Republican Congressmen say the cutest things sometimes! By ‘cutest’ I mean ‘totally messed up and disturbing’ and by ‘sometimes’ I mean ‘why won’t they shut up?’
Congressman and former OB-GYN Michael C. Burgess of Texas thinks the cut off for abortions should be 20 weeks because male fetuses that have been cooking for 15 weeks are already masturbating. He really thinks that. I would LOL, but I’m too scared imagining him coming at me with a speculum. Look into his eyes:
I know he sounds like a dopey woman-hating monster, but that’s because he is one. Here’s the logic behind his super dumb point of view: if it looks like boy-fetuses are masturbating, it means they can feel both “pleasure and pain” and since women don’t masturbate or feel anything at all, it’s not chill to abort fetuses. This is what he said:
“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby*, and they have movements that are purposeful. They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”
To an untrained simpleton like you or me, it may look like fetuses are just passively developing in the womb, but to the keen and discerning eye of this congressman/OB-GYN/fetal-mindreader, fetuses are definitely jerking off in utero. There’s no way involuntary movements made by a 15 week mature human fetus could be anything but meaningful and significant. Here’s a purposeful movement: my fully formed fists shaking at the sky with middle digits extended.
Burgess’ weird fetus fantasy came to light while he was defending one of the scariest bills devised in the past decade. Burgess and his goonish friends are pushing the “Pain-Capable Infant Protection Act,”– the highly restrictive, highly anti-woman, anti-abortion bill of our nightmares! It’s expected to pass later today, but hopefully it won’t be implemented because it’s based on misogyny and really unsettling thoughts about fetuses.
*Yeah, he’s an ex OB-GYN who refers to fetuses “babies.”