In protest of Georgia’s newly passed “heartbeat bill,” one state lawmaker is proposing a so-called “Testicular Bill of Rights” for men.
Rep. Dar’shun Kendrick told Rolling Stone she is “dead serious” about the legislation, which she introduced days after Georgia approved a bill banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat has been detected.
Ggggooooodddd morning! Introducing my "testicular bill of rights" legislative package. You want some regulation of bodies and choice? Done! pic.twitter.com/5E8HBRSc9l
— Dar'shun Kendrick (@DarshunKendrick) March 11, 2019
Last week, in a vote of 93-73, the state House of Representatives advanced the so-called “heartbeat bill,” which would — in most cases — ban abortion after six weeks, typically when a heartbeat can be detected.
While abortion advocates have vowed to challenge the legislation, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) has promised to sign the bill into law.
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“I campaigned on signing the toughest abortion bill in the country,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “and this is the toughest one we’ve got in the legislature now.”
What would Kendrick’s protest bill do?
If Kendrick’s proposal passed, the bill would:
- Require men to obtain consent from their sexual partners before securing prescriptions for Viagra or any other erectile dysfunction medication
- Ban vasectomy procedures in the state and allow for criminal charges to be brought against any medical professional who performs them
- Make it an “aggravated assault” for men to have sex without condoms
- Mandate paternity testing between six and eight weeks of pregnancy, requiring fathers-to-be to begin paying child support “immediately”
- Establish a 24-hour waiting period for men seeking to purchase pornography or sex toys
The Democratic lawmaker knows her bill, of course, will not pass. She understands it’s unconstitutional.
“It’s unconstitutional on purpose: this is a test case. It is a case to test Roe v. Wade,” she explained to Rolling Stone. “They’re hoping that it gets up to the Court of Appeals — the 11th Circuit is one of the most conservative court circuits that we have, and they’re hopeful that they will uphold part of it, and then they’ll take it all the way to the Supreme Court. They know exactly what they are doing. This is intentional.”
While Kendrick’s bill is a tongue-in-cheek shot against the “heartbeat bill,” the truth is they really aren’t the same.
The “heartbeat bill” is about expanding and protecting the rights of another human being, a human being who happens to be occupying the womb of another human being. Kendrick’s bill, the “Testicular Bill of Rights,” is not that at all. Her proposal is strictly about infringing on another person’s autonomy.
The untruth Kendrick is hoping to reveal with her bill is that restricting abortion is only and exclusively about taking away a woman’s autonomy. The problem with that, though, is it’s just not the truth.