Boy howdy, this one is just mind-boggling. This is what happens when education is considered to be elitist while stupidity and ignorance are glorified. Alabama state Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin (R), who apparently never took biology, is sponsoring the latest TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) bill in the Alabama legislature. It contains all the usual crap we’ve come to expect from those who are trying to outlaw safe abortion through burdensome regulations, including requiring physicians to have admitting rights at local hospitals, baseless building codes. Though this one also adds a prohibition against nurses, nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants from dispensing abortion-inducing medications (punishable as a felony, fergawdsake!). Mississippi’s last clinic is battling to survive in the face of similar legislation in that state.





We’ve heard all of the pro-birth crowd’s weak arguments about these regulations and how they will “make abortions safer” (they are already safe) and, gosh, we are only thinking of the patients. But Rep. McClurkin has come up with the most inane, ignorant thing I think I have ever heard:

“When a physician removes a child from a woman, that is the largest organ in a body. That’s a big thing. That’s a big surgery. You don’t have any other organs in your body that are bigger than that.”

Read that again and marvel at the sheer stupidity on display here. First, a baby is not an organ. Get that woman a dictionary! And a biology textbook, while we’re at it. The largest organ inside the human body is the liver, though the skin is actually the largest we have. Our skin weighs in at an average of 8 pounds… heavier than even most full-term babies.

A Democratic legislator in Alabama (now that must be an exhausting job), Rep. Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham, says that she expects the bill to pass. She points out that the Republicans who are pushing this legislation really have no idea what they are talking about, which is pretty obvious. But it’s not just the science that they have no grasp of, it’s the clinics themselves and the women they serve. These people don’t know what current regulations are, what they do or what a clinic even looks like inside. But that doesn’t stop them from pushing their religious agenda on everyone else.

It has also been pointed out that these bills will undoubtedly generate lawsuits, something that Alabama really can’t afford.

“I don’t think the state of Alabama should waste funds passing a law that will enjoined in court,” said Nikema Williams, vice president of public policy for Planned Parenthood Southeast. “Women would not stop seeking abortions,” she added. “We would lack legitimate regulated abortion centers to provide health care to women.” (SOURCE)

But that’s their end game, isn’t it? To make sure women can’t access safe abortions. It never ceases to amaze and disgust me that these pro-birth nutjobs are so willing to fight for a zygote yet, in the same breath, say we need to cut social programs that help them once they’re born. That is a dissonance I simply cannot fathom.

T. Steelman is a life-long Liberal. She has been writing online about politics since 2007. She lives in Western Washington with her husband, daughter, 2 cats and a small herd of alpacas. How can anybody be enlightened? Truth is, after all, so poorly lit…