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.

On Having A Heart

6-wk-old fetus--oh wait, this is a pepper sprout.

Aww, man. Georgia just passed a Heartbeat Bill, targeting women who pursue an abortion before six weeks' gestation. And here I just fired off my annual donation to Planned Parenthood. Unfortunately, this puts me in the crosshairs of the Georgia justice system, which might opt to prosecute me for hiring a hit man, and I can only hope they're too busy rigging elections down there to extradite me from Oregon. Odds are good Oregon wouldn't cooperate, but I can always hide in the office of our own governor, who has a uterus but (this being a blue state) is allowed to have opinions anyway.

It's not as though I court trouble, though, so I'm hoping to be able to get on the Georgia uterus registry in the "dried-up" column, because if I were to suddenly begin bleeding profusely from my central nethers, I want to be seen by a local medical professional and not hauled into court in Georgia on suspicion of aborting a potential human being at the stage in which the Legislature believes a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is to say a few weeks before it has an actual heart, or a face, and several weeks before it develops genitalia sufficient to determine the eventual worth of the child to the State of Georgia. At the grub stage, in other words. Which means they can't yet tell if the bouncing blob of cells is going to grow up to be a Republican senator, or a host body and sperm receptacle.

6-wk-old fetus--oh wait, garbanzo bean.

The heartbeat bill is inconvenient from the standpoint of the woman who is unlikely to know she's pregnant and may not even be glowing yet, but ideal from the standpoint of the grub, who is very near the most valuable stage of its life, gram per gram, in a death-penalty state.

Georgia is to be commended for showing the most concern in the nation for African-American embryos, who are nevertheless advised to come out with picture ID in hand.

Just to be on the safe side, it is suggested that every woman of mandatory child-bearing age in Georgia take the precaution of mailing all used pads and tampons to the State Legislature so they can make sure she hasn't pulled a fast one. No need to go to the trouble of packaging them up, either. After all, you can stick a postage stamp on a coconut.

6-wk fetus--oh wait, beetle larva.

The point of all these bills--Georgia is the fourth this year to pass a "heartbeat bill"--is to send an obviously unconstitutional measure all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court, where newly instated Justice, drunk and sexual predator Brett Kavanaugh is expected to try to redeem his soul by overturning Roe v. Wade.

There may, in fact, be no recourse for women in Georgia, unless they can get some legislation passed that will allow pregnant women two votes, or outlaw anti-life activities such as fellatio. Failing that, they could hold out altogether, and if the senators get lonely they can just go fuck themselves.

Georgia legislators, for their part, insist their measure is not extreme, citing Alabama's newly passed Wet Spot Protection Act. Step away from laundry detergent, little lady.