MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Tuesday night noted that Representative Michael Burgess (R-TX) was a leading member of a House subcommittee focused on public health and biomedical issues.

Burgess said Monday he supported the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act because male fetuses pleasure themselves as early as 15-weeks after conception. The bill, which would impose a ban on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, was approved by House Republicans on Tuesday.

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“It is one thing to be a random Texas congressman, Michael Burgess, saying that we should set laws for everybody in the whole country based on when he thinks fetuses masturbate,” Maddow remarked. “But this guy also is in charge of something. The House Republicans took the fetal masturbation theorist and put him in charge of their Subcommittee on Health. Because, hey, that’s who they got, I guess.”

“And honestly, with these last three or four years with the triumph of anti-abortion activism as the main policy thrust of the Republican Party, both in federal government and in the states, I kind of felt like I had lost the capacity to be surprised — before I heard the fetal masturbation theory from Congressman Burgess today.”

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