2011
Miss Wingnut Cal Thomas is afraid that if Republican amendments eliminating abortion rights aren't passed by Congress immediately, then these desperate would-be laws may seek passage from one of the many disreputable and unsanitary "back alley" legislatures that prey on innocent proposed statutes. And
that is how a bill becomes a corpse.
To Live or Die 'On the Floor'
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sometimes sounds as if she has cast aside any attachment to reality. Responding to a bill co-authored by Rep. Joe Pitts, Pennsylvania Republican, that would prevent federal funds from going to pay for abortions under the slowly unraveling health care law critics call "Obamacare," Pelosi said that if Republicans vote for the measure, "they will be voting to say that women can die on the floor and health care providers do not have to intervene."
The Protect Life Act passed the House last week, but will likely die in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Ironically, it will die on what Beltway insiders call the "Senate floor," and yet Mrs. Pelosi doesn't seem to care that there's a hemorrhaging amendment, slowly perishing from blood loss and septicemia on the carpet where Mitch McConnell might accidentally step in it.
There are more stirrings on this fundamental social issue. The November 8 ballot in Mississippi will include Initiative 26, known as the Personhood Amendment, that says: "The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof."
I wonder what "the functional equivalent" of "the moment of fertilization" means, exactly? I presume it has something to do with carefully --
carefully! -- inserting an egg into your Realdoll™ before dropping your pants and "applying the hollandaise sauce," as it were.
In any case, now we know where corrupt billionaires who want to cheat death will go to have themselves cloned for spare parts, as they do in movies like
Parts: The Clonus Horror, or Michael Bay's
The Island (but I repeat myself).
I just never thought of these glossy, super high-tech secret installations being in Mississippi, but I guess it would allow the billionaires to drop off a sample rib,
ala Adam, then swing by the Biloxi casinos and enjoy the loose slots.
Now if only Missouri would get off the pot and pass a similar law, they could compete for the abundant disposable income of these parthenogenic plutocrats. Maybe put together a vacation package in Branson: tissue donation, followed by a meal and "Yakov's Dinner Adventure" show at the Yakov Smirnoff Theater. "Get Your Remaining Ribs Tickled!" or "What a Country (For the Top 1%)!" I mean, the ad copy writes itself.
Perhaps an even greater counterattack on what former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop's seminal documentary on the issue "Whatever Happened to the Human Race?" referred to as "the slaughter of the innocents" is a series of initiatives organized by a coalition of pro-life groups to put legislation on ballots in every state requiring an abortion-minded pregnant woman to see a sonogram image of her fetus prior to termination.
But suppose the woman just rolled her eyes, or studied her nails instead of attending to the image? To ensure compliance, the law would also have to require the patient to wear those clamps that propped open Malcolm McDowell's eyes in
A Clockwork Orange. Which means there would need to be a staffer on hand to constantly drip Visine onto the pregnant woman's corneas, like in the movie, so when liberals complain that Republicans haven't offered a jobs program, you can tell them to
piss off, Mississippi has it covered!
I have long favored this approach as a means to substantially reduce the million-plus abortions performed every year in the United States. It imposes no restrictions on abortion, but gives women information.
Information they might not have known, such as "We don't trust you to make decisions about your own body," and "Fetuses are masters of disguise. See that vague, shapeless lump? No, there. No,
there...
This thing! That's a fully formed baby, but it's using camouflage to blend into its surroundings and fool its natural enemy, the Abortionist. Being pregnant is like having a chameleon in your womb. Or the Predator ..."
The Chicago Tribune, reporting on the "Ultrasound Opportunity Act,"
Also known as SB-341 or "The George Orwell Is Jealous Act." (Heaven forbid the government should cover health insurance, but paying for medically unnecessary embryonic Glamour Shots? Turn out those pockets, Uncle Sugar, this clump of cells is ready for its close-up.)
Mandating sonograms creates for "pro-choicers" an impossible intellectual, not to mention moral dilemma. If they oppose women receiving information, they are censors. Pro-lifers are aligning themselves with truth in labeling and truth in lending laws requiring that information be provided to women (and men) in order to help make decisions presumed to be in their best interests.
Well, at first glance this doesn't seem like an insoluble dilemma -- it seems like transparent bullshit -- but as we know, intellectual consistency cannot be satisfied until the slippery slope becomes an avalanche, so let's follow Cal's logic. If the price of a woman choosing to terminate her pregnancy is the government first forcing her to undergo a medical procedure against her will, then what happens when she remains unmoved by the Rorschach test that results from sounding her innards?
Besides Awkward Family Photos of the uterus, the other impossible moral and intellectual dilemma anti-choice activists (or as we were taught by Judie "pro-aborts" Brown to call them, “an-cho-vies") is "fetal pain." There's no credible evidence it exists, but fortunately Republican lawmakers are no longer hung up on that kind of thing, so the next step would be a "Fetal Pain Opportunity Act," which would mandate that the attending physician repeatedly jab the patient's calves with a shrimp fork while she thinks things over.
When pro-choicers stand in the way of women receiving information about such a critical decision, they place themselves where they say conservatives reside, in the land of intolerance and ignorance.
Oh -- I thought this was the land of Dairy Queen. No
wonder they're not treating me right.
Okay, how about this: a law that requires abortion providers to perform a sonogram, free of charge,
if the woman requests it? Of course, this would open states or the Federal government to the "free rider" problem, and they might find themselves funding procedures for women who just wanted a free ultrasound, and were only pretending they were considering abortion. Hell, I'd be tempted to take advantage of it myself, just to see if that gum I swallowed at age 9 was still in my appendix, like my mom predicted.
The response to this proposed legislation goes something like this: "You are insulting the intelligence of women who are smart enough to figure out these things on their own."
"Fine," I say, "then let's remove labels from cans, bottles and packages and do away with paperwork at the bank when a woman applies for a loan. Let's also rip Monroney stickers off vehicles at car dealerships because women should be smart enough to figure out the price, options and miles per gallon on their own."
They're not coming into the showroom to
buy a zygote, so Caveat Emptor doesn't really apply. And if they were fetus-shopping, you can bet there would be corporations that would manufacturer them under unsafe and unsanitary conditions, cut corners, use inferior materials, import toxic embryos made by slave labor in China, or produce babies whose planned obsolescence would have them falling apart before their second birthday. But if you want to get the Consumer Protection Agency involved, Cal, why don't we require obstetricians to lecture every pregnant woman on every conceivable complication of gestation and child birth, from the merely unpleasant to the frequently lethal, before she's allowed to carry her pregnancy to term? Lawmakers could christen it "The Mary Wollstonecraft Maternal Fatality Information Act" ("On 30 August 1797, Wollstonecraft gave birth to her second daughter, Mary. Although the delivery seemed to go well initially, the placenta broke apart during the birth and became infected;
puerperal (childbed) fever was a common and often fatal occurrence).
The reason pro-choicers don't want women to see what their babies look like in the womb is because
...they all look like Mister Peanut. It's a little disturbing.
...for too many of them, abortion has become a sacrament.
Sadly true. And while it's one thing for Catholics to eat a wafer and call it the Flesh of Jesus, pro-choicers need to devour actual pieces of fetus, and if the abortion mills stop producing a fresh supply, there's going to be quite a bit of grumbling at the altar rail.
They embrace a right to kill while simultaneously denying the right to life. Showing a pregnant woman a picture of her baby in the womb, heart beating, can only enhance the possibility that the child will be given the opportunity to live.
Plus, it would prepare the child to grow up in an America where all industries have been outsourced, and the only job available is Reality TV contestant.
Over many years of speaking to women who regret their abortions, the most common response has been, "If I had seen a picture of my baby, I would have made a different choice."
The second most common response has been, "I saw your picture on the Op-Ed page, and realized I didn't want to bring a child into a world of devastating financial crises, catastrophic climate change, and constant upper lip shortages."
