Rick Perry is the Worst.

[Content Note: Hostility to agency; appropriations; rape culture.]

Igor at Think Progress:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) directly attacked state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) during a speech at the National Right to Life conference on Thursday, arguing that the state senator who filibustered for 13 hours to defeat an omnibus anti-abortion bill should have learned from her own life experiences as a single mother to value "every life."

"Who are we to say that children born into the worst of circumstances can't grow to live successful lives?" Perry asked, before suggesting that Davis' own struggles should have turned her against abortion:

PERRY: In fact, even the woman who filibustered the Senate the other day was born into difficult circumstances. She was the daughter of a single woman, she was a teenage mother herself. She managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas senate. It is just unfortunate that she hasn't learned from her own example that every life must be given a chance to realize its full potential and that every life matters.

...During his remarks, the Texas governor also described Davis' filibuster as "hijacking of the Democratic process" and said of the pro-choice movement, "the louder they scream, the more we know that we are getting something done."

This fucking guy.

Of course it's no surprise that a dirtbag who is keen to legislate what women and other people with uteri are allowed to do with our bodies would, without a hint of compunction, presume to lecture a woman on what lessons she should have gleaned from her lived experience. He feels just as entitled to own and control Wendy Davis' story as he does entitled to own and control her body.

And blah blah insert here another 3,000-word screed that would never penetrate Rick Perry's skull if it were delivered typed on a paper airplane flown directly into his ear about how recognizing that "every life must be given a chance to realize its full potential and that every life matters" is precisely why those of us who are pro-choice are, since we actually value the actual lives of actual people who have actually been born.

Also: Did a male governor of a state with a disproportionately male legislature who are trying to legislate control over primarily women's bodies seriously just say "the louder they scream, the more we know that we are getting something done"? Because WHAT. THE. FUCK.

I have previously noted on many occasions (here, was probably the fist time) that I'm hard-pressed to see why I should be any less contemptuous of a man who sits at a big mahogany desk in a government building making decisions about my body without my consent than I should be of the man who used physical force to make decisions about my body without my consent.

It is an observation by which anti-choice legislators are outraged. They are horrified to be compared, even obliquely, to sexual predators. As well they should be. I am horrified to have to make it. But anyone who holds the position that zie should be able to legislate away my bodily autonomy and supersede my consent about what happens to my body shouldn't be too goddamned surprised by the comparison.

And anyone who does it while proudly bellowing, about mostly-male legislators seeking control of mostly-female bodies to the sounds of screaming protest, "the louder they scream, the more we know that we are getting something done" really, really shouldn't be surprised.

Asshole.