Wednesday, June 30, 2010

The Question

If there is one question a nominee for the Supreme Court hates, it is this one: "Is a baby in the womb a person?" All the hostility and anger and fear of Roe v. Wade are summed up in that one question. And it is a question that a nominee for the Court cannot legitimately duck, because no one on the Supreme Court has ever argued that a baby in the womb is a person. Yes, that's right, all the right-wingers sign on. It's unanimous. Even Thomas and Scalia agree that a baby in the womb is a non-person.

Since it's so frickin' unanimous, can Kagan honestly say the issue is likely to come up in the future? It's not like it's 5-4 on the humanity of the unborn. It's 9-0 against. Actually, mark it 19-0. Every Justice on the Supreme Court, implicitly or explicitly, have signed on to Justice Blackmun's dehumanization of the unborn (with the exception of Sotomayor, who hasn't had an opportunity yet to express her agreement).

You would expect, with this widespread unanimity, that the dehumanization of the unborn is a no-brainer, a softball, an easy question. But it's the opposite of an easy question. It's a damning question. It's the whole ball game. You know Kagan hates the question. They all hate the question. Because if a baby in the womb is a human being, then the Supreme Court has killed innocent people.

The Supreme Court held, in essence, that you become a person when you become a citizen. That is to say, when you're born. And you stop being a person when you stop being a citizen. That is to say, when you're dead. Birth is the beginning and death is the end.

Justice Scalia nods his head at this bright-line test. Birth! Death! It's simple. Who can argue that birth is when you start being a person and death is when you stop? Well, actually, anybody who uses his brain can argue with it.

Say that a baby, Sue, is conceived on January 1st. Another baby, John, is conceived on April 1st of the same year.  On October 1st, John is born 3 months prematurely and is rushed to an incubator. He weighs one pound. He's sickly, weak, and might die. Sue, meanwhile, is in perfect health. She weighs seven pounds and is ready to come out any day now.

According to the Supreme Court of the United States of America, John is a person and is entitled to the equal protection of the laws. And Sue, who is older, and bigger, and stronger, and healthier, has no constitutional rights at all.

According to Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist, Alito, Roberts, White, Kennedy, Burger, O'Connor, Stewart, Powell, Souter, Douglas, Brennan, Marshall, Breyer, Ginsburg, Stevens and Blackmun, that unborn baby in the ninth month must be classified as a legal object. It's required.

Now that should not be a unanimous opinion. I think many people would say that a seven-pound baby is more of a baby than a tiny 1-pounder. Cause, you know, she's bigger.

Of course it's pretty ridiculous to use pounds to measure humanity. What are we doing, buying meat? On the other hand, size appears to play a part in our compassion. Microscopic organism? Too tiny. Kicking baby in the ninth month? Definitely human.

Of the two, it's kinda bizarre to suggest the younger, smaller, unhealthier and less viable baby is a person.  But of course you have to agree she is, because she's a frickin' citizen. So what's really insane is to insist that the older, bigger, healthier and more viable baby is not a person at all.

You would think Carhart would blow this whole stupid argument out of the water. Unborn = object. Born = person. What's partially-born, the missing link? A partially born baby is like a minotaur to the Supreme Court. You're half-person, half-animal.

As all the right-wingers on the Court go into conniption fits about the homicidal uneumerated rights found by their liberal colleagues, you would think it would occur to one of them to revisit the issue of legal humanity. But it doesn't.

Why is this stupid argument still followed?  Because it's unanimous. Since it's unanimous, the issue never comes up.  Now, a unanimous opinion may mean it's an obvious point of law and only dummies like me are yelling about it. Or what it might also mean is that it's a weak argument that has gone unchallenged.

What do we know about an unchallenged idea? Well, you've never had to defend it before. You've never had to struggle with it. You've never had to think it through. You coast on your Ivy League credentials and your lazy assumptions.

Even more damning is the issue of bias. Why do liberals dehumanize the unborn? Because they want abortion rights for women. And the baby gets in the way. Okay, but why would right-wingers, the opposition, why would they dehumanize the unborn?

Again, bias. Some of them dehumanize the unborn because they are worried about their institution, the Supreme Court, and they want to protect it. Others have a strict jurisprudence and try to limit the Constitution whenever they can. They really don't mind the possibility of states murdering helpless and innocent people. "Go ahead and classify people as objects, we don't mind." Maybe they have a fear of being called an "activist." Personally, I would rather be called an activist than a baby-killer. I'll bet Scalia would, too.

Regardless, for whatever reason, no right-wingers in the judiciary have accepted the argument that a baby in the womb is a human being entitled to the equal protection of the laws. And obviously no liberals are accepting it. Thus we have a widespread judicial consensus on this issue. A consensus that is lacking among our people.

What this means, for purposes of a confirmation hearing, is that Elena Kagan has no legitimate reason to avoid talking about what all the Justices say is true about Roe: an unborn infant is a legal object without any constitutional right to live. Again, this is a seemingly unanimous, 19-0 opinion. Harry Blackmun in Casey even pointed this out, daring anybody to object. And nobody did. And since so many of our citizens are upset about precisely this aspect of the opinion, it seems fair to ask Kagan to explain the logic of the doctrine.

How do you define what a person is? Who defines that word? Is it an ordinary word that you look up in a dictionary? Or do you need to go to Yale or Harvard to know what a person is? Is it a legal term of art? Is there a danger of bias, of judges narrowing the word so that it doesn't protect people whom we want to discriminate against?

What do you think, Elena?

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

This Will Get Her Talking


General Kagan,

In Planned Parenhood v. Casey, the Supreme Court claimed that abortion was stare decisis now.  It has been decided.  And yet you are refusing to answer any questions about Roe v. Wade.  You claim that the Court will be hearing abortion claims again and again and again, and will be revisiting Roe again.  In other words, it has not been decided.  It's still a fight.

Brown v. Board of Education is stare decisis.  That's been decided.  No one's arguing that one anymore.  You are willing to talk about that case.  But your very silence on Roe v. Wade indicates that the Supreme Court was wrong in Casey.  It is not settled law.  

Empathy, Part III

Many abortion people, of course, don't need our empathy.  They're fine, no problem.  And that might be because abortion is no big deal.  On the other hand, what it might be is that you are detached from your feelings about what you did.  This might be why the most fanatical pro-choice people all seem to be Ivy League eggheads.  Really smart people can be a wee bit cold on the emotional side of the spectrum.  When's the last time Ruth Bader had a big, blubbery cry?
      
I imagine a lot of women feel kinda bad about having an abortion.  Even women who are pro-choice might feel bad about their abortion.  You imagine all the happy moms.  And you realize you're not one of them.  You're not a loving mom, and the father is not a loving father.  At some level, this realization has to suck.  And when you get pregnant again, for real this time, how will you feel about that first one?   
 
What do we do, as a society?  We don't talk about it.  And we deny anybody feels bad.  Here's Justice Ginsburg, in Carhart II:  "the Court invokes an antiabortion shibboleth for which it concededly has no reliable evidence:  Women who have abortions come to regret their choices, and consequently suffer from severe depression and loss of esteem." 

Yeah, cause abortion is just a routine medical procedure.  This is empathy?  Does Justice Ginsburg know every single woman who has had an abortion?  Have you talked with them, Ruthie?  Have you held their hand?  Or are you talking out of your ass?  

Here's a website, Madam Justice:  www.afterabortion.com.  It's a website run by people who have had abortions, so that other people who have had abortions can talk about them with each other.  It puts me and my blog to shame.  Here are people who are genuinely distraught about their abortions.  And they are pro-choice, they are pro-life, they are all over the ideological map.  Emotionally, they are a mess.  Very upset women. 

This is humanity, and this is what humanity is like.  Messy.  Illogical.  Emotional.

How is empathy going to help the Supreme Court deal with these women?  "You have a constitutional right to feel like you killed your baby."  I want to give these women a hug.  What can I do for them?  What can you?  Nothing.  Cause feelings are feelings and you feel them and they're not even logical sometimes. 

My rationality fails me.  "It might not be a homicide.  He didn't have brain activity.  Under our death statutes..."  And she's just bawling.  What can I say, what can anybody say, to make her feel better?


I don't say anything to these women.  I can't.  It's too painful. 

Empathy, Part II

One thing you notice is that we don't talk about abortion much in our society.  Maybe that's because we don't know what to say.  Is abortion like a miscarriage?  Cause a miscarriage, I know you feel bad.  You were happy to be pregnant, and now you're sad.  I feel sympathy for you.  I can give you a hug, or buy you a card.  An abortion, on the other hand, you wanted to do that, right?  Or did you?  Already I'm confused.  Do you feel bad?  Do you feel okay?  Do you want to talk about it? 

I have no interest in making people who had an abortion feel bad.  It was legal when you did it.  And it's in the past.  Ain't nothing we can do about it now.  It's like spitting on somebody for killing babies in Vietnam.  Today liberals remind themselves to be respectful to the military.  But in the back of their head, they wonder, did you kill innocent people?  But it doesn't do any good talking about it, right? 

So maybe empathy drives us to silence.  We just won't say anything.  Meanwhile, we had 1.3 million abortions last year, we're having 1.3 million abortions this year, and we'll have 1.3 million abortions next year.  Bill Clinton said that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare."  Rare?  How's that coming along?


Part of the problem with our silence is that young girls, innocent girls, are not prepared for sex.  We all think we're ready, at a younger and younger age.  And we have sex.  No big deal!  But of course once you get pregnant, you're little game of russian roulette is over.  It was so much fun being wild and crazy, but now we just made a little baby.  Oops. 

Maybe all our silence is one of the causes of our massive abortion numbers.  You don't want to say anything because of all the women who already feel bad about their abortions.  But as we maintain our respectful silence to the current crop of aborting women, we don't say anything to the future crop of aborting women.  Is all our silence making us a nicer, more loving society?  Or just a more repressed one? 

Of course, empathy doesn't mean you are pro-choice, or pro-life.  That's a political position reflecting your view on the baby in the womb.  (Or the squid).  We have asshole pro-lifers and asshole pro-choicers.  You know that's right.  Many of us nice people can veer over into assholery ourselves, if the moon is full. 

Harry Blackmun, like William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, was an empathetic guy.  At his confirmation hearing, he said the job of the Supreme Court was to "look after the little people."  And liberals go, "Awwwwww."  And pro-lifers snort coffee out of our nose.  As empathetic as he was, and he was a big ol' crybaby, I think it's safe to say that Harry forgot about some of the little people.

Of course, when an elite Supreme Court Justice says "little people," he's not actually talking about little people.  He's talking about you and me.  Big people.  We're the little people.  When you're a super-duper Supreme Person, big people become little people and little people drop off the map altogether.    

Is lack of empathy the problem, or is the actual problem the Supreme Court's willingness to play God?  You just imagine Harry Blackmun up in the clouds, looking down, speaking to 300 million Americans, saying, "I'll look after you from way up here.  Don't worry!" 

On my non-empathetic days, I imagine Harry Blackmun in the afterlife, trying to breast-feed 6 million babies all at once. 

Empathy


President Obama has announced that he wants his Supreme Court Justices to have empathy.  Kinda like Oprah, except with a law degree.  Okay.  How do we resolve the abortion debate, with empathy?

First thing you do, is censor all images of aborted babies from the media.  Cause we don't want to upset anybody.  So no aborted baby in the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or ABC news, or CBS or NBC or 60 Minutes or CNN.  Even Fox News is on board.  No dead baby photographs.  None.  Stop it.  Shut down the internet.  Oh that rude internet.


And no dead baby jokes.  Outlaw all dead baby jokes.

"How do you keep a dead baby from falling down a manhole?"

"Stick a javelin in his head."   

You're upset, right?  I upset you.  I know.  Not enough empathy.  This is why Obama's not nominating me to the Supreme Court.  Can you imagine an abortion opinion where the Supreme Court told dead baby jokes?  No legal analysis.  No thoughtful opinion on our abortion jurisprudence.  Just a dead baby joke, a dead baby joke, and a dead baby joke.

"Why do dead babies have soft spots in their heads?"

"So you can pick them up five at a time."

It's kind of like Justice Stevens' little joke in Carhart I:  "A lot of ink is spilled today..." 

You know, empathy is good.  I think we should all work on being more empathetic in our private lives.  But since empathy requires you to self-censor and avoid saying what you think, it is a very bad trait in a public speaker.  We don't actually want a journalist, a lawyer, or a Supreme Court Justice to be so empathetic that they keep the truth to themselves.

Harry Blackmun, very empathetic guy.  In one abortion case, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, Harry says the Court "casts into darkness the hopes and visions of every woman in this country."  Man!  Even Sarah Palin?  One thing about Harry, he's a feeler.  He was Bill before Bill was Bill.  He's our Supreme Feeler.  Feeling across state lines.  Feeling from Alaska to Maine.  All Bill could feel was your pain.  Harry can feel your hopes and visions.         


Not being an empath, I'm not sure how this works.  Apparently the unborn are not transmitting any empathy signals.  Are you sure, Harry?  Yes.  Of course he's sure.  No doubts at all.  Women, on the other hand, definitely are sending out empathy signals.  "Help us, Harry."  And Harry's picking them up on the ol' radar.  He speaks for all women, their hopes and their visions.  Their dreams too?  Yes, of course:  hopes, visions, and dreams. 

How many babies did you kill, Harry?  "We need not resolve that difficult question."  Yeah, yeah.  And what a mean question!  I have no empathy.  

Sex is Baby

You know what they should teach in school?  Sex is baby.  If you're going to indoctrinate people, that should be your mantra.  Sex is baby, sex is baby.  At least 1.3 million people are surprised with a baby every year.  I'll bet you were having sex! 

Once you realize that sex is baby, your whole worldview changes, I swear.  You watch MTV and you see some semi-naked woman writhing around, you get a little voice in your head.  "She wants me to have a baby!  She's a baby-trap.  Alert, alert."  Hey, feminists, you worried about male lust?  Remind 'em about babies.  Nothing sucks on the ol' wallet like a baby. 

We indoctrinate our children to practice birth control.  We tell them to be scared of pregnancy.  "It's a mistake."  And then they freak out when their controls fail.  Teach 'em sex is baby.  That's a fact, man.  Trying to control birth?  Ideology.  Might be a good ideology, but it's still ideology.  Sex is baby, on the other hand, you got to be a moron to dispute that one.    

You think sex isn't baby.  You hope sex isn't baby.  And then you find out that sex is baby. 

You know that Madonna has been flaunting her sex for like thirty years now.  That is a woman who really wants a baby.  I mean, does Madonna have a baby-making drive or what? 

Once you realize that sex is baby, you don't ask dumb ass questions like why are there no old women in Hollywood?  Cause young women make babies, that's why.  Why do women try to look young?  Because young women have babies, that's why.  Why do women have breast implants?  Because baby needs a lot of milk.


See, this is why we need sex education.  Otherwise you get a bunch of dumbass citizens who think big boobs = more milk.  Men go for those big boobs cause we got a lot of babies to feed.  But A cups feed babies too, moron.  Revamp sex education.  Sex education needs work.  Sex is baby, sex is baby.   

Don't put squishy implants in your body.  That's not real milk, America, that's a squishy implant!  Baby knows the difference.  Talk to baby, he'll tell you. 

Oops!

What do you do when you make a mistake?  I try to fix it, you know, before anybody else notices.  Sometimes I might even let it go.  "Aw, screw it, I'm human."  I probably got some mistakes on this blog already, right?  Mostly I think they have to do with that frickin' html code.  But if I make a mistake, ahhhh, big deal.  Fix it.  Keep going. 

Other occupations, there's a bit more stress involved.  Say you're a surgeon, for instance, and you're operating, and you make a mistake.  Oh, that's not good.  You screw up in the O.R., you can kill somebody.

Luckily, being a doctor is a high status occupation.  You go out in the hall to talk to the loved ones.  "I'm sorry.  Your family member died."

"Oh my God.  What happened?"

"Complicated medical terminology."

Cause we're human, right?  We ain't God.  We're hairless, ass-wiping apes.  We're not even hairless, really.  I got hair in places I don't even need.  That's how animal I am.  But what do we do?  We pretend like we're better than we are.  We hide our mistakes.  We play it off like no mistakes were made. 

Did I make a mistake, when I was an attorney?  Uh, one or two.  No comment. 

You cover it up, right?  You hide.  One of the things journalists love to do is point out the mistakes of people in power.  "Ha ha, you made a mistake!  Oh my God that's so stupid."  And the people in power try to cover it up.  "I didn't make a mistake, I didn't make a mistake.  I have God-like authority.  How can I make a mistake?" 

One of the big journalist skill-sets is picking up feces and throwing it.  "Mistake!  Mistake!  You messed up."  Oh they love that.  That's pretty much Mike Wallace's career, right?  Pointing out the mistakes of other people.  Always fun. 

I think Harry Blackmun maybe knew that he was making a big mistake.  You read his secret memo, it's like he's got a warning bell going off in the back of his mind.  "I am finding this difficult and elusive."  That's Ivy League talk for "Help!  Help!  Oh my God I'm in over my head.  What if I screw this up?"  Right after he says it's "difficult" and "elusive," Blackmun says he's going with first trimester.  Which he says is "arbitrary."  And then he says maybe any other point is arbitrary, too. 

Do you want to go to a psychiatrist, Harry?  It's like he's a undergraduate student who just read Sartre for the first time.  Maybe the black robes got him depressed.  "It's all so arbitrary." 

What Harry Blackmun really needed was Hugo Black jumping up and down like a madman.  He needed some authority figure who takes his work very seriously and takes his Oath to follow the Constitution very seriously and he loses his shit when he reads Harry's arbitrary memo.  Harry Blackmun needed somebody to pick up a law book and throw it at his head.  Are you on drugs?  Did you try some of the happy weed in 1973?  Because that memo is an embarrassment to justice. 

Roe v. Wade is written by a guy who's oblivious.  He has no idea the size of the shitstorm that he is about to unleash.  "As I stated in conference, the decision, however made, will probably result in the Court's being severely criticized."  You think?   

I feel sorry for the guy.  I really do.  I feel sorry for Harry Blackmun in 1973, a newbie on the Court.  Fresh off the boat.  Barely got his feet wet, and Burger sticks him with Roe v. Wade.  You know in the Vietnam war, soldiers never wanted to learn the names of the new guys, because they often got shot right away.  You want a bunch of mistakes?  Let the new guy handle it.

I feel less sorry for him in every abortion opinion that follows, when he's in full blown denial mode.  "I didn't make a mistake.  No mistakes.  It's not arbitrary, it's required by the Constitution.  No mistakes.  It's perfect.  I speak for all women."  But in 1973, Harry Blackmun was like a judicial virgin.  He's about to make a horrible, horrible mistake.  He's sleeping with William Brennan, metaphorically speaking, and Thurgood Marshall, too. 


In their book, The Brethren, Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong interview scores of judicial clerks.  The clerks joke about Roe v. Wade, referring to it as "Harry's abortion."  What they mean is that it's a botched opinion.  It's a screw-up.

Psychologically speaking, that's more right than they know.  What is an abortion?  You're making a mistake disappear, right?  You're erasing it and starting over.  All the dissenters from Roe have this reaction to the opinion.  "It's a mistake.  Let's erase it and start over."  They want to abort Roe v. Wade.  What do liberals want to abort?  They want to abort any mistakes in the opinion.  They want to abort those pages and pages when Harry talks about the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association.  They want to abort that memo when he says first trimester is arbitrary, and any other point is arbitrary, too.  They want to abort that part of the opinion when Harry says states can't require doctors in the first trimester.  In fact they want to abort the whole trimester system and just go with viability.  And they want to abort all the photos of all the dead babies, and they want to abort all the pro-lifers and make them go away.  

Why is abortion a screw-up?  Because you screwed up your birth control.  And now you're trying to fix your mistake.  Which makes abortion a cover-up, too.  Shhhhhhhh!  Keep it quiet.  Because your mistake created a pregnancy.  Which might involve a human life or something.  It's kind of a big deal.  Which means if it's a mistake, it's a big mistake.  Not a little mistake.  

I admit to little mistakes all the time.  Kind of hard to admit to big mistakes.  You want to deny they ever happened.

Abortion in France

In France, women have a statutory right to abortion for 10 weeks.  That's it.  Horrible situation for women in France, right?  Oppression.  Where's the ACLU?  Oh my God, it's the dark ages in France.  Maybe NARAL could send some human rights observers to France and keep us updated.  Send in the NOW teams.  I mean, feminists are raising all these American dollars because abortion rights are under attack, what about France?  Lafayette, we are here. 

Feminists, how can you ignore women in France?  No partial-birth abortion, no D&E abortion.  No abortion in the second trimester?  It's a moral outrage.  Right now some poor French high school girl is missing period number three.  She wants a choice.  She needs a choice.  And the French chapter of the vast right-wing conspiracy is forcing her to carry her fetus to term.  Oh the humanity.  A chill wind is blowing through France. 

Liberals, when you holiday in Europe, remember to pack your birth control.  Otherwise you have to fly back home for your seventh month abortion.  Back home to freedom.  Cause Europe is strict, man.  Austria, 12 weeks.  Finland, 12 weeks.  Denmark, 12 weeks.  Belgium, 12 weeks.  Switzerland, Norway.  12 weeks, 12 weeks.  Hungary, Poland, Spain.  12 weeks.  What a right-wing continent.

One short-term goal for right-wingers, I think, is to move our abortion laws in the direction of socialist France.  Yeah yeah, aim for France!  See if we can move it off our current Cuba-China-North Korea dictator standard in the USA. 

In any abortion debate, make sure you remind the liberals how out of whack we are with civilized Europe.  I mean, we're just a bunch of lawless, baby-killing cowboys over here.  Normal people don't like second trimester abortions.  Look at France!  France is normal.  Kinda.  Compare our rules--dictated to us by nine unelected people--to all the rules propagated by the more democratic and civilized nations in the world.  You know your typical liberal is embarrassed about being an American hick and wishes he was a European sophisticate.  So rub his nose in it.  Our abortion rules are like something farmers would use to slaughter pigs.    
Shame your liberal by reminding him how backwards and violent we are compared to France. 

Feminists and liberals are fanatically opposed to any regulations of abortions.  They say it is "chipping away at Roe."  Well, yeah.  I mean, Roe is a baby-killing monolith sitting atop the birth line, begging for demolishment.  So of course we are chipping away.  We are trying to bring some sanity back to Supreme Court jurisprudence. 

What do liberals in our country want?  They want first trimester abortions.  They want a 12-week rule, or a 10-week rule.  Just like Europe, right?  That's what liberals want.  What did the Supreme Court give them?  Dehumanizing babies in the ninth month.  Partial-birth abortion.  D&E ripping in the uterus.  4-7 million dead Carhart babies, plus an unknown number of women hurt because they weren't in a hospital.  Gee, thanks, Harry.

Now, Roe is synonymous with abortion rights.  Millions of people support Roe because they want abortion, right?  They want nice, safe, European-style free abortion for 12 weeks.  That's what liberals want.  But they know they're not going to get free abortion.  And they're worried that they're not going to have any abortion.  So they defend Roe.  No matter how bad Roe is, and how many people have died as a result of it. 

Baby on Death Row

Did you know that a couple of years ago Congress passed a rule that you can't execute a murderer if she's pregnant?  Passed it 417-0.  Nobody, I mean nobody, wants to kill a baby on death row.  That's sweet.  Baby has a right to life.  Death row's the only place in America where a baby has a right to life.  It's nice.  I think it's nice.  Baby gets to live, and mama too, for awhile.  Oh you killer mama.


I don't know about you, but if I was a woman facing that electric chair, I think I'd get off the pill and lower my standards a little bit.  That guard's kinda cute.  If you close one eye.  "Hey, guard.  You sexy.  You got a sexy walk.  Come here."

That's my problem, I've been hitting on women in bars.  Death row is where I need to be.  Easy as pie.  That place is hoppin'.

You know the warden's mad.  "Damn it!  She's pregnant again.  We're never gonna gas this bitch."

"She's fertile.  That serial killer is fertile."

You know how they say funerals make women horny?  Well, wait till you get 'em on death row.  That's a passionate woman right there. 

I know what you're going to say.  It's wrong.  Impregnating a woman on death row.  Who's desperate.  But she's so damn happy!  "Oh, baby.  Oh, baby!  You saved my life."

"You know it."

"You ravished me.  You rescued me."

"It's like a fairy tale."

I know it violates some sort of ethical code.  On the other hand, I'm pro-life.  And I'm opposed to capital punishment.  And I like sex.  A lot. 

I kinda think it's a gray area.     

I know, they're never gonna hire me now.  Damn it, I messed up my application to the girl's prison.

Oh No, You're Inside a Woman!

Men and women are not actually equal, at least when it comes to sex.  I mean, the way I have sex, I put my penis inside her vagina.  Right?  I think that's right.  I fell asleep in sex ed.  They lost me at fallopian tubes.  But the way I do it, I'm inside her.  She's not inside me. 

The reason I bring this up--well, I like talking about sex, but I got a reason--the reason I bring this up, is because the Supreme Court insists that anybody who is inside a woman is not a person.  In fact, it seems if you are partially inside a woman, you are not a person, either.  To be a person you have to be completely independent of a woman.

You see my problem.  Cause every time I have sex, I am inside a woman.  I hope I'm doing it right.  Most of me is outside.  But a huge part of me, I mean a massive huge part of me, is inside a woman.  And according to Supreme Court person theory, I have now lost my humanity.  I know, I'm an animal.  That's true.  Oh I've been called an animal before.  Just not legally.  Apparently, under the law, I'm not only an animal, I don't exist at all.  Two have become one.  And if I'm reading those cases correctly, she's the one, and I am a big legal zero.  You have to be outside the vagina to be an independent being.  If you're in the birth canal at all, look out!  The Supreme Court just dehumanized your ass.

I'm glad I'm not having sex with a black widow spider.  Damn, black widow spiders suck.  And the praying mantis.  I read when a praying mantis has sex, she bites his head off in the middle of it, just chews his head off and swallows it, and meanwhile he keeps on having sex.  Doesn't want to stop.  His head is missing and he's still having sex.  And I say to myself, yeah, that sounds about right.    

It's nice to be inside a woman, damn it.  It's not a dehumanizing vehicle.  We don't want some doctor and/or murder accomplice stabbing us while we're inside a woman.

"Kill him!  He's inside my body, hurry!"

"No, no, just my penis.  Don't stab me!  Help!"

Monday, June 28, 2010

Abortion Is a Football


Forget the baby. Let's take the baby out of our abortion debate. The baby's a football, a political football. We'll say abortion has nothing to do with babies. Now it's a war between the sexes, a fight over equality. And women need abortion in order to achieve equality. Does this argument even work?

"It's my body. It's my choice."

"Don't I have a say? I put the football in there."

"I know you did. It's my body. I don't want your football."

"I want the football."

"You can't have the football. I'm terminating the football."

"You can't kill my football."

"Don't be an idiot. I don't even like you."

"I am going to sue to stop you from destroying my football."

Football destroyed. In the Equality Super Bowl, that would be Women 1, Men 0. Better luck in round two, guys.

"It's my body. It's my choice."

"I don't want a football."

"Well, I want a football. We're having a football."

"You don't even like football."

"I like football! I'm going to cry. I can't believe you said that to me."

"It's not even a football. It's a glob of leather."

"It's a football. And you are going to pay me football support for eighteen years."

Football kept. In the Equality Super Bowl, that would be Women 2, Men 0.

"It's my body. It's my choice."

"I am not playing football with you, girlie. Forget it."

"But we made this football together."

"I don't love you, I don't like you, I'm not playing with you, ever."

"Oh my God."

"Here's some money. Get rid of the football."

"I'm keeping it. You'll have to pay football support."

"No I won't. It's not my football. How do I know that's my football?"

"It's your football!"

"I've seen you, playing football with Bob."

"I did not play football with Bob."

"I am running to South America, where they only play soccer. And you will have no football support from me, ever."

"You are so evil."

Okay, we got one. Playing kind of rough. Women 2, Men 1.

"It's my body. It's my choice."

"Yeah, whatever."

"Whatever?"

"I don't care."

"What do you mean, you don't care?"

"It's your body. It's your choice."

"But how can you not care?"

"I don't care."

"Do you want the football?"

"What does it matter what I want? You do what you want to do."

"This affects both of us."

"Whatever."

"I can't believe you don't care about the football."

"Why should I care? It's your football."

I don't know. Are we tied? Is it equality yet?

I personally think the feminist idea that moving sexual relations closer to the pagan model is a net boon for women is a questionable assumption at best. One can certainly argue that a society where men feel a responsibility for the babies they create, and a duty not to sport-fuck women, might be a better society for women. Or not. I do sort of think that this debate might be better decided by women and men in the society, and not by our unelected superiors.

Yes, Roe gives us an option, but those options are not pleasant for women. In the Supreme Court abortion caselaw, the woman is isolated. The Court is seemingly oblivious to how abortion will affect men and their behavior towards women.

Roe might have some unintended and bad side effects for women and their relations with men. And this is when we assume the baby is a football. If we assume the baby is a baby, all these discussions are uglier and meaner.