Now that the nation has spanked Rush Limbaugh for his heavy breathing over Sandra Fluke, and there has been open ridicule of the Virginia legislature’s vaginal ultrasound laws, you would think that there would be a chilling effect on similar sentiments and legislation elsewhere. Apparently not.
It seems that there was some kind of general memo distributed to elected officials in state houses around the country that read, with Svengali-like enchantment: Non-Procreative. Sex. Must. Cease. Looks like we’re seeing more pre-abortion vaginal ultrasound and fetal personhood legislation proposed in state after state, and that memo was spread around long before Rush flapped his gums.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, this last year alone close to a thousand new laws have sprung up across various states, limiting or punishing reproductive choice for women. All Rush did was openly broadcast the fight over our vaginas. Conservatives in state legislatures and local governments have been doing the rest of the footwork, long before Sandra Fluke spoke up. They had hold of The Memo long before Fluke-Limbaugh made the news cycle(s) of March.
To some, the ludicrousness and misogyny of these laws signal the last thrashing of a dying conservative movement, but in his newest article, leading progressive political messaging expert George Lakoff thinks otherwise. Lakoff says in his article “The Santorum Strategy”: