Childhood hijinks, or sinister liberal plot?

If fetuses in Texas could vote, they’d probably vote Republican, at least according to one state official:

In a recent speech to an anti-abortion group on the economic impact of terminating pregnancies, Texas Railroad Commissioner Barry Smitherman, a Republican candidate for attorney general, said he believed many unborn babies “would have voted Republican.”

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Smitherman spokesman Allen Blakemore called the candidate’s statement a matter of statistics.

“Of course he was referring to the ones in Texas,” Blakemore said, “and we know that the majority of Texans vote for Republican candidates.”

I am honestly just too worn out to bother trying to make fun of Smitherman directly, and this comment actually boggles my mind to the point where snark begins to fail me. Instead, I will point out the callous disregard Smitherman shows for children through this comment. Apparently he wants to give the franchise to fetuses, but nothing he said indicates that he would support granting similar voting rights to children between the ages of birth and eighteen. Individuals in that age range do not have the right to vote, per the 26th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

What does Smitherman know about children that would cause him to seek to suppress their voting rights in this manner? What is behind this push for a fetal franchise? Are Texas children far more liberal—and therefore more likely to vote for Democratic candidates—than their amniotic-submerged counterparts? Or is something more sinister at work here?

Or, in the alternative, is Barry Smitherman talking completely out of his ass? History will decide (assuming that we’re still even bothering to teach history in the future).

Photo credit: xandert from morguefile.com.