From today’s dumb legislation file comes a bill that’s a lot less clever than it tries to be, from Texas Democratic state Rep. Jessica Farrar who appears to be a lot less clever than she thinks she is:
A female politician in Texas is taking an unusual swipe at what she sees as restrictive abortion laws by targeting men – more precisely male masturbation.
Her unlikely draft law has a simple aim, she says – to protect unborn children everywhere. Which is why it wants all “emissions outside of a woman’s vagina, or created outside of a health or medical facility” to carry a $100 (¢81) fine. If a man made such an emission it would “be considered an act against an unborn child.”…
[S]he argues it is no more extreme than the restrictions put on women by the state of Texas when it comes to choosing whether or not to end their pregnancy.
I get that she’s trying to create a male analogy for abortion. It’s just that this one doesn’t work. Sperm aren’t people, just like skin cells and hair cells aren’t people. Monty Python aside, sperm are not unborn children, or even (on their own) potential unborn children. Nor are human eggs.
But put them together, and it’s a whole different story — one that Rep. Farrar apparently never learned in biology class. Conception changes mere cell matter into a living, developing a human being who will, given proper care and preserved from the abortionist’s knife, someday read, write, drink alcohol and vote.
Farrar’s clumsy and somewhat gross attempt at legislative humor reveals the assumption (or more likely the bad-faith assertion) by many pro-abortion campaigners that people care about the moral evil of abortion because they resent women for having sex. In fact, no, they owe their existence to women having sex. And they care about abortion because every abortion kills a unique human person, whether it’s performed by a male or a female abortionist.
We were all fetuses once. Not one of us was ever a sperm.
