GOP Rep Casually Beheads Chicken While Talking About Banning Abortion

It's still early, but Missouri representative Mike Moon may have taken the title for Least Sane Republican of the Year. On Monday, he posted an extremely bizarre video to Facebook to make a statement about the special legislative session on abortion policy that started that day.

In the video, Rep. Moon makes it clear that he was hard at work on his farm before being called back to the legislature: He's holding the head of a live chicken that is strung up by its feet on tree. "When the governor called for the second special session this year, I was right in the middle of my summer job," he says to the camera.

Nonetheless, he's ready to pass laws restricting women's reproductive rights. "But like any good career politician, when I get the call"—here, he pauses and beheads chicken—"I'm going back to work."

Taking the dying chicken down from the tree to fully butcher it, he compares his domestic fowl decapitation to his intent to enact anti-abortion laws. "God gave us man dominion over life. He allows us to raise animals properly and care for them and then process them for food so we can sustain life—and that's what I'm doing here with this chicken," he says. "So we've been called back to this special session for the primary purpose of supporting life, protecting the unborn specifically."

Then he reaches into the chicken to pull out its heart: "I think we need to get to the heart of the matter here. So today, I'm filing a bill that will lead to the stopping of abortion in the state of Missouri, and I hope you'll support it."

While the chicken imagery is unpleasant, Moon's pledge to pass extreme anti-abortion legislation is the most disturbing aspect of the video, according to Allison Dreith, the executive director of NARAL Missouri. "Whatever Mike Moon does with a chicken in the privacy of his home is his own business," she said in a statement to the Missouri Times. "But we will not let him use the rights of women across Missouri as some kind of political prop. His call to ban abortion is disturbing and dangerous, no matter what he does with that chicken."

Earlier this year, Moon—who has compared abortion to slavery and the Holocaust—introduced a "personhood" bill in the state legislature that would have completely banned abortion. It's likely the legislation he filled on Monday is similar, given his promise to "stop" abortion. Rep. Moon did not respond to Broadly's request for comment in time for publication.

It's unlikely that the bill will pass this time, but reproductive rights are still under threat in the state. Governor Eric Greitens called the special session with the specific intent of passing more regulations on abortion providers after a federal judge struck down laws in Missouri that limit clinics, and lawmakers seem eager to pile on additional anti-abortion bills. The governor also wants to rescind a St. Louis ordinance that makes it illegal to discriminate against women based on their reproductive choices.

In a statement, Planned Parenthood advocates in Missouri called Greitens' actions an "extreme, frivolous and expensive effort to endanger women's health with even more medically unnecessary restrictions on safe, legal abortion."