Boy, time flies. The last time I wrote anything on the abortion issue, I was younger, bright-eyed, idealistic, full of potential, and endlessly popular with the chicks. At least, that's how I choose to remember it. The only adjective of that last statement that would not be disputed by my historians is "younger." In fact, I was a lad of only 24. How time flies. In the intervening years I failed to score. SIGH.
Not much has changed on the abortion front, either. It's all still a lot of political wrangling and head butting by people with bigger mouths than brains. There's all of this stupid yammering about morality and rights and legal hairsplitting. It's enough to make me intensely indifferent.
By golly, I think it already has.
So anyway, there are some facts that are not in dispute. Abortion IS the ending of a potentially viable human life through artificial means. Once the kid is born, it's called murder, but up to the second prior to birth, it's OK. Seems like a tenuous and arbitrary distinction, that, I suppose, can be troubling to many, particularly those of a small-minded religious bent. Of course, then you have the other side commits the cardinal sin of using legalese to try to pencil it into the Constitution as some kind of "right". The real solution is SOOOOOO much simpler, but none of these knuckleheads seem to get it. I'll get to that later, though.
So I was talking to one of my contemporaries some time ago and the subject of abortion came up. He was definitely heavily influenced by religion, and hence a Pro-Lifer. He was a friend and a coworker, so I definitely tried to water down the subject. I couldn't help but try to force his brain into uncharted territory. I got him to admit that I guy who knocks up his chick and then bails commits the moral equivalent of abortion, regardless of whether or not the chick keeps the kid. I think I made some real progress with him.
"So what happens to an aborted baby's soul?" I asked my religious friend.
"It goes straight to heaven," he answered, "because it's sinless."
And THAT, my dear Watson, is vulnerable exhaust port in the Death Star of the religious opposition to abortion which an intellectual X-Wing flyin' dude like myself can exploit. Aborted kids go straight to heaven. Therefore, since no religion says that everyone gets to heaven when they die, what service do you give the would-be aborted fetus by forcing it to be born? All you're doing is kicking it out into a cruel and nasty world and giving it the chance to LOSE its ticket to paradise! Egad! How is the kid POSSIBLY better off by being born?? Following that logic, those religious nuts should be in FAVOR of abortion, since it assures their kids a free one-way trip to heaven! "Mommy, if you loved me, why didn't you get me aborted so I could go to heaven?" Given the choice between ending up as a red mush in a slop bucket while cavorting in the clouds and dying cancer-ridden in my bed 50 years from now on my way to that Great Barbeque Below the Dirt, I'd take the former. Obviously this only applies to the "one life time" crackheads. The idealogically distinct but equally deluded reincarnation crackheads would see it differently.
If God said to my pre-birth soul while it was hanging out in the Holy Jacuzzi, "Jason, you need to make a decision. You can get aborted and come right back here to heaven, or you can get born, suffer through asthma, crack your head when you're four years old, get ruthlessly bullied by stupider classmates, continually fail to score, generally suffer through all kinds of aches and pains, and maybe end up in Hell when it's all over."
I blow a kiss to the bikini-clad angel chicks and say, "I'll see you soon, ladies!"
With argumentative talent like that, I should have been a lawyer. The only things stopping me from pursuing such a career are my unfortunate possession of a conscience and the fact that I come up with these arguments at the precise moment when it's too late to make a difference.
Then comes the inevitable argument, "Then how come it's illegal to kill anybody outside the womb?" Well that's an easy one. I won't get into my whole legal philosophy concerning it, but it all comes down to damage being committed against society. Killing a productive adult who is contributing to society is pretty darn damaging, while the elimination of another mouth to feed can arguably be beneficial. Maybe someday I'll make a graph demonstrating the relative societal worth of people as they age. I reckon it peaks out at about 40 before gradually declining… Anyway, you gotta draw the line somewhere, and birth as a good a line as any. Besides, laws haven't stopped other crimes from being committed, now have they? Make it illegal, and all you'll have in prison is a bunch of chicks who are otherwise no threat to society, and then what slim hopes I have of scoring will dry up completely.
It all comes down to this: Government should not, MUST not, try to legislate morality. And yet, it does, and it fails every time, because politicians are as short sighted and idiotic as their constituents. The law should be based on hard logic, not emotion or temporary hysteria. Unfortunately, logic always seems to be in short supply.
God, I can't wait until I'm dictator. Things are going to be different around here…
