Texas Democrat Trolls Anti-Abortion Colleagues with Bill Fining Men $100 Each Time They Masturbate

Since men in Texas have no problem proposing and passing legislation that restricts how much control women have over their bodies, one female legislator is turning the tables on them with a clever bill of her own.

We’ve already seen Texas legislators propose bills requiring aborted fetuses to have a proper burial — presumably to shame women from having them — and allowing doctors to withhold important information from women if they think it might lead to an abortion. The overarching idea here is that Texas legislators don’t trust women to think for themselves.

That’s why Democratic State Rep. Jessica Farrar has proposed a new bill, HB 4260, that would require men to pay a $100 fine every time they masturbate. And that’s not all.

An attending physician must verbally review the informational booklet entitled “A Man’s Right To Know” with every male patient seeking a vasectomy, Viagra prescription, or colonoscopy.

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Consent to an elective vasectomy or colonoscopy procedure, or a prescription of Viagra is voluntary and informed only if at least 24 hours have passed since the initial health care consultation for the procedure or prescription.

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An attending physician must administer a medically-unnecessary digital rectal exam and magnetic resonance imagining of the rectum before administering an elective vasectomy or colonoscopy procedure, or prescribing Viagra.

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Emissions outside of a woman’s vagina, or created outside of a health or medical facility, will be charged a $100 civil penalty for each emission, and will be considered an act against an unborn child, and failing to preserve the sanctity of life.

If your reaction to the various items in the bill is, “That’s silly. None of that is necessary, and a lot of it makes no sense at all,” well, that’s the point.

This bill will inevitably be ignored and get nowhere, but bills requiring women to go through unnecessary procedures or forcing Planned Parenthoods to be built like outpatient surgery centers seem to be a constant in the deeply red state. A lot of these politicians just want to punish women for having sex, ignoring the fact that a man may also bear some of that responsibility.

“What I would like to see is this make people stop and think,” Farrar told The Texas Tribune. “Maybe my colleagues aren’t capable of that, but the people who voted for them, or the people that didn’t vote at all, I hope that it changes their mind and helps them to decide what the priorities are.”

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Farrar continued: “Men have to answer for their actions and so forth. So if there’s going to be an emission, it would have to be done in a hospital where the semen could be preserved for future pregnancies or it would be directly deposited into the vagina of a woman.”

Again, this bill won’t get anywhere. But it’ll be fun to listen to Texas Republicans explain why women deserve to be punished for their decisions while men face no similar consequences under the law.

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