Texas Legislator Takes Aim at Pro-Life Bills by Filing One Impacting Male Emissions

The brilliance of this satire in a Bill filed in the Texas Legislature would undoubtably make the late columnist Molly Ivins smile. And I’m using a photo of Senator Ted Cruz for what ought to be obvious reasons.

The Guardian has this story on a bill filed by Democratic Texas legislator Jessica Farrar that would regulate “masturbatory emissions” with fines and jail time in response to several anti-abortion bills being advanced by male Republican legislators.  She simply — and brilliantly — used the same language in anti-abortion bills filed by conservative male lawmakers and swapped the gender.

To read the entire bill, click here.

From The Guardian newspaper:

It calls for a $100 fine for “emissions outside of a woman’s vagina, or created outside of a health or medical facility”, which “will be considered an act against an unborn child, and failing to preserve the sanctity of life”.

It also requires the creation of a “masturbatory assistance registry” of not-for-profit organisations and hospitals able to provide “fully-abstinent encouragement counseling, supervising physicians for masturbatory emissions, and storage for the semen”.

The bill from Jessica Farrar, a Democratic representative from Houston, is called the Man’s Right to Know Act – a reference to legislation known as the Woman’s Right to Know Act which previously passed into Texas law. That forces doctors to perform a sonogram, make audio of the heartbeat available, and describe the fetus to women considering an abortion at least 24 hours before the procedure takes place.

It is also the name of a state health department pamphlet that emphasizes – and, according to critics, exaggerates and misleads readers about – the risks of abortions, and steers women towards alternatives.

Farrar’s bill requires the creation of a booklet which must be reviewed by doctors with male patients and which “must contain medical information related to the benefits and concerns of a man seeking a vasectomy, Viagra prescription, or a colonoscopy. The booklet must contain artistic illustrations of each procedure.”

It also demands an attending physician “administer a medically-unnecessary digital rectal exam … before administering an elective vasectomy or colonoscopy procedure, or prescribing Viagra”.

The reason Molly Ivins would have loved it is obvious.  Her biting wit.

From the Texas Observer:

We were having a little fundraiser for The Progressive, and Molly had come free of charge, of course. Swarmed by fans after she spoke, she needed to wet her whistle, which she liked to do more than once in a while.

She had just finished telling one of her favorite stories (which we published in August 1993) about the Texas state legislator who introduced a bill banning sodomy, both homosexual and heterosexual, in the Great State, as she always called Texas. When this legislator succeeded in passing the bill with the help of an ally, the two men shook hands in celebration. “Whereupon, the Speaker had to send the sergeant-at-arms over to reprimand them both,” Molly said, “because under the new law, ‘it’s illegal for a prick to touch an asshole in the state.’ “