Congressman Thinks Birth Control Is Worse than Animal Cruelty

Iowa Republican Steve King currently fighting to oppose California’s right to regulate eggs from out of state, but he argues against Affordable Care Act on the grounds that the government shouldn’t have the right to tell states what to do. He’s also against letting states outlaw fois gras, and in favor of letting states outlaw birth control. Regulate the shit out of human ovaries but, my god, do not intrude onto the sacred ova of poultry. How did we get here? What in tarnation is going on?

Rep. Steve King is an unfortunate victim of what’s known as Obama psychosis, a tragic condition affecting thousands of Americans, with no cure in sight. You see, since declaring that the first priority of the 112th Congress was to make sure that Barack Obama was a one term President, conservatives have launched a campaign of NO that might rival that of the most dogged toddlers. They’ve blocked judicial nominations, further inflamed a global economic scare when they threatened to block raising the debt ceiling to make a point about how much they hate spending money, almost shut the government down over Planned Parenthood funding, and fought the Affordable Care Act tooth and nail. It should come as no surprise that in their campaign to stymie the President at every turn, congressional Republicans occasionally opposed issues that turned them into goofy looking hypocrites.

According to Think Progress, King is a huge states’ rights guy. If States’ Rights were to get married, Steve King would give a hilarious yet poignant speech at the rehearsal dinner that ended with him saying “I love you like a brother, man.” He’s specifically opposed the Affordable Care Act because he says that it interferes with states’ rights to regulate their own commerce. But he doesn’t love states’ rights when other states want to use their rights to interfere with his state’s right to make money by selling products across state lines. California recently passed laws requiring eggs imported to the state be raised with higher animal care standards than is federally required (the law would require egg laying hens to be raised in cages large enough so they could stand and spread their wings) and banning the sale of fois gras (which is a product that results from force feeding ducks), and in response King has led a legislative push to pass a federal law barring states from enacting their own animal cruelty standards. He said California’s attempt to exercise its rights as a state just “scrambles and creates a patchwork quilt of state regulations.”

But he wasn’t so keen on federal authority back in February, when he argued that Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court case that determined that it was illegal for states to outlaw contraception and set the privacy groundwork for Roe v. Wade, was a bunch of crap because states have the right to act in ways they see fit. He said,

Why should I care about the conclusions that have been brought forward by the Supreme Court if we can race from 1965, Connecticut having a Tenth Amendment right to establish a policy, a Supreme Court that creates a right to privacy that’s the foundation for mandated abortion, and here were are discussing whether we’re going to mandate everybody in America fund and provide that contraceptives. … Why should I care?

I get it now! States’ Rights means “states” have the “right” to agree with Steve King.

So there you have it — everyone should have the right to interfere with the sale of birth control to women who don’t want to be pregnant, but no one should have the right to violate a woman’s right to force feed a duck until its liver becomes engorged with fat, and then killing the duck and eating the liver.

[LAT]