press release saying that Sen. McIntyre was “disregarding the decorum due to her office.” And, honestly, this probably is the sort of thing that they warn you against doing in Politician School. But what fascinates me are all the conclusions that we can evidently draw about the senator’s character—nay, the character of all who oppose fetal personhood legislation!—from a profane sign she posed with.

Specifically the press release quoted Dan Skerbitz, president of Personhood Oklahoma. Skerbitz said that this “display of vulgarity from a sitting senator is truly shocking[,]” and that it “is more evidence of the hardness of heart behind a movement that would deny the right of a helpless pre-born baby to be recognized and protected by the law[.]”

Well, look. Respectfully, in my experience, there is NOTHING about the gestating, birthing, or raising of human beings that precludes the occasional F-bomb dropping. (Ask a labor and delivery nurse.) As for hardness of heart? Well, the proposed personhood legislation is so vague that it contains no exception for in vitro fertilization or life-threatening pregnancies. Some would call that hard-hearted; some would call it brave consistency and resoluteness. It all comes down to who you give a… um, fudge?… about.