Texas Legislator Wants To Root Around In The Sewage Looking For Birth Control Hormones
This is not the first piece of ridiculous legislation brought to us by state Sen. Bryan Hughes.
Texas Republican legislator Bryan Hughes may have the worst record on environmental issues in the state senate, but he’s willing to put that hard-won reputation at risk if it gives him a new way to force women to have babies they don’t want.
Hughes is not a man who could be accused of minding his own damn business. He famously authored the Texas bill that allowed any random citizen who found out about someone having had an abortion after six weeks to sue the doctor who performed it, and now he wants to go rooting around in the sewage in hopes of proving that birth control is poisoning the water supply. Hughes, whose abortion ban has endangered the lives of countless Texas women, claimed when introducing the bill earlier this month that he feared that hormones and chemicals in the water supply could harm “pregnant moms and vulnerable populations.”
SB 1976 would require the state to test wastewater for a number of hormones, most of which are found in birth control, abortion medication and gender-affirming care, with an eye towards banning them in Texas and, eventually, nationwide.
This “pretend to care about the environment in order to ban things we don’t like” tactic has been a thing for the anti-choice crowd for a while now. In states like Oklahoma, Arizona, Idaho, Maine, West Virginia and Wyoming, legislators have attempted to pass laws that would require those who self-manage their abortions with medication at home to bag their expelled fetal tissue in medical waste bags and return them to the doctor who prescribed them — which, as Jessica Valenti has pointed out, would allow anti-choicers a chance to harass them and tell them they are going to hell.
The push has been led by Students for Life, the leadership of which has been very clear that this should in no way be interpreted as them actually caring about the environment, but rather as them cynically using environmental law in order to interfere with the personal family planning decisions of other people.
Via Politico:
“This is not because the environment was my first weapon of choice — it’s because it’s the one we have now,” Kristi Hamrick, the vice president of Students for Life of America, said at the group’s annual conference on Saturday. She added that after decades of pushing for new restrictions on abortion by approaching state and federal lawmakers saying, “Please, please pass this law to help us. Pretty please with sugar on top?” she and her fellow abortion opponents landed on this strategy.
“Environmental law has teeth. It already exists,” she stressed. “And, frankly, I’m for using the devil’s own tools against them.”
Yes, it is a little known fact that Satan is a card-carrying member of Greenpeace.
There have been claims for years that hormones in birth control are harming the environment in one way or another, which many citing the “feminization” of fish as proof of this. However, actual studies have shown that the estrogen in birth control accounts for less than one percent of the estrogen in the water, whereas 90 percent comes from animal manure, due to the steroids given to sheep and cattle to encourage growth.
Also, as Bridget Grumet of the Austin-American Statesman points out, in 2015, the federal government tested 12,000 water systems across the country for hormones and they were detected in only less than one percent of the systems.
So far, the bill has stalled in committee, but when it comes to passing ridiculous-seeming legislation — like collecting bounties on abortion providers, banning “critical race theory” in schools and forcing teachers to put up big signs in every classroom reading “In God We Trust” — Hughes has an incredibly impressive track record.
Also, it’s Texas, and we can’t really put anything past Texas when it comes to forcing people to give birth against their will.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
I must say, this bit left me speechless (okay, only about 30 sec.). Will Texas also be checking for residual Viagra? The GOP is given to asinine statements, but this must be up in the top 10%.
I want these people to meet a Pennywise that's into grown-ups down there.