MURDER, n. What happens to human embryos that are subjected to abortion - and, what happens to those that are carried to term and born into this world unwanted and without adequate provision for their support. Most civilized societies profess to prefer quick, relatively painless means of dispatch to slow ones with torture. But then, this is America. See GUANTANAMO, ABU GHRAIB.

-The New Millennium Devil's Dictionary

As I have already written, abortion is a proxy issue. Antagonists often have about as much concern over individual parents (please note) facing the issue, as antagonists over the issue of slavery in the Civil War had about the fates of individual slaves. That is to say, none whatsoever. The real issue, now as then, is power. Who has control?

If we truly had concern for each other as people, we would recognize that abortion is a tool, available if it is needed. We would educate ourselves, long before the occasion arises, of what the tool is and what it represents. We would educate ourselves as to the costs and responsibilities associated with childbirth and child rearing, and realize that the cheapest and easiest way to manage those costs is to keep yourself off the couch and out of the bedroom until you're ready to bear them. Or are sure of your tools and strategies for avoiding fertilization. In other words, proper and thorough sex education.

But no. Sex sells. We have to have the right to live dangerously, or how would we ever get that SUV marketed? And we always have demagogues who are prepared to convince you, for their profit, that you can do whatever you want. Or to argue, for their profit, that their God is the sole repository of ethics in the world, and anyone who disagrees is automatically Satan. The God I know about wants folk to love and care for their neighbors. Not engage in demagoguery. Or obsess about their "rights".

RIGHT, n. Don't lead with it, unless you're a southpaw. In law and politics, a state of being to which one is entitled, access to which is not to be disturbed; as opposed to a privilege, which is bestowed upon a person and can be removed.

all men … are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights

intones the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, with its portrayal of the Deity as a subomniscient presence with no concept of (or, perhaps, respect for) bipedality. Since life itself is a privilege, extended over a limited period and revocable at any time, the concept of "unalienable rights" is scarcely intelligible - and on that basis, the numerous persons who claim any possible advantage, however miniscule, as a "right", can hardly be faulted.

-The New Millennium Devil's Dictionary

The end.

  - O Ceallaigh

Copyright © 2006 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.

All opinions are mine as a private citizen.