A Republican legislator’s claim that his experience as a vet makes him an expert on abortion shows how gerrymandering makes legislators out of touch (Photo by Bryce Richter / UW-Madison)
Wisconsin Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) earned a lot of unwanted national media attention late last week for his remarks during a floor debate in which he said he was qualified to deny women abortion access because he’s a veterinarian. “I did thousands of ultrasounds on animals,” Kitchens declared . “ … I think I know mammalian fetal development better than probably anyone here.”
So swaggeringly confident was Kitchens in his opinion that “abortion is not health care” based on his experience with sheep and cows, he was oblivious to the splash his comment would make on social media and in news outlets across the country. Vanity Fair , HuffPost , The New Republic and the Independent jumped on the story, enthusiastically spreading the word about Kitchens “comparing pregnant women to breeding livestock.”