Oklahoma style.

I’ve never been taken by the right’s attacks on “big government.” Most of it has always struck me as a handy catch-all for programs and policies that they just don’t like, while very few have actually any impact on the way these people will lead their lives. The EPA regulating pollution-causing industrial process is not big government, it’s merely a policy that some corporations don’t like. And corporations aren’t people, so people who treat them as such aren’t that serious in my book.

On the other hand, when the state legislature in Oklahoma says that a woman cannot sue her doctor if she’s given birth to a child with birth defects and the doctor lied about it being a healthy fetus while she was pregnant, that, my friends, is Big Government. It is legislating a doctor’s beliefs onto his patients. Or more specifically, it is legislating a halo of legal immunity around a doctor who lies to patients and in so doing rips constitutionally protected rights out of their hands.  If nothing else, every member of the Oklahoma state legislature who voted to override the Governor’s veto to make these anti-choice laws a reality should be banned from ever complaining about the size and role of government ever again.