Christian Extremist GA Rep. Bobby Franklin: The Death Penalty for All!*

*Women, that is.

Georgia State Representative Bobby Franklin hates women, and what’s more, he’s obsessed with stripping women of their rights.  The last time we heard tell of Representative Franklin, he was trying to pass a bill that changed rape victims and victims of stalking into accusers until the defendant was convicted of the crime, but oddly enough, he didn’t deem it necessary for any other crime.  Plus, he wanted to mandate that a victim of a stalker had to have a landline and give that number to the police in order to be contacted if her¹ stalker was released from jail.  Why a landline?  Only God and Bobby Franklin know why a landline is needed for this onerous deed.   Only the FSM knows why Bobby Franklin is such a malevolent, misogynistic fuck-face who wants to hurt as many women as possible in one fell swoop of his pen.  Too uncivil?  Too unkind to the “Gentleman” from Georgia?  Then feast your eyes on his newest bill.  My angry black overlady posted a brief post about it early before her head ‘asploded and left her body, so I’m here to clean up the mess.   Ew.  Angry Black Lady bits are strewn all over!  Here is the original post from Mother Jones that sent ABL and me over the goddamn fucking edge.  Yes, she excerpted much of it, but I wanted to link it again so everyone can see what a spineless, cold-hearted, evil, and crazy jackhole Franklin actually is.

Franklin got mocked and widely trounced on for the other bill, and it seemed to go nowhere.  Whew!  Said I.  One more ignorant, repulsive, woman-hating piece of shit legislation down, eleven-billionty to go.  I didn’t give Franklin another thought as he was not worth the energy and the mind space.  Besides, there were so many other astoundingly anti-woman bills flying fast and furious on the federal level that I barely had time to catch my breath, let alone think of some pissant humanity-hating piece of shit representative from Georgia.

Until today.  My angry black overlady put a call out to me to read the link above, and I nearly punched a wall.  Bobby Franklin was back in the news, and again, it was for his astounding and apparently all-consuming hatred of women.  Georgia’s unemployment rate is 10.2% (national is 9.4%).  In 2008, their SAT scores ranked 45^th in the nation.   In other words, Franklin has plenty of things to occupy his time and his work hours–he does not need to be focusing all his energy hatred on women like this.

So what is it this time that is all-so-fire important to Franklin that he has to try to make it a law?  He wants to make a miscarriage that is abetted by human hands a felony.  Which, in Georgia, can mean life imprisonment or the death penalty.   Here is the actual bill Franklin is proposing.  I skimmed it.  Now, I am not a lawyer, but quite frankly, neither is Bobby Franklin.  At least I have a rudimentary knowledge of how the law works (fucking Constitution, how does it work?), but he clearly has no idea, nor does he have any idea of the difference between opinion and fact.  For example, he goes into the age-old debate of when life actually begins.  It’s a complex issue that philosophers and wise people have hashed over since the beginning of time².  This is what Franklin has to say about this thorny topic:

The State of Georgia has the duty to protect all innocent life from the moment of conception until natural death.  We know that life begins at conception.

Bam!  Ooooh, zinger.  You hear that you silly people who grapple with the issue of when life begins?  It’s sooo easy.   “We know” that life begins at conception. And we know this…how?  Because Bobby Franklin declares it to be true!  He offers no evidence upon which he based this knowledge; he simply declares it to be true.  And, once he states that to be true, he declares a fetus a person.  And, since a fetus is a person and the law must be impartial as to how each person is treated, BAM!  Abortion is murder.

Now, to be fair to Franklin, the batshitcrazy idolatry worship of the unborn does lead to the inevitable conclusion that abortion is murder.  In fact, some of the left have asked forced-birthing³ supporters why if abortion is murder as many of them have screamed for so many years, why haven’t they pushed for women to be convicted as murderers?  Why only go after the doctors?  The usual response was mumble mumble mumble weak-willed women mumble mumble mumble evil dastardly bullying doctor or some such word salad and a quick, “abortion kills!” before said mumbler scurried away.  Now, at least one state representative is actually trying to put into law what pro-fetus supporters⁴ have being yelling for decades.  If they believe that life begins at conception, then a woman who has an abortion is a murderer.

Now, that’s problematic enough, but the bill is even more idiotic and frightening.  Franklin spends a great deal of time talking about Roe v. Wade and why it doesn’t apply on a state level (seriously?  We’re back to the states rights bullshit again?).  He has to do some mighty-fine twisting and contorting of language to be able to state this:

(12)The United States Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to hear or decide the case of Roe v. Wade or any other case pertaining to a state’s punishment of the crime of prenatal murder;

(13) As it had no jurisdiction to hear the case, certainly the United States Supreme Court lacked the authority to pass, or order all states to strike or refuse to endorse, a law that is outside of its subject matter or federal jurisdiction;

(14) Even if the United States Supreme Court had jurisdiction, its authority is limited to the case or controversy before it, and its opinion extends no further than between the parties to the case or controversy;

That’s right, bitchez.  The most powerful court in the land is to bow down and worship at the feet of Bobby Franklin, just because!  It doesn’t have the jurisdiction to order Georgia to do anything, so neener neener neener.  And, and, and, even if it did have jurisdiction, it was only for that one specific case!  Why?  Because Bobby Franklin said so!  How often does he have to repeat that?  He wishes it to be, and therefore, it is!

This is actually a good slogan for the Tea Party and their ilk:  I wish it to be, and therefore, it is!  It’s constitutional if we say it is or if we like it (2^nd Amendment remedies, anyone?), but it’s not constitutional if we don’t like it (ooooh oooh, the 14^th Amendment is for shit, toss it!).  Why?  Because, shut up, that’s why!  He’s got God on his side.  That’s good enough for Bobby, and that should be good enough for us!

By the way, I was curious about this guy since I know next to nothing about him.  So, I looked him up on the Wiki.   Some of the things they said about him caused me to raise an eyebrow, such as their claim that he said the following:

Islamic terrorism is not the greatest threat facing America.  God is.

What the hell?  I mean, I’ve gotten pretty used to rightwingers spouting off about God this and God that, but I haven’t seen one quite so blatantly call God a threat to America.  I checked the link that Wiki gave for the quote.  Which is right here.  Oh, lookie lookie, third paragraph in.  The very sentence quoted above.  Then a bunch of Bible verses mixed in with warnings about all the curses of God if we don’t mend our evil ways.  Here is another excerpt that gives insight into the mind of this man:

Throughout history God has blessed cultures when they obeyed Him and he (sic) has cursed those who rejected Him…When God judges us, whom He uses to bring that judgement is not the issue…He could judge us by having us overrun by Islamic terrorists or destroyed by some plague or new world order elite.  Regardless, it is God who is sending the judgement.

Franklin goes on for several paragraphs about how we have to atone for our sins, the definition of said sins as decided by Franklin, the one true minion of God.  Franklin ends his essay with this uplifting thought:

Until we, as Christians, repent our own sins, I am much more concerned about God’s wrath on America than I am about Osama bin Laden–whether he⁵ is over there or over here.

These are the words of a true zealot.  This man looooves him some Old Testament, yes he does.  However, here’s what I want to know.  Franklin has been in office since 1996.  He has a history of introducing nutty bills.   And, while this one is arguably the nuttiest, it’s not like he was a moderate before this bit of asshattery hit the floor of Georgia’s House of Representatives.  Here are the comments on his Facebook page, and most of them are overwhelmingly negative towards Franklin–especially the comments on his last two bills, this one and the aforementioned odious rape/stalker bill.  He’s not an unknown quantity.  I can’t help but wonder how many of the people writing scathing comments on his page voted for him.  This leads me to make a toolish remark.

Voters of America.  It’s time to grow the fuck up and educate yourself about your elected officials BEFORE you vote for them.   I understand that it’s hard to make an informed choice, especially as the mainstream media is pretty hell-bent on protecting the status quo.  I know that most people are frazzled and tired and busy and think all politicians suck or are all the same or what good can one person do, anyway?   I sympathize.  I really do.  Politics are a morass, and wading into the weeds can be daunting.  However, this is the shit that happens when you vote for someone with whom you’d like to have a beer or you vote for so-called moral reasons or you vote in what appears to be your best self-interest–no raising taxes.  YAY!–but really isn’t.

Stop.  We can’t afford to be ignorant voters any more.  We can’t afford to not know that Walker in Wisconsin is bought and paid for by the Koch Brothers and is trying to bust unions to make it easier for his corporate overlords to take over the country.  We can’t afford to not get dirty in the mud.

This is the fucking results if we choose to continue to be willfully ignorant.  PSA aside, back to Christian Extremist Bobby Franklin and his War on Women.

There is so much bullshit packed into this bill of Franklin’s, I could continue writing for several thousand more words, but I won’t.  I just want to outline one more particularly odious part of his proposed bill:

(2) ‘Prenatal murder’ means the intentional removal of a fetus from a woman with an intention other than to produce a live birth or to remove a dead fetus; provided, however, that if a physician makes a medically justified effort to save the lives of both the mother and the fetus and the fetus does not survive, such an action shall not be prenatal murder.  Such term does not include a naturally occurring expulsion of a fetus known spontaneously as a ‘spontaneous abortion’ and popularly as a ‘miscarriage’ so long as there is no human involvement whatsoever in the causation of such event.

Go back and re-read that paragraph with all its typos and as ill-written as it is.  It should chill you to the bone.  This man is proposing that any woman who miscarries has to prove that she did not cause the miscarriage intentionally.  Go read the comments on his FB page or on ABL’s post, both here and at Balloon Juice.  Women share their painful and deeply personal stories of miscarrying and rail at Franklin for wanting to put them through even more pain purely because he has fetishized the sadistic nature of the Old Testament god.  Franklin wants to put these poor women through needless grief and pain in order to satiate his warped version of being pro-life.

Some commenters at BJ said this has no chance of passing.  It doesn’t.  Or, if it did, it would get struck down so fast, Franklin’s head would explode (we can hope).  Some said (and mostly men) that there’s no need to get so pissed-off about it because it won’t pass.  ABL disagreed, and so do I.  The problem with extreme shit like this is that it makes less extreme but still odious crap look more palatable.  That’s how we’ve been getting the incremental erosion of legal abortion in the first damn place and why we are fighting so hardily against even more erosions of women’s reproductive rights.

You know what’s bitterly cruel about this?  The same goddamn people who keep shouting about keeping gubmint outta their Medicaid, Medicare, SS, schools, businesses, etc., are the same fuckers who want the government all up in women’s uteri.

Fuck them.  Fuck them with my trusty rusty pitchfork.  They claim to love life and families and all that bullshit.  They claim that every life is precious–except, apparently, for those of actual individual women who want to make choices with their own lives and bodies.  They, apparently, can go to hell with Franklin’s and God’s blessings.  Or curses.

I don’t know about you, but for me, personally, these last two months of extreme anti-woman vendettas by the Republicans have enraged me, infuriated me, and finally pushed me over the damn edge.  I have always been a strong proponent of a woman’s right to choose, and I am even more determined than ever not to let these fuckers win.   For me, this is a hill upon which I’m ready to die.  For years, I’ve thought about volunteering, but I never did.  Now, I’m going to volunteer with Planned Parenthood, and I want to be an escort.   Each woman is a human being whose life matters.  Every woman has the right to make her own reproductive choices.  Full stop.   I will not let this become a society in which my niece has less reproductive rights than I do, not without fighting it every goddamn step of the way.

¹For convenience’s sake, I am going with the heterosexual and dominant convention of victim being female and male being perp, even though I know that’s not always the case.

²Give or take a few millenniums.

³Yes, the term is deliberate.  Given this bill, I am comfortable applying this nomenclature to supporters of said bill.

⁴I like this term, too, as it points out that the so-called pro-life people don’t give a damn about a baby once it’s born.

⁵I don’t know whether Franklin means bin Laden or God, but I suspect it’s the former.   Franklin’s writing is turgid and sloppy–much like his thinking.