As the nation focuses on concerns like jobs and health care, congressional Republicans have turned their attention to a favorite cause of right-wing culture warriors: banning abortion. So on Monday, Texas Congressman Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville, offered his reasons for why the U.S. House of Representatives should pass a new anti-abortion bill that bars women from having the procedure at any point 20 weeks after conception:
“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?”
Masturbating fetuses, now I have heard everything.
Burgess, like most Republicans, just doesn’t get it. Human “personhood” requires a functioning brain, which is simply not there, science shows, until after 28-32 weeks of gestation. How do we explain this strange GOP GOP war on women’s rights, freedom of conscience, and religious liberty? — Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
Just like the GOP: support fetal masturbation only to make them stop once they are born.
This is just outrageous!
Yes, compromise the health of the mother so the kid can wank off in utero. Sounds reasonable to me.
Isn’t this guy a OB-GYN Dr. or did I get some misinformation? Not all Dr are created equal.
Well, hell yes, he just has to be from Texas! What the hell, did they put extract of f***ing stupid in the water here or what?
If these fetuses aren’t born, then they won’t have the opportunity to be born-again and repent for their sinful in utero masturbating. An aborted fetus is destined for hellfor hell.
Ergo, abortion must be banned in all cases.
It’s not the committed sin. According to traditional dogma (going back to St.Augustine) original sin affects every human being except Mary* and Jesus and thus anyone not baptized, born or unborn, goes straight to hell. The idea of Limbo was considered heretic for centuries and never accepted outside the RCC. Only after Vaticanum 2 did the RCC drop the idea of a hell filled with unborn that died in the womb. Strict protestants still cling to it. They would see masturbation in the womb** as just an outflow of the totally corrupt nature of man (original sin).
Btw, this mad idea about the cruelty of G*d led to the invention of instruments for pre-natal baptism, so souls could be saved in an emergency.
*even that became dogma only very late in the RCC and never in any other church.
**not rubbish in and by itself but not at that early a stage in the pregnancy
Ye Gods, can these wingnuts get any dumber? Wait, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know.
Wow, that’s even more stupid than casting aspersions on Gohmet’s asparagus! Seriously, why isn’t that fool being laughed out of the state???
Ok so let me get this straight. This guy sees a fetus on a sonogram with its hand between its legs and he assumes its mastrubating?! This guy is never allowed near my kids. Born or unborn!
Let’s make things even more fun…
Never mind the abject stupidity of this idiot’s words, Genesis 38:10 indicates that God(tm) slays men that masturbate.
Moron.
Michael Burgess now joins Louie Gohmert, Jeb Hensarling, Joe Barton, Michael Conaway, Lamar Smith, Steve Stockman, and several others, I’m sure, in the pantheon of Texas Republican U.S. Congressmen notorious for opening their mouths and having the most stupid, ignorant, crazy, bigoted, or imbecilic remarks spew out. It’s as if their mouths are unconnected to their brains or, more likely, their brains are defective due to the well-known syndrome of extreme religious right-wing anti-intellectualism, authoritarianism, and wacko partisan agenda-driven zealotry.
This is why it is called the U.S. House of Representatives.
The founding fathers wanted a body within Congress to hear and represent all of the good and bad ideas held by the common man. The founding fathers, being uncommon men, recognized that the common man needed to be heard along with all of the ignorance, crazy ideas, prejudices, and downright stupidity common men are known for everywhere.
One thing they never forgot and that we too should never forget is that the common man—for the most—is just exactly that—COMMON. The founding fathers meant for the Senate and the President to be uncommon men who would really get the business of the nation done in a sensible and sober way.
Immigration reform is a perfect example. Both Republican and Democrat Senators have agreed in principle on an immigration reform plan. The U.S. House of Representatives said today that they want nothing to do with this joint Senate plan.
Why? It is because the common man is sending intelligent messages to their representatives in the lower house:
Build a steel wall 800 miles long and electrify it.
Put the U.S. Army on the border and mow’em down with machine guns before they can cross (men, women, and children).
No more wetbacks in America. This is a white man’s country.
The problem with the common man is that he regularly proves himself to be exactly what he is—a low-life commoner. Our Founding Fathers knew that, and the vast hordes of common men that walked through the Cumberland Gap proved them right over the next 200 years.
More than half the problems in this country would go away in just a few weeks if the common men could recognize that they do not know their own buttholes from holes in the ground and let the folks with real educations and good sense take them where they need to be.
I’ll save someone the trouble:
“That Charles iz the awfulest man that ever lived.”
Molly Ivins said (or should have):
“If the Texas Legislature weren’t half idiots, it would no longer be a representative body.”
How can we keep electing these morons?
John, WE don’t keep electing these morons. They keep getting elected because so few people in the districts and the state as a whole vote. These morons get into office with a very low percentage of votes. The only way WE can keep the morons out is to get people out to vote. How do we do that? I for one will be out going door to door talking to people in my district to get out and vote for people with progressive policies instead of throwing up their hands and saying their vote doesn’t count. WE need to convince people that their vote does count.
stop it already – I can’t take any more of these guys. Their absurdity is making me ill.
So … now the litmus test for whether something is a person is whether or not it masturbates?
Big news for the primate cage at the zoo.
I wank, therefore I am???
20 weeks then masturbation?
That’s not even a month.
He misquoted the medical journals saying an infant has an erection as early as 8 weeks.
The penis isn’t fully developed let alone the testicles, which is why the nerve endings won’t let him have a full erection that would tempt him to masturbate.
If he really wants to make a case out of it, at 20 weeks there is some pre-cum, but I don’t think that counts since pre-cum is more like sweat.
Another Texas politician making the state look like idiots?!?! “Gasp!”…..oh no wait….”sigh”….