Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has won the endorsement of Emily's List, which supports pro-choice female Dems across the country, in part for pushing one of the weirder bills ever to come out of City Hall.
Emily's List, as The Sun's Julie Scharper reports on our politics blog, praised Rawlings-Blake for sponsoring a bill to require crisis pregnancy centers that don't perform abortions to post signs saying as much.
The bill passed in 2009 when Rawlings-Blake was City Council president. A federal judge struck it down in January. The city is appealing.
The council's abortion-sign bill always struck me as goofy, even for a body that busies itself with matters like Council Resolution 9876, which congratulated "Raymond Rawlings-El on the celebration of 13 years of sobriety."
Do lots of women walk into faith-based pregnancy centers expecting to get an abortion? If a pregnant woman walks out of such a center still pregnant but supplied with prenatal vitamins, maternity clothes, counseling and a job referral, has she just been ripped off?
Different pregnancy centers offer different services, just as different restaurants have different menus. Would the city require Mexican eateries to post notices saying they don't serve Thai?
Imagine if the council required abortion providers to hang signs reading, "Abortion stops a beating heart."
Orwellian, right? So's the other bill.