Do, Do That Voodoo

There's been a bit of a squabble in the right-to-life/pro-choice world. It happens.

While everyone agrees that there has been a 40% decrease in the number of abortions in Iowa since 2007, the explanation remains controversial. Planned Parenthood spokesman Penny Dickey noted that the drop correlates well with the increased use of long-term contraception such as IUDs and hormone implants.

But Iowa Right To Life director Jennifer Bowen dismissed that assertion, stating that contraception has a huge failure rate. Planned Parenthood countered that the failure rate is less than one percent. Which triggered the retort that for the unlucky one percent, that corresponds to a 100% failure rate. Bowen attributed the reduced abortion numbers to an increase in baby pictures in the social media. Planned Parenthood pointed out that birth rates had not gone up at all, and so contraception, which they provide at low cost, is the only logical explanation for the drop.

Bowen declared instead that abortions are becoming rarer because of an increase in the number and intensity of people's prayers to not get pregnant. "Iowans have finally started getting in touch with the Man Upstairs," she said.

Asked to comment, the Planned Parenthood representative stared at the wall for a full minute, looking depressed, and finally mumbled something about the whole notion of "upstairs" being a relative concept constrained by the forces of gravity, and that no one really knows where, assuming there is a Man, he is; at which point everybody quit listening.

Energized, Bowen further touted the power of Iowan prayer. "Hawkeyes are a strange breed, and proof of that is the fact that as soon as they started praying more frequently and vigorously, the Man Upstairs started listening," she said. The prayer initiative is paying off. Previously, men had been praying mostly before intercourse, and women afterwards, but now they're doing it while they're doing it, and the effect has obviously been remarkable. It was a natural progression; it all started with oh God oh God oh God and then it was just a matter of fine-tuning and elaboration.

"Maybe everyone was praying the contraception would work," the Planned Parenthood spokesman muttered into a dead mike in an empty room.

"We have plans to also start incorporating various other types of prayers in order to start ridding children of different diseases while they're still in their mother's wombs," Bowen went on. A website is already in the works, including a navigable menu with items such as Petition 101.68: Lead us not into dementia, and deliver us from pigmentary cirrhosis. There has also been a proposal for a special pamphlet with a Sickle-Cell Anemia prayer fold-out to be distributed through Mickey D's. Everyone agrees it's a nice touch for the coloreds, but then again Iowans are nice people.

The Man Upstairs is reported to be totally on board with reducing abortions in Iowa. Presumably he could achieve a zero-abortion goal any time he wants to, but he's the sort who likes to be begged.

"We also have other plans," Ms. Bowen went on, "but unfortunately this is all I have the authority to divulge at the moment." Her smile remained enigmatic, but her administrative assistant was heard to say the Hawkeyes are looking real good in Escape Comet Bingo.

The Planned Parenthood spokesman was unavailable to comment due to heavy drinking. But other concerned factions were quick to criticize Ms. Bowen's take on the drop in abortions. One contingent insisted that there can be no such prayer effect and nothing short of a live blood sacrifice could account for the reduction. Furthermore, an animal no less evolved than a goat would do. If you merely toss a crab in a pot, explained a spokesman for the Mambo Miracle Institute, the Man Upstairs might have reason to doubt your sincerity.

Knowledge In Retrograde

The Great Pootini

The other day my friend Dale made an announcement on Facebook. He said "nobody needs to know what I think about 'Mercury in retrograde.'" He typed it emphatically, you could just tell.  It's not always easy to judge these things in the digital world, but I believe he was taking a tone.

Dale and I are compatible spirits. We're not entirely alike of course. He tends toward melancholy, and I toward alcoholy. But I thought it was likely that if nobody needed to know what he thinks about Mercury in retrograde, maybe nobody needed to know what I think about it either. Which means I have to go look it up again so that I remember what I think about it. I try to keep a tidy house in my head and that means I maintain a running fire sale on thoughts that I haven't used in a few years.

So I looked it up. If a planet is in retrograde, it means it looks like it's going backwards from the vantage point of us on Earth. It's not going backwards. It's going the same direction as it always has. It's just an illusion brought about because the planets take different amounts of time to orbit the sun and they do a little leap-frogging. Shepherds who spent one heck of a lot of time under the stars noticed that the planets seemed to go astray every so often and, not having a clear grip on what was actually going on, began to read a lot into it. Maybe they fell into some hard times and squinted up at the planet backing up and thought: huh. We should probably be more cautious whenever that happens. And a whole network of observations and associations built up around these things and got passed down. It's like thinking your team loses when you forget to wear your lucky shirt, only bigger, inasmuch as it involves everybody and the whole solar system and all.

Thousands of years later when we're sophisticated enough to land a golf cart on a particular plain on Mars, people still figure the shepherds were probably on to something.

So I don't have the particulars, but you're supposed to approach decisions in your own life in specific ways whenever it looks kind of like the planets are going to backwards even though they're not. Like, right now Mercury is in retrograde. It's in retrograde an average of three times a year, so you have to stay on top of it. When Mercury is in retrograde, you might need to plan more carefully. With proper knowledge of your star charts, you would know when to plan for more spontaneity, say. And everyone isn't affected the same way. It depends on when you, personally, first presented your slimy self to the outside air. If you're a November baby, you might have to conduct yourself in a whole different way from a spring hatchling.

Which means my parents changed everything for me when they had me induced two weeks early. The effect that Mercury has on me as it trundles predictably around the sun but appears to be going backwards might be entirely different than it could have been, all because of parental fatigue and a  Pitocin drip.

If I do want to know what it is I should be doing, or doing differently, as a result of these celestial illusions, there's an astrologer in the neighborhood I can consult. Scoff if you will, but she's got powers. She gets bigger every time she approaches me and smaller when she leaves. Swear to Jupiter.