"The Texas Baby Purchasing Act Of 2007"

Posted by Bruce Wilson at 8:00 AM on March 22, 2007.

Anonymous author "moiv," whose hard-hitting, exposes on the Christian theocratic movement's ongoing war on women's rights could at this point fill several good sized books, writes in her latest jeremiad that:

Texas State Sen. Dan Patrick, author of a current proposal to criminalize safe abortion care, has figured out that adoption tax credits have a serious limitation: they don't do anything at all to increase the number of newborn babies available for adoption in the first place. But Senator Dan's the man with a plan to even out the shortfall.

Under Patrick's SB 1567, AKA the Texas Baby Purchasing Act of 2007, women would qualify for a $500 payment from the state within 60 days of signing away all parental rights to their newborn children.

If Patrick gets his way, childbearing in the service of the state won't be just creepy Handmaid's Tale fiction anymore. How's that for some moral family values?

As freakishly "Brave New World" as it may sound, the new bill introduced in the Texas State legislature that would pay $500 to unmarried mothers who signed their parental rights to their babies away to the Lone Star State is not unexpected coming from from a legislative body that last hit the national radar screen when one of its top members circulated a memo alleging the theory of Evolution to be a Jewish Kabbalist conspiracy and referencing a website that declares Copernicus was wrong and that the Sun revolves around the Earth. What could really top the fact that one of the most powerful politicians of one of the largest states in the Union had promoted the notion that the fundamental scientific breakthrough - that the entire celestial world, the whole heavens and cosmos, didn't revolve around the Earth each and every every 24 hours and which some would say was a key conceptual advance that helped usher in the Enlightenment - was actually a Jewish cultic plot ?

That said, this latest political excressence of the Lone Star State's far right and theocratic religio-political culture has potential media legs beyond the liberal, metrosexual, public radio crowd cosily ensconsced on those populous American coasts that AIPAC ally Pastor John Hagee says may get nuked, in the war he's lobbying for, as an act of divine retribution for insufficient support of the political platforms of the Israeli far-right. Here's why...

"The Texas Baby Purchasing Act Of 2007" may just touch a deep, raw nerve among the "New World Order" conspiracy crowd that both expects a coming Apocalypse but also fears that George W. Bush might just be the Antichrist, or at least a minion of the AntiChrist. And, leaving the Apocalyptic theological views out of it, the proposal that states should pay hard cash to buy babies, on condition that mothers sign away all parental rights, seems pretty darn menacing. But, who knows? Maybe that's the intent.

Still Texas State Senator Dan Patrick really missea golden opportunity to set new standards for creepily Orwellian, menacing state legislation ; with a few bold strokes of his legislative pen, Patrick could have both set in motion a state-run baby breeding program and , by taking up Al Mohler's advocacy for medical procedures that could "fix" gay babies, written a legislative mandate that human babies purchased by the state of Texas ( at an average per pound rate cheaper than good quality sushi-grade Tuna, a bargain ! ) who might be gay must be "fixed" with brain surgery and also liberal doses of hormones. Dan Patrick, who is no doubt a 'Bible-believing' Christian but seems only lukewarm in his devotion to his faith, might heed the Book Of Revelations :

Revelation 3:15–16. "[15] I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou were cold or hot. [16] So because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth."

Bruce Wilson writes for Talk To Action, a blog specializing in faith and politics.