THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD
(apologies to Keith Olbermann)
Rick Brattin
A Republican lawmaker in Missouri is introducing a bill that will require women to receive consent from the man who impregnated them before getting an abortion, Mother Jones’s Molly Redden reports. State Representative Rick Brattin filed the bill, which states that “[n]o abortion shall be performed or induced unless and until the father of the unborn child provides written, notarized consent to the abortion.”…. The two exceptions to the requirement are “in cases where the woman upon whom the abortion is to be performed or induced was the victim of rape or incest,” or if the woman has “a notarized affidavit attesting to the fact” that the man who impregnated her is deceased…. “Just like any rape, you have to report it, and you have to prove it,” he said. “So you couldn’t just go and say, ‘Oh yeah, I was raped,’ and get an abortion. It has to be a legitimate rape.”
Every now and again someone or something comes along so breathtakingly stupid and ham-handed that it leaves me something close to speechless. You might have thought that after former Missouri Congressman Todd Akin employed the term “legitimate rape” in a distressingly ignorant manner- and paid the price- Brattin might have learned something. Akin claimed a woman couldn’t get pregnant from a “legitimate rape,” because the female body has ways to “shut the whole thing down.”
In his defense, Brattin claimed he was using the term “legitimate rape” differently than Akin, but by that point there was no way to unring the bell. Brattin had already stepped in it, and no amount of explanation was going to change the perception that he was just another authoritarian Republican who believes in his heart of hearts that women are the property of men because that’s what God ordained.
With that in mind, the only person who should be allowed to provide permission for an abortion is the man in a woman’s life…because after all, women are the property of men, don’tchaknow?
He who has the penis makes the rules, right?
I find it interesting that nowhere in this equation does Brattin mention anything about the rapist who might be responsible for impregnating a woman against her will. Or does he believe, as some Republicans seem to, that life is so precious that a woman should be forced to be her rapist’s child? Evidently, the only person really deserving to be held responsible for a rape is the victim.
[T]his isn’t his first brainwave: he made headlines last year when he launched a bid for anti-evolution lessons in science classes, telling the Riverfront Times that while he’s a “huge science buff,” he believes intelligent design has been unfairly maligned. In January of this year, he filed a bill calling for Missouri to bring back execution by firing squad. This month, he also filed a bill suggesting that any federal law be deemed unenforceable in Missouri if lawmakers there don’t like it (something expressly forbade in the Constitution, but, um, okay, Rick. Give that one a shot.)
Brattin’s bill will go nowhere, and it’ll waste a lot of taxpayer time and money getting there. That’s because it isn’t legal, and hasn’t been for a very long time: in 1976, Planned Parenthood v. Danforth made it unconstitutional for a woman to have to get parental or spousal consent to obtain an abortion. Nonetheless, men do periodically sue on those grounds and lose. And conservative lawmakers in Ohio tried filing a fatherly consent bill in the 2009 legislative session, which died in committee. It’s not legal and it doesn’t work. Nonetheless, anti-abortion outfits like Live Action News still recommend that men try obtaining legal injunctions to prevent their wives or girlfriends from getting abortions.
At the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law, Adolf Hitler did mention in Mein Kampf that one of the first things he’d do once ascending to power would be to do away with the silly notion that women should control their own bodies. For what are women but sperm receptacles, right? If not for bearing children, women would be of little value except for the sexual gratification of men.
It would be too easy to pass off Brattin’s sexism and misogyny to his youth and inexperience (he’s 34 and was elected in 2010). It’s possible that his age and lack of political experience may contribute, but I think his arch-Conservative authoritarian philosophy is the product of simply not being very bright. He’s clearly not smart enough to understand that his anti-woman bill won’t play well with the distaff half of Missouri’s electorate, and he displays a stunning lack of PR skills. When you quote Todd Akin, no matter how unintentionally, you’re a train wreck looking for a place to happen.
Perhaps if women stopped giving permission for sex to people like Brattin, things might change…but I doubt it. Brattin would probably argue that women OWE men sex, especially within the context of marriage.
Stay classy….
