Rescuing anon’s comment from the Open Thread, Paul Ryan has decided that his first signature act of this new Congress would be to cosponsor a bill that would give legal rights to a zygote. Bills like this were roundly defeated everyplace they came up in 2012, if they even survived legal challenges. So this is the signal, right? That the GOP intends to beat their own record for the Worst Congress Ever.
Despite the deep unpopularity of fetal personhood bills in 2012, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has again decided to cosponsor the Sanctity of Human Life Act, a bill that gives full legal rights to human zygotes from the moment of fertilization.
Ryan, who reportedly has 2016 presidential ambitions, had to de-emphasize his opposition to abortion without exceptions during the 2012 election to align his position with presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But this year, Ryan has been tapped as a keynote speaker for the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List’s sixth annual Campaign for Life Gala, and he is re-upping his support for the most extreme anti-abortion legislation in the country.
The personhood bill, first introduced in 2011 by Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) and reintroduced by Broun last week, specifies that a “one-celled human embryo,” even before it implants in the uterus to create a pregnancy, should be granted “all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.” Similar legislation has been rejected by voters in multiple states, including the socially conservative Mississippi, because legal experts have pointed out that it could outlaw some forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization as well as criminalize abortion at all stages.
Broun said in a statement that a zygote’s right to life should be “defended vigorously and at all costs.”
Note that last statement. There are no live children with a right to life according to this world view. They want to work on a legal right to life for zygotes while there are children in Newtown and other places whose right to life was subordinate to the right of gun owners to uselessly point their guns at the government. These are the same people who are all for cutting back on child-oriented programs like SNAP or SCHIP and even education. These are the people at Ground Zero of the On Your Own Society who clearly do not get that there is NO human zygote that can survive on its own. It needs a mother who wants to carry it to term — even though a mother’s rights would now be subordinate to this new legal entity.
Wonkette does their usually snarky take on this thing, but they make a good point here that needs to be made over and over and over as this Congress gets suited up to do this kind of bullshit:
Aren’t we lucky, fellow Amercians, that someone is thinking of the children? Also, no wonder Paul Ryan got a standing ovation when he came back from the campaign. He’s in the trenches, doing the hard work of co-sponsoring legislation that has absolutely no chance of passing and has nothing to do with jobs, the economy, or the deficit.
Read more at http://wonkette.com/496338/paul-ryan-focusing-on-jobs-with-new-bill-about-one-celled-embryos#Bb03pmqavZl5RY7V.99