Politicians who try to be funny often struggle. Politicians who try to be funny about state-mandated, medically-unnecessary, trans-vaginal ultrasounds invariably fail.
Just ask Sean Duffy, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, who made some curious comments on the subject last week.
Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) declined to take a position last week during a town hall meeting on whether transvaginal ultrasounds should be mandatory for women seeking abortions, saying he has never heard of the practice and couldn't weigh in on it because "I haven't had one." [...]
Duffy has described himself as "100 percent prolife without exceptions" (though he also said "To qualify, I believe that if we have the life of a mother as an issue, the mother's life takes priority, but we must make every effort to save the life of the child.") Asked about one of the main goals for the pro-life movement, however, Duffy said he had not heard of transvaginal ultrasounds at all.
The Republican lawmaker's defense, apparently, is complete ignorance. He doesn't know what a trans-vaginal ultrasound is -- though it seems to me the name is rather descriptive and self-explanatory -- and he has no idea that his fellow Republicans have pushed proposals at the state level, including Wisconsin, that would require medically-unnecessary, trans-vaginal ultrasounds by state mandate.
But since Duffy hasn't kept on the news, and thinks it's amusing that he hasn't been subjected to a trans-vaginal ultrasound of his own, he's comfortable dodging the question.
Here's the follow-up inquiry: if folks were able to educate Duffy on the policy, and he could no longer claim ignorance, would he support or oppose the policy?
