Most of them were pretty quiet, but there were some quality victories this week at the state capitol for Louisiana’s conservatives, and it’s not out of line to say there are now reasons to believe the state legislature is about to function as a conservative body in the future.

Of course, we’re not counting on many of the wins piled up so far in this session to be lasting. After all, this state still has a Democrat governor who has zero qualms about flouting the will of the people by vetoing popular legislation. So bills passing in the House or Senate or even both aren’t necessarily “permanent” wins.

Most of the good bills won’t be more than a good talking point until John Bel Edwards’ veto is overridden. But of course, that’s what happens when you lose an election to a far-left wannabe tyrant like Edwards.

The top win, though, is permanent – at least until next year when we’ll surely have this fight again.

Republican lawmakers in Louisiana rejected legislation Wednesday that would add exceptions in cases of rape and incest to one of the strictest abortion bans in the country.

This legislative session, there is a package of bills aimed at loosening Louisiana’s near-total abortion ban by adding exceptions, clarifying “vague language” and decreasing the punishment for doctors convicted of performing illegal abortions. However, much of the proposed legislation died in a GOP-controlled committee Wednesday or was voluntarily deferred by the bills’ authors.

The big bill in that bunch was HB 346 by Delisha Boyd which would have put in the rape exception to allow abortions in Louisiana. The House Administration of Criminal Justice Committee has 10 Republicans and five non-Republicans (Joe Marino, a Democrat in everything but name, calls himself an independent), and the vote was 10 nos and five yeses.

And that made Edwards very sad.

“I simply do not understand how we as a state can tell any victim that she must be forced by law to carry her rapist’s baby to term, regardless of the impact on her own physical or mental health, the wishes of her parents, or the medical judgment of her physician,” said Democratic Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who supports abortion restrictions but believes there should be exceptions. “As I have said before, rape and incest exceptions protect crime victims. We must do all that we can to protect them and sadly, the committee failed to do so today.”

He never stops lying, because that’s not what the bill does. Any woman who gets raped can still take the “morning after” pill and prevent a pregnancy, so voting Boyd’s legislation down doesn’t consign rape victims to pregnancy. In fact, we’re pretty sure that if you report the rape you get the “morning after ” pill as part of the rape kit.

What’s more, John Bel Edwards who calls himself “pro-life” and fraudulently won two elections in Louisiana by saying so, ought to be ashamed of himself for making such a lousy argument. After all, the question here is whether we’re going to protect the unborn, and the unborn aren’t guilty of rape. That’s an innocent human life in there.

No, you certainly shouldn’t have to raise a child which came as the product of rape. But there are thousands and thousands of families actively seeking kids they want to adopt, and a true culture of life would entail embracing the possibility of creating and contributing to the welfare of a new human being those families want to participate in.

Edwards doesn’t care about that. He says he’s pro-life but not in the tough cases, and his position would crank up the abortion mills who’d then encourage every hesitant pregnant mother-to-be to claim they were raped in order to have an abortion. So you’d have a whole lot of people who engaged in consensual sex now embroiled in scandalous allegations that would ruin their lives.

That isn’t a defense of rapists, you know. It’s a recognition of reality. We see false rape allegations all the time. Look what happened to former Buffalo Bills punter Matt Araiza, who lost a whole year of an NFL contract, and his reputation, over a false accusation last year. He wasn’t even in the building when his accuser says he raped her. Then you have things like the Duke lacrosse case and the University of Virginia fraternity case, both of which were hoaxes.

It happens quite a bit. It would happen even more if Boyd’s bill became law. And since we still have the “morning after” pill in Louisiana, there is a remedy for women who don’t want to bear a pregnancy. All this thing amounted to was an attempt to keep those abortion mills alive in the state so that their campaign dollars and their advocacy would be around to help Democrat politicians.

Killing that bill is therefore a big win for a host of reasons.

The budget and the discipline not to waste the current surplus on recurring expenses was another big win; we’ve discussed that one already here at the site.  One word about that, though – in Bossier Parish, Reps. Raymond Crews and Dodie Horton are apparently getting roasted by the teachers’ unions for not backing a state pay raise.

And this is so completely dishonest and indicative of the petty games Democrat interest groups play.

The budget plan passed in the house pays off debt which frees up tens of millions of dollars a year for local governments. It literally paves the way for teacher pay increases by the actual employers of those teachers – namely, the local school boards who will be paying less in debt service. Talk to anybody who pays attention to the state budget in Louisiana and you’re going to get from most of them a recognition that Louisiana needs to wean its local governments off the state-government teat, and teacher pay is a prime example of that.

So no, Crews and Horton didn’t vote against teacher pay raises. They voted to enable them at the local level where they should be. Taxpayers in Ascension Parish or St. Mary Parish shouldn’t have to pay for teachers in Grant Parish or Bienville Parish, or vice versa.

We still expect the budget to turn sour in the Senate. The fact that the reform measures which were enacted in the House went as far as they did was nonetheless a great win.

We liked HB 103 by Rep. Nicky Muscarella, which establishes a requirement for Louisiana schools to teach financial literacy. That one sailed through the House without opposition yesterday. We also liked HB 182 by Rep. Kathy Edmonston, which provides that nobody can be required to receive a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition for attendance at any public or nonpublic school in the state. That one passed 63-28 – which might or might not signify that it’ll survive an Edwards veto if one comes (our guess is he might leave that one alone).

And Rep. Debbie Villio’s HB 321, which creates the Truth and Transparency in the Louisiana Criminal Justice System Pilot Program, passed with a 63-36 vote. That’s a good bill we don’t think will get a veto from Edwards should it pass in the Senate, but on the other hand Attorney General Jeff Landry is pushing it so Edwards might be petty enough to do that.

Rep. John Stefanski’s HB 586 creates civil liabilities for fentanyl dealers, which is an obvious measure, passed on an 88-4 vote.

Not all of these are strictly conservative measures, but they do represent good legislation, and they’re moving.

Bad bills generally are not. Which is encouraging. And this has been a good week.