Remember how Texas is having such a huge budget crisis that the Legislature has been forced to slash funding for one of its favorite pet projects, crisis pregnancy centers?
Well, apparently, the budget crisis is over because Gov. Rick Perry is insisting that the Legislature focus its attention on the most important issue ever:
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has suggested to pro life activists that a bill in the Texas Legislature requiring women seeking abortions to have a sonogram taken of their fetus will be placed on the emergency fast track for passage.
That's right -- passing even greater restrictions on women's access to reproductive health care is an emergency in Texas, budget be damned. Not to mention that this legislation, if it passes, will inevitably lead to litigation, as it has in pretty much every other state where similar laws have been enacted. Nothing like a costly lawsuit to really help out with the state's budget crisis, huh, Governor?
This is the same Gov. Perry who, less than two years ago, declared that Texas might have to secede from the union because "the federal government has become oppressive. I believe it’s become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of its citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state."
Curse that damned federal government for intruding into citizens' private lives. Everyone knows only state governments should be oppressive and intrusive.
But here's the point apparently lost on Gov. Perry and his fellow Texas Republicans:
One controversy surrounding Perry's drive to make the sonogram abortion bill a "fast track emergency" is that the Texas State Legislature is wrestling with a real emergency of a huge budget deficit that has to be closed at all hazards. Placing other bills on a "fast track emergency", no matter what the merits, may be unwise until that problem is solved.
So in Texas, passing oppressive, intrusive legislation takes precedence over everything else because when it comes to the forced birthers, nothing -- not even the budget crisis -- is more important than making sure that if a woman is going to have an abortion, her doctor should be forced to try to make her feel super duper bad about it first.
Now if only Gov. Perry could find a way to tax women for the sonograms they'll be forced to have, he just might be able to kill two birds with one really, really stupid stone.