Anti-American Conservative Legislators Are Trying to Turn Back The Clock To 1850 for American Women

How Lawmakers Lost Their Sense Of Shame

Connie Johnson is not afraid to be outrageous. The Democratic state senator from Oklahoma has watched in frustration for several years now as colleagues have rammed through bills limiting women's reproductive rights.

She tried debating and making speeches. Finally, earlier this month, she thought of something that made her point more clearly, or at least more graphically.

She introduced an amendment that would define life as beginning not at conception, but at "ejaculation."

"It wasn't until I got graphic that people finally heard what I was saying," Johnson says. "It was wonderful. If this is what it took to draw attention — to draw the world's attention to Oklahoma — I'm willing to do it."

Other legislators have used similarly provocative means to underline their point that bills addressing reproduction seem to be targeting women unfairly.

The Virginia Senate, for instance, last month rejected by two votes a measure, offered by Democrat Janet Howell, that would have required men to undergo a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before they could be prescribed drugs for erectile dysfunction. Howell's measure may have been a stunt, but it was also intended as a serious comment on the underlying measure being debated, which would have required women to undergo an intravaginal ultrasound exam prior to an abortion.

These bills themselves are part of a larger trend. Politicians have always thrived on attention. In the age of reality shows and instant hype through Twitter and cable coverage, however, it appears there are no longer any limits on what they are willing to say or do.

"There's always been an element of grandstanding in the legislative process," says Jack Pitney, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College. "If you're eager for attention, the new electronic environment makes it easier for such activities to get attention."

The New Media Environment

Politicians have always said things that are shocking. But now titillating words and deliberately agitating bills can resonate well beyond their states or the halls of Congress as they're picked up instantly by blogs and cable.

This week, Indiana state Rep. Bob Morris gained instant national notoriety with his argument that the Girl Scouts subvert "traditional American family values."

Morris has stuck to his guns, but other politicians caught up in a trap of their own words' making have ended up apologizing. Some may have originally meant what they said — but they perhaps never intended their words to travel so far, so fast.

That was obviously the case for Rep. John Sullivan, R-Okla., who complained at a Bixby town hall meeting on Wednesday that there was no way to get senators to pass the House version of the federal budget "other than me going over there with a gun and holding it to their head and maybe killing a couple of them."

Sullivan illustrated his remarks with a firearms gesture, but he quickly apologized when he was called on them by a national news organization, the liberal blog Talking Points Memo.

There used to be a saying - America Love It or Leave It- Maybe its time for conservatives to start loving American freedom and respecting the basic rights of citizens or go found their own backwards country.