Ted Cruz unwittingly makes himself pro-choice with outrage over vasectomy bill
Ted Cruz has unwittingly made himself pro-choice by expressing his outrage over Alabama's vasectomy bill.
The Texas senator shared his thoughts about the new bill in a tweet on Saturday, writing: "Yikes. A government big enough to give you everything is big enough to take everything...literally! Alabama Democrat proposes bill mandating all men have vasectomy at age 50 or after third child."
While Mr Cruz was attempting to criticise the invasive new bill, introduced by Alabama Democratic representative Rolanda Hollis last week, he instead played into what pro-choice advocates have been arguing for years.
Introducing the bill was a long shot by Ms Hollis, but her main priority was to demonstrate the "outrageous overstep in authority" exhibited by Republicans who want to legislate the female body. She did this by creating her own legislative overstep targeting the male body.
"Year after year the majority party continues to introduce new legislation that tries to dictate a woman's body and her reproductive rights," Ms Hollis said. "We should view this as the same outrageous overstep in authority."
She said the vasectomy bill was also created to "neutralise" the abortion bill passed last year in Alabama.
"Men should not be legislating what women do with their bodies," Ms Hollis said.
Besides wanting women to have autonomy in their reproductive choices, Ms Hollis was also concerned about the amount of money Alabama taxpayers were forced to pay organisations like the ACLU to fight abortion bills.
"Alabama taxpayers have been forced to hand over more than $2.5 million in legal fees to the ACLU to fight unconstitutional attempts to restrict women's access to reproductive healthcare, and the majority party's continued attempts to restrict women's reproductive rights could cost Alabamians even more," she said.
Outrage surrounding Ms. Hollis' proposed vasectomy bill, which is not expected to pass, started to die down before Mr Cruz tweeted about the proposal to his 3.5 million followers.
Commenters noticed his tweet only helped to push the pro-choice narrative.
Yikes. A government big enough to give you everything is big enough to take everything...literally! Alabama Democrat proposes bill mandating all men have vasectomy at age 50 or after third child. https://t.co/PeaNUg1Joc
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz)
"Wow how awful that the government is trying to interfere with bodily autonomy! What's that feel like?" wrote one commenter questioning the politician's tweet. Another wrote: "A bill involving a medical procedure which only applies to one gender? Governmental overreach!"
Alabama's abortion bill was passed by state legislators last year and involved a near total ban of the reproductive procedure. Doctors could face up to 99 years in prison if they perform the procedure on a woman at any stage of her pregnancy.
Two weeks before the bill was intended to take effect, it was stopped by a federal judge. But the restrictive bill comes at another attempt by the pro-life movement to challenge Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v Wade ruling — the landmark court decision giving pregnant women the choice to an abortion. With a conservative majority sitting on the Supreme Court, the pro-life movement believes it has a shot to overturn the decades-old ruling.
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