On Their First Day Back, Congress Introduces Abortion Ban

Never ones to waste a second in their unending quest to fuck you over, on the first day of the new Congress, House Republicans re-introduced a bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks. It’ll pass, and then it’ll go to the Senate, where it’ll also pass, and then it’ll go to the president, who will veto it. This is a solid, non-bullshit use of our tax dollars! [Violently rage-barfs.]

The bill, HR 36, known as the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, was introduced by Reps. Trent Franks of Arizona and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee; it would ban all abortions after 20 weeks, under the completely bogus premise that fetuses feel pain at that point in gestation. Franks introduced an identical measure last session, as he has for years, even though, as RH Reality Check points out, a fetal pain measure was found to be unconstitutional in his home state. Last year, the bill passed in a party-line vote before dying in the Senate.

The Hill reports that in a statement accompanying the new bill, Franks compared abortion to torture:

More than 18,000 ‘very late term’ abortions are performed every year on perfectly healthy unborn babies in America. These are innocent and defenseless children who can not only feel pain, but who can survive outside of the womb in most cases, and who are torturously killed without even basic anesthesia.

Now that the Republicans have a majority in both the House and Senate, the bill will likely make it all the way to the president’s desk, although there is literally no chance that he’ll sign it. So here we are, heading for another session where we get to watch a bunch of largely male senior citizens with dust collecting on their genitals play ping-pong with our reproductive rights. Reminder, people under 30: this is what happens when you don’t fucking vote.