Tulsi Gabbard, in her penultimate month as a US Representative from Hawaii, introduced a bill Thursday that would keep biological men from participating in women’s sports.
House bill H.R. 8932, the Protect Women’s Sports Act, interprets Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments as protecting people from discrimination based on biological sex. Therefore, if passed, the bill would not give biological males who “transitioned” the protection under federal law to compete in women’s athletics.
Gabbard, a Democrat, introduced the bill with Republican representative Markwayne Mullin (OK-02).
As amazing as it is for a Democrat to do something like this nowadays, H.R. 8932 was not the only bill she recently introduced that defies her party leadership. H.R. 8923, introduced Wednesday, would “amend title 18, United States Code, to ensure a health care practitioner exercises the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.”
A similar bill had been struck down by Democrats earlier this year. They argue that the bill is redundant since the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 already ensures care for babies who survive abortions. But it does not impose criminal penalties on doctors who fail to provide it.
Tulsi Gabbard decided not to run for reelection in the House during her long-shot 2020 presidential candidacy. Although publicly progressive on certain issues, Gabbard has found an affinity among some nationalists and right-wingers for her anti-neoconservative, pro-America First stance on foreign policy. She previously held pro-life and pro-traditional marriage convictions before the Democratic Party made them untenable for any of their elected officials. She was also the only Democrat to not vote for the impeachment of President Trump.
The introduction of these two bills as a lame duck representative appear to show that Tulsi is sick and tired of her Democratic Party bosses and that she has more common sense on social issues than most every other leftist.