Carl Wimmer. Husband. Father. Former SWAT team leader. Chairman of the Utah Family Action Council Team. Republican in the Utah House of Representatives. Glenn Beck sycophant and proud 9/12er. Also a proud teabagger and founder of the new Patrick Henry Caucus, whose goal is to "restore and uphold the sovereignty and rights of the individual States as guaranteed by the tenth amendment of the United States Constitution."
What does that actually mean?
The Patrick Henry Caucus adopted a unanimous position Wednesday, December 23, 2009, to oppose the Health Care Reform Bills, and to support a lawsuit against the federal government in order to stop the national health care bill from becoming law.
Carl's standards for deciding whether to support a bill are very straightforward. He always asks himself these questions:
"Is this something that the government should be involved in?"
"Does this law enhance freedom and strengthen the constitution, or does it restrict it?"
"Does this bill uphold traditional family values?"
That’s why he opposes the new bill in Utah to ban smoking in cars when children are present.
Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, said the Legislature this year is passing other bills and resolutions to get the federal government out of people's lives and should not now create greater state impositions.
"To think that we are smarter, or know more, or even care more about other people's children is absurd," Wimmer said.
Carl doesn’t want the government to regulate guns. Or schools. Or water conservation. Or health care for children of documented (that means “legal”) immigrants. ’Cause lord knows that the state has no interest in ensuring that other people's children receive health care -- once they’re born.
Carl doesn’t want the government to touch a damned thing. Liberty, and all.
But Carl does want to see women thrown in prison for "recklessly" endangering or harming their fetuses.
Like the 17-year-old girl in Utah who was seven months pregnant and paid a man $150 to beat the shit out of her to induce a miscarriage. It didn’t work; the baby was born and put up for adoption. But the local authorities investigated her and tried to charge her with soliciting murder. The case was thrown out because "a woman who is seeking to have or obtains an abortion for herself is not criminally liable."
Carl was "absolutely outraged." Not because this scared kid found herself unexpectedly pregnant at 17. Or because the laws in Utah require parental consent for a minor to obtain an abortion. Or because she was so desperate to terminate her pregnancy that she was willing to be beaten. No, Carl was "absolutely outraged" that this girl is not rotting in prison for her crimes.
And Carl wants to make sure that never happens again. So he’s written a bill:
This bill amends provisions of the Utah Criminal Code to describe the difference between abortion and criminal homicide of an unborn child and to remove prohibitions against prosecution of a woman for killing an unborn child or committing criminal homicide of an unborn child.
His bill won’t stop girls from seeking to end unwanted pregnancies. It won’t prevent those unwanted pregnancies either. It won’t provide resources for those girls once their babies are born. Carl doesn't vote for that sort of thing.
But he does want to make sure that if anything ever happens to a fetus -- not a child, of course -- but a fetus, well, the mother just might be to blame. And she should have to pay.
What could be more pro-family than that?
The purpose of this bill, like all the other bills, is perfectly clear. Carl says so himself, on his issues page.
This year, through my leadership, we began to chip away at Roe v. Wade by passing HB222 and HB90. I sponsored HB222 entitled, THE UNBORN CHILD PAIN PREVENTION ACT. This law required that Doctor’s who are going to perform an abortion on a child, shall inform the mother that the child may feel pain, and requires that the Doctor to offer an anesthetic to alleviate the pain. I also co-sponsored HB90 which made an illegal abortion the equivalent of a 2nd degree homicide.
Both of these bills create some basic human rights for the unborn, and thus chips away at the nation's abortion laws...We are continually working to pass pro-life legislation which will weaken Roe v. Wade.
Because Carl believes in life. He believes in it so much that women’s sovereignty and liberty be damned. It’s life, after all. What is more important than preserving life?
But Carl doesn't really give a damn about life. He's outraged by the "excessive appeals that criminals on death row receive."
Carl is a hypocrite and a liar -- and he’s in a position of power to make his will the law of the land, even when he knows it’s unconstitutional. But Carl is really no different from those who came before him to criminalize women.
Women like Regina McKnight:
Her crime? Giving birth to a five-pound, stillborn baby. As McKnight grieved and held her third daughter Mercedes's lifeless body, she could never have imagined that she was about to become the first woman in America convicted for murder by using cocaine while pregnant.
Women like Kawana Ashley, a pregnant teenager who shot herself in the stomach and was charged with murder.
Women like Brenda Kay Peppers, who was arrested and charged with child endangerment for using cocaine while pregnant.
Women like Tayshea Aiwohi, who was convicted in Hawaii of manslaughter because she smoked crystal meth while pregnant.
The list goes on. There are plenty of cases of women -- overwhelmingly young, poor women of color -- charged with the crimes of endangering their children while pregnant. Their prosecutions were supposedly in reaction to the inevitable epidemic of crack babies who, according to President Reagan, would one day overrun and destroy America.
Except that never happened, as studies have shown that "the hysteria over crack babies was more a product of the media than of scientific data."
But controlling and punishing women for their reproductive decisions didn't start with Reagan's racist fearmongering either.
In Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, Dorothy Roberts details the horrifying history of the forced sterilization of black women. Between 1970 and 1980, there were more than half a million cases of sterilization, largely performed without the patient’s consent or even her knowledge. They were so common in the South, they were called "Mississippi appendectomies."
Carl Wimmer's latest effort to "chip away" at Roe v. Wade is nothing new. From forced breeding of slaves, to sterilization without consent, to murder charges for crack cocaine users, to restrictions on access to safe abortion -- these are all part of the same long and ugly pattern of men with power making decisions about women's bodies. The fight over abortion has never really been about protecting life, as the so-called "pro-lifers" make clear again and again, by opposing laws to provide health care to children, advocating for the death penalty, or terrorizing patients and murdering doctors.
Carl and his predecessors don't care about children. And they don't care about women. They care about controlling women. And the laws they pass are part of the obscene belief that women's reproductive organs are somehow unique and therefore necessitate government control.
The laws Carl fights for, and all the laws that came before Carl set foot in the Utah House of Representatives, are intended to deprive women of their sovereignty. They tell women, again and again, throughout history, that they do not own their bodies. Their reproductive organs make them the property of the government, subject to the distorted beliefs of people like Carl. And any woman who dares to assert control over her own body will be punished. She will be made a criminal.
Because Carl believes that the government should stay out of the decisions of private citizens -- unless those citizens are women.
Carl is wrong. He is part of the problem, as is every other elected official who supports this sexist, racist, draconian system of controlling women. The right to women's bodies does not belong to Carl. It does not belong to the government.
It belongs to women.