I sure hope this guy runs for president again. Now Rick Santorum is telling anti-abortion student groups that abortion rights advocates
make it uncomfortable for boys to shower.
Santorum argued that the pro-choice movement infuses passion about abortion rights into "every aspect of their life." He said that because of this, showering at a gym had become an "uncomfortable" prospect for students.
"They make it uncomfortable for students who come to Austin to shower at a Young Men's Christian Association, YMCA, gym," he said. "Because they live it. They're passionate, they're willing to do and say uncomfortable things in mixed company. They're willing to make the sacrifice at their business because they care enough."
I … I don't understand. I'm not sure I want to, mind you, but I'm just trying to parse out how this situation came up and why Rick Santorum was thinking about it. So the premise is that abortion rights advocates are wandering into YMCA showers and lecturing people? Did someone have this experience, where they were randomly accosted in the "mixed company" of a YMCA gym shower by a group of radical abortion rights advocates, and it made them sad and they said, "I know what I must do now. I must go tell Rick Santorum about this." It's no seven-foot-tall doctor, but roving public shower lectures on abortion rights certainly sounds like it could be the next big thing.
Then there's the notion that it's the abortion-rights people that are the crazy obsessed people, unlike the wallflowers of the anti-abortion movement. It's not like the anti-abortion crowd accosts people on the sidewalks outside medical clinics or drives around in vans with giant pictures of fetuses or shows up at people's homes or churches or calls their neighbors or coworkers or hands out creepy flyers to random passersby or surreptitiously drop little plastic fetus-babies into kids' candy bags during public fairs or sets up fake medical clinics explicitly for the purpose of luring in unsuspecting women needing actual medical care or widely and loudly publishing people's personal information with suggestions on why those people deserve to die such that those people are legitimately so fearful of their lives that they have to go around wearing bulletproof vests—they're not maniacs. I mean, they're not willing to say uncomfortable things in mixed company. And showers, good Lord. Have you abortion-rights folks no sense of decency?
Could this be all it takes? Has Rick Santorum given us a clue on how to finally defeat anti-abortion extremists—we just have to catch them in the shower, making them uncomfortable? No, wait—we say "uncomfortable" things in "mixed company," things like "perhaps we should not be basing our laws on your particular religious opinions about things, you enstinkened stain on humanity, you." Oh, that'll fix them. The Texas legislature was willing to confiscate the tampons of women who came to hear them talk about their anti-abortion laws lest those women even think about making a scene, so they're clearly wilting little flowers. Following anti-abortion extremists into public showers and subjecting them to a bit of naked scolding, wow, if that's all it takes to prove true commitment to other people's rights then maybe Rick Santorum has blessed us with the best idea in the history of activism. Just pop in there, hand out some ovary-shaped soaps and they'll all pass out from the sheer scandal of it all—by the time they wake up again, medical decision-making rights will be saved and their skin will be really, really pruney.