Representative Clay Hawkins of Eagle Hollow has filed a bill in the Idaho legislature that would regulate the travel of women of child-bearing age.
Hawkins' bill would prohibit fertile women (14 to 54) from leaving Idaho unless they could present evidence that they were not pregnant. "How else," said Hawkins, "can we prevent them from traveling to a child-murdering state like Colorado and killing an unborn child?" The bill would require women to present a certification from a doctor or the results of a recent pregnancy test.
The bill is expected to sail through the Republican dominated legislature. Governor Brad Little has pledged to sign the bill "as soon as it hits my desk." He called it "common-sense legislation."
Asked how the state plans to enforce the legislation, Representative Hawkins replied, "roadblocks."
[April 15: I wrote this parody of Republican foolishness a week ago, fully confident that my readers would recognize it as a joke -- an April fool exercise. But to my surprise, almost everyone who commented or contacted me took it for real. Readers readily accepted the idea that an Idaho legislature and an Idaho governor would take seriously a proposal to examine the menstrual cycles of childbearing-age women. It goes to show not that my readers are unusually naive, but that the present-day Republican party is so fanatic, dictatorial, and intrusive that it might just offer such legislation. Which tells us something about the sorry state of our beloved country.
In truth, I do not believe it was my imitation of journalist style that deceived my readers. I think it was the accompanying photograph. The doofus-schmendrick in the photo is in fact a member of the Idaho House of Representatives (though he's not Clay Hawkins, whom I invented). But the so-called Clay Hawkins has the face of a person who would conceive of such a fascistic bill -- the foolish, fatuous eyes, the pseudo-patriarchal beard no doubt camouflaging a receding or slack chin, the general air of know-nothing simple-minded idiocy. It's the picture, not the prose, that sold the satire.]
This kind if stupidity is too dangerous to laugh at.
Posted by: Don Z. Block | April 12, 2023 at 06:39 PM