Was hanging out with some old friends at an old haunt when I was introduced to this gleaming shiny bleach-mouthed paragon of Wingnuttery, a member in good standing of the All your Uteri Are Belong To Us™, Division. For those of you that don’t make it regularly over to Mother Jones I present to you: Rick Brattin.

I cant think of any particular amendments to make to the image as it is almost a joke unto itself, invoking in my mind black lit velvet Elvii from the 70’s, those huge eyed paintings from the 60’s and ultimately a Rear window tintstrip of the Eagle crying with a flag background on a pickup truck festooned with yellow ribbon magnets and bedecked with a pair of TruckNutz (a pair of which I caught in the wild recently with a friend who had been previously unfamiliar with the concept, which got away before I could get a picture, but I digress.)

Anyhoo, this lovely young man has somehow managed to become a state Rep in the Show me State of Missouri and has a really good idea. Dig it, ladies, and Gents, he wants to mandate that women who are about to obtain abortions (apparently still legal and available in MO.*) obtain the permission of the sperm donor before the procedure can take place. Now in the case of “legitimate rape” she can forgo this necessity as though the burdon of proof, oddly enough seems weighted on her. Incest, also, too. Here he mansplains his version of the meaning of “legitimate rape”:

Brattin adds that he is not using the term “legitimate rape” in the same way as former Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), who famously claimed that women couldn’t get pregnant from a “legitimate rape” because “the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”

“I’m just saying if there was a legitimate rape, you’re going to make a police report, just as if you were robbed,” Brattin says. “That’s just common sense.” Under his bill, he adds, “you have to take steps to show that you were raped…And I’d think you’d be able to prove that.”

*Apparently I was only half joking:

Missouri is home to only one abortion clinic, based in St. Louis. Each year, legislators target the clinic with dozens of new restrictions. In 2014, the GOP-controlled Legislature approved a bill requiring women seeking an abortion to wait 72 hours between the initial consultation and the procedure. It’s the longest abortion waiting period in the county.

One clinic located on the edge of the state, under constant assault. Check.
The logic that follows is well, just special

A group of Democratic lawmakers in Missouri found the onslaught of anti-abortion bills so ridiculous that in 2012 they introduced a bill to ban vasectomies except to save the life of a man. If conservative male lawmakers imagined jumping through hoops to obtain reproductive services, the thinking went, they would see the absurdity of their anti-abortion crusade.

Not Brattin. The father of five says that his recent vasectomy was the inspiration for this bill.

“When a man goes in for that procedure—at least in the state of Missouri—you have to have a consent form from your spouse in order to have that procedure done,” he says. “Here I was getting a normal procedure that has nothing to do with another human being’s life, and I needed to get a signed form…But on ending a life, you don’t. I think that’s pretty twisted.”

What I think is twisted is that you didn’t think that having your spouse sign off on the procedure was a ridiculous violation of privacy and think about doing something about that. I might add that spousal agreement in this case makes at least some kind of lizard brained sense, where as your sperm donator protection act seems not to require any spousal involvment at all.

But then we get to the punchline, which should surprise none of us:

A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, a group of clinics that perform vasectomies, says that there is no law in Missouri requiring a man to get another person’s permission for a vasectomy. Individual providers sometimes require a patient to have his partner’s consent. (Planned Parenthood of Missouri does not.) Brattin saved the document his wife signed and intends to share it with other lawmakers when it comes time to promote his bill.

Maybe he can see if he can get the Jar with Santorum’s abortimiscarriage child for show and tell as well.

From his Bio:

Rick was born in July 1980 and grew up in Greenwood, Missouri where he graduated from Lee’s Summit High School. After graduating, he worked in the construction industry until September 11, 2001. He then joined the United States Marine Corps where he served for six years as a Noncommissioned Officer. Since then, Rick has been owner and operator of a family construction company and tends a 40-acre farm in central Cass County north of Harrisonville.