Arlington Republican state Rep. Tony Tinderholt has filed legislation that would make abortion a felony in Texas, allowing for health care professionals who perform abortions and women who get abortions to be charged with murder.
As Texas Observer reports, Tinderholt’s bill, HB 948, orders state officials to ignore “any conflicting federal laws,” classifies a fetus as “a living human child” from the moment of conception, with the same rights and privileges as “any other human child,” and makes no exception for cases of rape or fetal abnormalities. It also removes the exception for abortion in the state’s penal code for criminal homicide.
It does allow an exception for cases in which the mother’s life is at risk due to complications from the pregnancy.
Tinderholt defended his bill by claiming that it would “force” women to be “more personally responsible” with sex, Texas Observer reports. He told the Observer: “Right now, they don’t make it important to be personally responsible because they know that they have a backup of ‘oh, I can just go get an abortion.’”
Neither Tinderholt nor any of the other self-righteous dicks in the Texas Legislature have filed legislation to jail men who get a woman pregnant and then abandon her.
HB 948 is, of course, patently unconstitutional. But Tinderholt and his ilk don’t give a rat’s ass about that because they are white men, and they get to tell everybody else what to do and how to live because they are better and more important than the rest of us.
Tinderholt, elected in 2014, is 46 years old, Roman Catholic and a military veteran, having served in both the Air Force and the U.S. Army. He went in to his first term in the Legislature, in 2015, with guns a’blazin, declaring himself to be a defender of traditional family values. He’s so Christian and family values oriented that in 2015 he filed a complaint against a Texas probate judge after a lesbian couple was allowed to marry in Austin in February that year (before Obergefell). As it turned out, Tinderholt’s hand-written complaint was filed against the wrong judge. In his first term in office, he passed no legislation.
Bethany Tyler-Tinderholt, promoting family values — and condoms — at a Playboy party in 2015.
It also turns out that he believes so strongly in the sanctity of “traditional” marriage (between one man and one woman only), that he’s been married five times. As Dallas Voice Senior Staff Writer David Taffet noted in 2015:
“Wife No. 5, Bethany, was also wife No. 2. On her Twitter account, Bethany Tinderholt says she is a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, adding, ‘I believe in God, family and conservative values.’
“Apparently, going by these photos that were sent to Dallas Voice Wednesday, March 4, believing in ‘God, family and conservative values’ includes going to Playboy parties wearing cleavage-baring dresses and posing with similarly-dressed women and a Playboy Bunny or two, while waving around condoms.
“We think the pictures were taken last year at the Aloft Hotel in downtown Dallas when the hotel became the Bud Light Hotel for Final Four weekend — at a time that Tony and Bethany Tinderholt were already proclaiming their Christian faith and conservative values to prove he was qualified to serve in the Texas Legislature.”
If you wanted to send a message to this God-appointed protector of purity, here’s his contact info. And here’s his campaign website. And here’s his Facebook page.
