Can't Touch This

Hey hey! Welcome to my humor blog! Join us on a madcap romp through the world of strange science, fun facts, and human foibles! Now let's talk about abortion!

Oh. We're not supposed to talk about abortion. It's a "touchy" subject, kind of like Hell is "toasty." I just got to thinking about it on account of all the so-called "heartbeat bills" that are getting passed that criminalize abortion at the stage a fetal heartbeat can be detected, or about the time when a woman starts feeling bloaty and crabby for no reason. 

I suspect the whole heartbeat thing has to do with how we romanticize the heart. It's where we imagine love is, it's what we paint on our valentines, it's how young girls dot their i's. Seems like a good place to draw a line, but here's the thing: any line we draw is going to be arbitrary. Even the moment of heartbeat detection depends on what device you use to detect it. Are you bent over a belly with a warm stethoscope, or jamming a wand up a personal area? Is a heartbeat the beat of a heart, or a flickering of electrical activity in a group of cells that aspire to be a heart?

Doesn't really matter. The only thing that we ought to be able to agree on about abortion is that we can't agree on a thing about it. It all depends on what we as individuals believe about human life, and its preciousness or insignificance, and that's personal. Many people abhor the thought of snuffing out even potential human life, and there we're getting into unfathomable territory: the existence of the soul, and the moment of its inception. Is it here, at the eight-cell stage? At the kidney-bean stage? Is any of this obvious? Some people believe it starts with the gleam in the father's eye. That it is sinful to obstruct the safe passage of a raft of sperm cells on its glorious emission.

That's why the one thing that has been proven to dramatically reduce abortion numbers across the board--the provision of free birth control--is still controversial.

Heck, whether you believe in a soul at all is not a given either.

I myself tend to the non-preciousness side of the scale. I think a viable dodo egg is far more valuable than any human blastocyst. It's a supply-and-demand thing in a world choked with people. But that's just me. I also would have no trouble deciding whether to snatch an infant out of a burning building, or twelve jars of unimplanted embryos. No trouble at all.

But here's the other thing I believe about abortion. I believe that there are some politicians who know in their maturely-beating hearts that abortion is a great sin. That is why they got into politics. But I believe there are far, far more politicians who thunder on about abortion, with trembling fingers and quavering voice, and don't actually care at all; might even have underwritten a few. For them, abortion is a lever to move as many voters as possible to their party so they can do what they really care about: assure that the vast wealth of the country remains in the hands of the few.

You might think your legislator is doing the Lord's work, and that's your right, but maybe he's just working you over.

Getting To Know You

In a number of states it is now an official position that you should get to know your fetus before you have it evicted. And that is why it has been suggested that a doctor should conduct an ultrasound of the fetus and describe it in detail to you. Democrats, in general, don't see the point of this, although actually they do. So there have been other suggestions.

Taking a page from the elections department, where hanging chads are examined by a member of each major party, some legislatures are proposing that a Democrat and a Republican should be in attendance during the ultrasound, since it is assumed that a woman who has already had to get used to having one extraneous being in the room is not going to mind a committee.

The Republican doctor will begin by remarking on the length of the fetus's fingers, and exclaim that he has the hands of a violinist.

The Democratic doctor will point out that this is also a good attribute for a pickpocket, and that in any case the Republicans have eliminated funding for music education in the schools, leaving the accordion, drum kit, and boom box as the only choices readily available to children.

The Republican will say that although the little tiny soul is not actually visible in the ultrasound, probably because it is being blocked by the elbow, it is most assuredly there and has been since before the blastocyst stage.

4. Little tiny soul

The Democrat will note that the image is cloudy and there is no feasible scientific way of determining for certain whether or not the fetus is already on the path to becoming a meth dealer, but there is no way to rule it out, either.

The Republican will comment that the child with all its perfect components parts (listed) will, if given the chance, be born into the Land of the Free.

The Democrat will say, clearing his throat, he doesn't know about Free, but it costs $241,000 on average to raise a child to adulthood, adding, however, that it is not at all unusual these days for that adult child to remain in the basement playing video games, whacking off, and getting Cheeto dust all over the furniture until he is well into his forties.

The plan has been implemented on a trial basis in a number of counties in Texas resulting, in every case, in bloodshed or the threat thereof, with the unarmed Democrat considered to be at a distinct disadvantage.

As a result, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (a.k.a. Notorious RBG) weighed in on the issue, proposing that the single Republican doctor should indeed be the only one in attendance, just as soon as he finishes reading Where The Wild Things Are to a million frozen embryos.