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Backdoor bigotry, single moms and tequila
The Virginian-Pilot
© January 12, 2006
Last updated: 12:22 PM
Until this week, I had no idea that single women who desperately want
children and go to clinics for help were such a menace to the
commonwealth.
But I?m getting more REM sleep now that I know Del. Robert Marshall,
Republican from Manassas, is on the case.
As lawmakers return to Richmond this week, a firehose of questionable
legislation has spewed into the General Assembly. One of the wettest
bills is Marshall?s.
Turkey Baster Bob wants to forbid medical professionals, like those at
EVMS? Jones Institute, from performing artificial insemination or
in-vitro fertilization on unmarried women.
Marshall, you may remember, boasts an unsurpassed zeal for government
meddling in private lives.
His invocations of ?family values? make Pat Robertson look like a wuss.
He?s set in his sights colleges that distribute morning-after pills, and
crusaded to keep newscaster Hugh Finn on life support over his wife?s
objections.
So it?s no great surprise that he?s determined to keep Virginians safe
from the scourge of single mothers.
Or is that really single women with female partners?
You see, many lesbians conceive with the help of artificial
insemination. And while Marshall?s bill, HB187, specifies only
?unmarried women,? his previous anti-gay rants make it reasonable to
conclude that they?re in his cross hairs yet again.
If Bob can?t stamp out homosexuals, then by gum, he?s going to make
darned sure they don?t procreate.
Never mind the anti-family collateral damage.
That includes widows of soldiers killed in Iraq, who froze their
husbands? sperm just in case they didn?t come home. Or spouses of
patients who succumbed to cancer, who did the same before undergoing
chemotherapy. Or a newly widowed woman with a series of frozen embryos
and no doctor to implant them.
Widows, after all, are single women, too.
Look, if unmarried gals who are determined to get pregnant can?t go to
clinics, they?ll get the job done the old-fashioned way: a bar, some
tequila and a randy guy with good genes.
In other words, Marshall?s bill, if passed, could encourage women to
pick up strangers in bars and have unprotected sex in order to conceive.
Not exactly family values.
Maybe he should outlaw Jose Cuervo and Barry White while he?s at it.
On the off chance that Marshall is truly targeting single motherhood,
not just homosexuality, he should introduce a bill outlawing divorce,
and a companion piece mandating IUDs for all females over 12.
Sure, studies show children are better off raised by two parents.
They?re also better off eating all their veggies and being born to
adults in higher income brackets.
But it?s not Richmond?s place to dictate which Virginians can give
birth, lest the government start issuing IQ quizzes, Myers-Briggs tests
and bank balance questionnaires, and return to the bad old days of
forced sterilization.
On a whim, I called Eastern Virginia Medical School to see how the Jones
Institute?s business might be affected if this bill becomes law. I was
told they don?t even keep track of whether patients are married or
single. Nor do they care.
After all, they?re in the business of medical engineering ? not social
engineering.
If Marshall?s GOP colleagues ? who tend to roll their eyes at his
legislation and then vote for it anyway ? give this a nod, they should
be booted from the party of Goldwater and Reagan.
What happens when a woman?s feet are in the stirrups is none of
Marshall?s, or the government?s, business.
Bronwyn Lance Chester is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.
Reach her at 757-446-2307 or e-mail her at
bronwyn.chester@pilotonline.com
© 2006 HamptonRoads.com/PilotOnline.com
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Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a cornucopia of splinters.
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