Because I can barely contain my rage/outrage over what is clearly and without apology a War on Women, meaning the current House Oversight Committee hearings on regulations requiring insurers to cover contraception, I will instead focus on the the Ohio Crazy House, I mean State Legislature.

Oh so many f’d up things going on in Ohio, its hard to narrow it down. Today’s mini-rant features one prominent and one sneaky move. Yesterday a bill (HB 284) intended to expand the scope of what a physician assistant can do, suddenly included removing their current permission to insert or remove an IUD.

Physicians Assistants can be trusted to prescribe controlled substances like opiates and cannabis, issue a Do Not Resuscitate order and pronounce someone dead, but they can’t be trusted to touch an IUD. No wait its not about trust or medical skill, this provision was included because a State Rep believes that a fertilized egg is a human and an IUD prevents fertilization. Can’t get in the way of how many children the Good Lord wants you to have now can we. Nope. Not in Ohio.

Another piece of pending misguided legislation is House Bill 191. This piece of brilliance would restrict public schools from holding classes before Labor Day or after Memorial Day.

Am I the only one who thinks its insane to reduce the number of school days when we already require fewer than any other industrialized country? There is no federal requirement but most schools are in session for roughly 180 days. That 80 days of vacation not counting weekends. This might have made sense once upon a time when we all had to help out on the farm in order to eat come winter, but that has not been the case for a very long time.

We also have the shortest school day of any country – 6 1/2 hours compared to 7 1/2 or 8 hours in the EU. US kids seem to need a lot of free time to fish in the creek and play stick ball, or play video games and run the streets. One or the other.

The sponsors of HB 191 say it is about stimulating the economy by increasing the amount of summer we have for tourism.

So from my perspective the State House plan is to keep women from using contraception so they get pregnant, and then because summer vacation is so long they have take their children to King’s Island multiple times. And then when they are older, those same kids can work at King’s Island because they have been So Poorly Educated They Don’t Qualify for Anything Else.

Forward thinking – thanks State Reps!