Lawmaker Named Dick Thinks Gals Should Have Men Sign Abortion Permission SlipsS

Oh hey, another terrible idea about abortion! This time, it's coming from Alaska, the home of other terrible ideas like the Palins and the midnight sun. Not only is the state currently considering a bill that would require doctors to perform medically unnecessary ultrasounds on women prior to their receiving abortions, one legislator thinks that pregnant women who want to be unpregnant should first secure the permission of the dude who knocked them up.

Aptly named Republican state Representative Alan Dick isn't so sure about ladies having a say-so in what happens inside their skin. In fact, the whole idea of abortion makes him uncomfortable, since it's not really fair to say that a fetus is "her pregnancy." He said he'd be a lot more comfortable with the whole thing if the woman were required to get a man's signature of approval before terminating a pregnancy. Nothing says "freedom" or "the 1950's" like having your husband sign a permission slip before you get surgery.

According to Robin Marty of RH Reality Check, Dick's idea isn't even that original. In 2009, a legislator in Ohio by the name of John Adams suggested the same. The measure was defeated.

It's pleasant to pretend that we don't already live in a world where women have to seek men's permission before receiving legal medical procedures, but, isn't that kind of what mostly-male state legislators are doing, anyway? Forcing ladies to get a man's permission to not be pregnant? Forcing women to undergo ultrasounds, to visit crisis pregnancy centers, to listen to the fetal heartbeat? Laws that put legislators between a woman and her own body remove agency from the people who actually possess the babygrowing parts and place it instead in the hands of the party whose role in pregnancy can be as limited as ejaculating, rolling over, and then going out for cigarettes. I'm not suggesting that every woman in every unplanned pregnancy situation should just go out and abort without talking to her boyfriend or husband or fuckbuddy or fuckstranger, but to attempt to force all relationships to adhere to an imaginary model by legislating that it must be so is hardly a path to large-scale happiness.

Besides, anyone who ever attempted to forge a signature on a permission slip knows that mens' handwriting is way easier to copy than women's.

Help, help! There's an elephant in my uterus! [The Mudflats]