Joe Walsh addressing an April, 2011, Wauconda, Illinois, town hall meeting with his constituents.

I think I’ve finally figured out why the right wing is so opposed to factual sex education in our schools. They don’t want their kids to know how ignorant they are.

First it was Missouri Senate candidate Todd Aiken insisting that women have some magical ability to shut off their reproductive systems so they never get pregnant during a “legitimate rape.” One can only assume that a “legitimate rape” is like a forcible rape and must include a gun or knife and violence. Date rape drugs wouldn’t count and neither would one where a woman does what everyone instructs her to do to save her own life – don’t fight back and don’t look at him so that you could identify him.

Now along comes the GOP’s favorite deadbeat dad, Illinois Representative Joe Walsh who claims that “There is no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing, with advances in science and technology.”

Oh, let’s see – there’s ectopic pregnancies, where the fertilized egg implants in the fallopian tube and if the embryo isn’t removed, it grows until it bursts the fallopian tube and floods a woman’s abdominal cavity with materials that quickly turn toxic.

Ectopic pregnancy is the leading cause of life threatening conditions in pregnancy, but hardly the only one. According to Amelia Banks and David Levy of Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham University Hospital, the United Kingdom, the list includes: Obstetric hemorrhage caused by placental praevia, placental adruption, uterine rupture, uterine atony, genital tract trauma, uterine inversion and lieno-renal axis aneurysms; pre-eclampsia, eclampsia, hypovolaemia obstetric hemorrhage, non-obstetric hemmorhage, hypoxia convulsions, other aetiology, neurological events, thromboembolic pulmonary thromboembolism, amniotic fuild embolism, air embolism, magnesium sulphate overdoes, local anaesthetic toxicity, overdose of antihypertensive agents, tension pneumothorax, cardiac tamponade, myocardial infarction, and the biggie, sudden adult death syndrome. The symptoms of pre-eclampsia and eclampsia include placental adruption, disseminated intravascular coagulopathy, pulmonary edema, acute renal failure, aspiration pneumonia, stroke and cardiopulmonary arrest.

Translation – a bad pregnancy can cause a mother to have a fatal heart attack, her kidneys to shut down and her body fill with toxins, her lungs to fill with fluid and drown her, a blood clot let loose and kill her brain cells, the placenta to separate from the uterus or her lungs to swell so she can’t get any air in them….but none of those things could possibly be called a “life threatening pregnancy” could they?

Women survive these things because of advances in medical care, but sometimes the only way for them to survive is to abort the pregnancy. The further along a pregnancy is, the better the chances of saving both lives with rapid and early intervention. But that would involve women having access to prenatal care, wouldn’t it? And that would involve women having their “lady parts” care covered by health insurance and their affordable health care centers funded, wouldn’t it?

Rep. Walsh needs to spend less time watching Access Hollywood and reading the celebrity tabloids. Yes, Tori Spelling and her baby survived placenta previa, which was diagnosed at 18 weeks. She was already receiving top-level prenatal care and had early symptoms that were being monitored. She was able, with three small children, to spend the next three months of her pregnancy in bed receiving both nursing care and housekeeping and child care. That’s what life can be like when you’ve inherited part of your Daddy’s massive fortune. Of course it also helps that placenta previa is a condition where the placenta grows at the lowest part of uterus and covers the cervix. It does cause massive vaginal bleeding, which is where the threat to the mother and fetus arises.

Walsh is being challenged for his House seat by Tammy Duckworth, and he’s losing in all the polls. He’s a short-tempered jerk who yells at his own constituents if he doesn’t like the questions they ask him. He owed a whole lot of back child support and blew off a support hearing because he’s too important and couldn’t leave Washington on the day of a “critical vote” which his party was going to win on pure party lines even without him. He finally reached a settlement with his ex-wife over the child support, including having her issue a joint statement that he is not a “deadbeat dad.” Sorry, too late. Not making over $100,000 in child support payments while loaning money to your congressional campaign and visiting foreign resorts with your second wife qualifies you as a deadbeat dad no matter what you later do. The only thing this man knows about women’s bodies is where to stick his johnson to father five children and cheat on his wife.

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