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A Mississippi Democratic lawmaker with a sense of humor and a sensitivity to hypocrisy has introduced state legislation declaring that “conception begins at erection.”
The bill would make it illegal for a man to masturbate or engage in any other sexual acts which would involve discharging “genetic material without the intent to fertilize an embryo.”
“There’s no need for an abortion bill if we regulate what men do,” state Senator Bradford Blackmon told WAPT-TV in Jackson.
Blackmon said he was inspired to introduce the bill by all the new restrictions on women’s sexual and reproductive freedoms.
“The filing of this bill is to point out the double standards in legislation,” he said in a statement on Facebook. “You have male-dominated legistures in Mississippi and all over the country that pass laws that dictate what a woman can and cannot do with her body.”
He added: “When a bill has been filed that would regulate what a man is able to do with his own body in his own home, it suddenly has people in an uproar … men are not held to the same standard when it comes to the intrusion into their personal private affairs as women.”
He also complained to WLBT that the “vast majority of bills relating to contraception and/or abortion focus on the woman’s role when men are 50 percent of the equation.”
The bill “brings the man’s role into the conversation. People can get up in arms and call it absurd but I can’t say that bothers me,” added Blackmon.
His bill proposes fines ranging from $1,000 to $10,000, but is highly unlikely to pass in the Republican-dominated Mississippi legislature.
Mississippi has a long tradition of lawmakers introducing bills to mock or point out hypocrisy.
It’s one of 12 states that have total or near total abortion bans.
