Michigan's extremist lame duck session continues with anti-abortion and anti-Sharia bills

Michigan Republicans are continuing their lame-duck sprint through a long, long list of terrible bills. At the same time they were going after unions and working people over massive protest, Republican leadership in the state legislature has been moving forward with several anti-abortion and anti-contraception bills and that perennial favorite of paranoid Republicans: Sharia law.

The anti-abortion and anti-contraception bills, the most sweeping of which had previously been passed by the House and was passed by the Senate Wednesday afternoon impose harsh and unnecessary regulations on abortion providers and putting abortion out of the reach of many rural women. Other abortion bills moving through the state legislature sound like Roy Blunt's wish list, prohibiting insurance companies from covering abortion except through a special rider women would have to purchase, allowing doctors to refuse to provide abortion or contraception because of their own beliefs, and allowing employers to refuse to cover contraception.

Michigan state Rep. Dave Agema learned the lesson of the Oklahoma anti-Sharia law struck down by a federal appeals court as unconstitutional, and when he drafted his Michigan anti-Sharia law he didn't actually include the word. But, Adam Serwer reports, "there's little doubt" as to what Agema is getting at:

Its sponsor, state Rep. Dave Agema, has said that American Muslims "do not want to live under our law" and falsely said that President Barack Obama is a Muslim, which in Agema's view is bad because he thinks "just about every terrorist is a Muslim." [...]

Agema's bill would prevent "foreign law" from being applied if it would "result in a violation of constitutional rights." Now, if you're asking yourself why you need a bill stating that your constitutional rights can't be violated if you already have a Constitution, or how this bill would help if your constitutional rights are already being violated, then you've just realized why this bill is stupid.

So, in just a few short weeks of lame duck session, Michigan Republicans are going after unions explicitly and all working people implicitly, by passing a law shown to lower wages substantially; women's health coverage and right to control their own bodies; and Muslims, anyone with enough brains to realize that a state law ostensibly protecting against unconstitutional foreign laws is pointless given the existence of the Constitution itself, and the general principle of not using the law to target people of a specific faith. You can't say Michigan Republicans aren't motivated and efficient, at least for this little window of time.