Low: Miscarriages are murder, apparently

(Note: Even Dubbya, who may or may not be a comic genius, had to shake his head when he heard about this one)

Now hear this. Just when I thought I had heard it all, that the coffers of political irresponsibility had finally been emptied, Georgia simply does it again. State Representative Bobby Franklin came forward with a bill that would come down hard on not only abortions, but miscarriages as well. How hard, you might ask? Hammurabi hard. You know, the 3,500 year-old Babylonian code that wasn’t officially shot down until the 1940s, when a skinny Indian man (dot, not feather) with a walking stick said something like: “nah, that whole eye for an eye business is just crazy….do you even hear yourselves?” The 10-page bill proposes that women could be found guilty of “prenatal murder” and potentially put to death for both abortions and miscarriages. Read that again if you have to. In all honesty, the bill reminds me of that strange kid in fourth grade who says random, over-the-top things every now and again just to get people to look his way for a few seconds. Franklin also previously proposed a bill to ditch driver’s licenses. For a topic that obviously is a pretty dark and serious one, I also can laugh knowing that a bill like that would never sniff getting passed. But the true scary thing is that he’s not the only one in the country proposing such laws, as Nebraska and South Dakota have seen proposals that would allow “justifiable homicide” for anyone who wants to clip an abortion provider. The government as a whole, despite the occasional idiot local cop or governor with lengthy “escort” bills, actually runs fairly well. It’s easy to criticize something that we’ve come to expect the stars from, and we expect them cheaply and quickly. But every once in a while you look up at a real story and just hang your head, knowing that a fairly prominent member of the government could put forth such a bill with a straight face.