Today's hilarious story, via Digby:
Agriculture Committee passes anti-abortion measuresAnd it's in the Agricultural Committee that the sympathetic (hairy?) ears are when it comes to eggs and milk in general, including those some of us believe belong to women.
Illinois women who want to get abortions might be required to either view an ultrasound before the procedure or decline to do so in writing, under proposals that passed an Illinois House committee Tuesday.
...
Rep. Deborah Mell, a Chicago Democrat, was one of the two members voting against the bills and criticized the assignment to a committee that generally handles farming issues.
"We're not talking about abortions for cows and pigs, right? We're talking about women?" she said.
The Agriculture Committee is dominated by downstate conservatives, and by assigning the bills there Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan assured the measures would be heard by sympathetic legislators.
I think this is bitterly funny. It reveals such a humongous disrespect of women and nobody even bothers to try to disguise it as something else than pure contempt.
Apropos on that cows=women business, Pierce wrote an interesting post about the history of the Catholic policies towards contraception. It's well worth reading but the bit I saved (serendipity!) was this:
That's what produced Rick Santorum — a 20-year effort to develop Roman Catholics who could talk like Southern Baptists, bonded as both groups were now by their twisted views of human sexuality, and by their desire to re-establish control over what American women can do with their bodies. It is an alliance of powerful convenience. It has as much to do with religion as it has to do with agriculture. It has as much to do with the Gospels as it has to do with the Collected Works of Ludwig von Mises. Jesus wept.Bolds are mine.