Rep. Lynn Watchtmann. Republican member of the Ohio House of Representatives. This guy would probably outlaw birth control entirely if he could. Today, he took a step in that direction.
Maybe you've heard of Lynn Wachtmann before. He's the author of the so-called Heartbeat Bill, legislation that would ban an abortion in Ohio if a heartbeat can be detected. Although the bill passed the Ohio House, it fortunately stalled in the Ohio Senate.
Rep. Wachtmann is chairman of the House Health and Aging Committee. In his committee has been a bill to expand the scope of what physician assistants can do.
Presently, PAs can insert and remove IUDs for patients. Nothing in the proposed legislation or in the hearings held by the committee considered changing that. Until today.
At the last minute, without any hearings, Rep. Wachtmann inserted (pardon the pun) an amendment to the bill that would ban PAs from inserting or removing IUDs.
An attempt by a Democrat on the committee to eliminate the Wachtmann amendment failed. In the end, the bill, with the Wachtmann amendment intact, passed out of the Republican-controlled committee and now heads to the full Republican-controlled House for a possible vote.
Why did Rep. Wachtmann feel compelled to make that last-minute change to the bill?
Wachtmann told The Plain Dealer he included the provision because of his belief that a fertilized egg is a human life. IUDs prevent pregnancies by not allowing fertilized eggs to implant in the uterus.
"I'm pro-life and I don't want to encourage any medical professionals including PAs to be able to do that," the Napoleon Republican said after the vote.
Even the right-wingers commenting on the article linked above are weighing in in favor of preserving access to birth control, not restricting it:
Im lean pretty far to the right but this is just plain stupid. They are ruining a potentially productive piece of legislation. No place for hillbillies in politics.
I am pretty right wing, but this is out of hand. The Republicans were sent to Columbus to get the economy in the right direction, not pull these stunts. It's as if the fools in the Republican caucus want to the Dems to win back the House in November. And they might just hand it to them.