GOP Lawmaker Says It’s Harder To Get A Vasectomy Than An Abortion

State Sen. Todd Gardenhire speaks to the Hamilton County Pachyderm Club during their luncheon on Monday, Feb. 23, 2015. Members of the Mercy Junction Ministry protested for the uninsured outside before protesting aga... State Sen. Todd Gardenhire speaks to the Hamilton County Pachyderm Club during their luncheon on Monday, Feb. 23, 2015. Members of the Mercy Junction Ministry protested for the uninsured outside before protesting against State Sen. Todd Gardenhire. Gardenhire, who was the featured speaker at Monday's Hamilton County Pachyderm Club's luncheon meeting, was one of seven Republican legislators to vote down Gov. Bill Haslam's Insure Tennessee plan earlier this month. (AP Photo/Chattanooga Times Free Press, Dan Henry) THE DAILY CITIZEN OUT; NOOGA.COM OUT; CLEVELAND DAILY BANNER OUT; LOCAL INTERNET OUT MORE LESS
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A Republican Tennessee lawmaker on Tuesday said that he thinks it’s harder for a man to get a vasectomy than it is for a woman to get an abortion.

“Men go through a lot more stringent process to have a vasectomy than a woman does, I would assume, on an abortion,” state Sen. Todd Gardenhire said, according to a video posted by the Huffington Post.

Gardenhire made the remarks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing while discussing a bill that would require a 48-hour waiting period for women seeking an abortion, according to the Nashville Post.

State Sen. Sara Kyle (D), who opposed the legislation, brought up vasectomies while criticizing the bill.

“Why don’t we put these same standards on a man who wants to have a vasectomy?” she asked, according to The Tennessean.

Gardenhire, who supports the bill, then decided to begin discussing his own experience with a vasectomy.

“Having personal experience in that field and also having one reversed I want to promise you that when … you start talking to a doctor about them whacking on you down there, you want to wait a while and think about it,” he said, adding that a doctor discusses the vasectomy with the patient before scheduling the procedure.

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  1. I think he has a point. We should make it easier for a man to get a vasectomy. In fact, Young Republicans should actually get government subsidies to go through the procedure. We could have vasectomy-a-thons at GOP rallies!

    “Men go through a lot more stringent process to have a vasectomy than a woman does, I would assume, on an abortion,”

    Yes, but then again an abortion doesn’t curtail the woman’s fertility for the rest of her life. Unless, of course, she’s forced to go to a hack physician who irrevocabaly damages her reproductive system. I suspect women would go through much the same consultative process for a tubal ligation or even for a far more invasive hysterectomy.

  2. Gardenhire may well be the first elected American politician to publicly raise the issue of the tragic loss of untold potential inches in penile tissue performance from back-alley vasectomies.Some pols will be known for raising ‘the reckoning’’; this guy’s staking his historical rep on ‘the thickening’.

  3. “Whacking on you down there”? I’m not a doctor, but I don’t think that’s how vasectomy works.

  4. The doctor is also required, by law, to explain in excruciating detail the pain that each sperm feels when it is murdered with a small-caliber scrotal rifle.

  5. Avatar for tao tao says:

    No kidding? I certainly had not noticed any legislation to prevent funding for vasectomy procedures.

    What a numb nutz.

    EDIT: He’s right. I failed to consider how difficult the operation is when the patient has his head up his ass.

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