Sunday, May 17, 2009

The Abortion Debate

The one thing that really bothers me about the abortion debate is that as debates go, this one sucks. Both sides really stink it up when it comes to reasoning through this complex issue. Pro-lifers generally hide behind their Bibles which is great when preaching to the choir, but utterly worthless outside of their little clique. Or they'll say "life is sacred," and then get hammered into the ground with the death penalty. But I'll take it easy on the pro-lifers, because I'm on their side. Besides that, it's more fun to beat up on the pro-choicers. Let's take some of their ideas and just... run with them.

The first centers around the question of "When does a fertilized egg become a human being?" Many learned people have come up with arcane and elaborate formulas for this, which can be debated until the heat death of the universe. I prefer much more simple and elegant solutions that can be proposed and discussed in the space of no more than two martinis. So a couple of years ago, I came up with a Modest Proposal-esque solution to this dilemma. It's really dead simple (rimshot, please): Let any mother abort any baby at any time, with one condition: under penalty of death, she has to eat the fetus. Raw, straight up, and no Tabasco sauce. If it's not a human being - just some foreign tissue growing inside of her then there's nothing really wrong or gross or even cannibalistic about it, right? Heck, it just came out a nearly sterile environment and any toxins in it are just stuff she's got in her already. Just think of it as a really exotic dish. Biologically speaking, it's not nearly as gross as eating sushi, and I love to eat sushi. In fact, since some sushi is actually served alive, we really don't even have to kill it first. If you catch it early enough you can just suck it right down like an oyster. Maybe we can throw in just a little Tobasco. Remember: it's not a baby or anything like that. And ... um... how's that argument working for you right about now?

Another line of reasoning suggests that OK, OK, maybe it is human and all, but since a fetus isn't viable outside of the womb it's not really all the way human or something like that. This assertion fraught with problems to begin with (as anyone born prematurely can attest), but let's just take it at face value because we can have fun with it. The obvious question that comes to mind is "why stop at birth?" Babies can't survive on their own, nor can small children... or even many adults. If they can't support themselves then they're not viable, and we should be able to abort them instead of letting them drain our financial and biological resources (hey, they're costing me money and that's standing between me and more sushi). You could even go so far as to say that people who don't make enough money to pay taxes aren't viable in the sociological sense (ditto). Heck, we could solve social security insolvency, welfare problems, and eliminate the possibility of any Democrat being elected to anything ever again right there! It's tempting.

And finally, we get to: "My trigger finger is part of my body and the government can't tell me what to do with my body!!!"

(For the moonbats reading this, yes, this is satire, and no, I'm not going on nor advocating a shooting spree. But if you can eat the fetuses... well, you win.)