never go to planned parenthood without your camera and a zoom lens

Tonight Trina and I went to the Dixie Chicks concert because my Mother won tickets at work. The concert was fantastic -- when they first walked on stage, they played "Hail to the Chief." That's the first time in a long time I've heard that song and didn't feel suicidal.

Anyway, the concert, while excellent, isn't what I want to tell everyone (all 5 of you) about. Rather, it's the freaks who were lining the sidewalks in front of the Mellon Arena carrying pictures of "aborted" fetuses. It's hard to make anti-choice idiots funny, but I'll do my best.

One man tried to give me information about breast cancer. (One of their favorite myths is that abortion and breast cancer are linked. They also like to pretend that birth control is linked to breast cancer. If they were morally opposed to rutabagas, they would say that rutabagas cause breast cancer. It's a favorite threat that they cling to it even though there is no scientific evidence to back it up. Check with the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, a doctor, or anyone who can read above a 5th-grade level and they'll all tell you the same thing -- no correlation.)

I told Breast Cancer Man that I was on my way to get an abortion today, but his picture of a mangled fetus changed my whole outlook on life, and thank you ever so much. Trina told him to get a vasectomy. Good times.

Then we booed some other idiot with a fetus poster. On the other side, the thing said "Abortion kills babies and hurts women." I'm all about equality and I don't like men-bashing, but a sign like that really loses whatever impact it might have when it's held by a man.

Then we yelled at some stupid woman holding a sign. I think I may have called her a disgrace to women everywhere -- who can remember? I think the cunt actually started praying. That really sends me into a rage. Don't fucking pray for me. Me and my soul are just fine.

Then we talked -- rather civilly, in fact -- to another woman holding up one of these fetus-boards. First of all, let me tell you a little bit about this fucking fetus. Its intestines are all on the outside, it's got half a leg, and other assorted reasons why nature said "no." Is it sad? Of course. Especially since it was (allegedly) a 28-week fetus, which looks remarkably like an actual human being. (Unlike the fetuses that are actually aborted, which look like jello that got dropped in dirt.)

So this woman told us the story of this allegedly aborted fetus. She said it was found in a dumpster with "thousands" of fetuses. She told us it was so mangled because it was a chemical abortion. She also told us its name was Malachi.

How tragic for poor little Malachi. But anyone with slightly more intact faculties than a mangled fetus is capable of coming up with a few little handy bullet points to contradict every word she said.

- All aborted fetuses are required by law to be cremated. They don't throw a surgically removed tumor into the regular trash -- why the fuck would they toss out a fetus like that?

- In what city are there thousands of abortions performed in one clinic on one day? I'll even give them a week. Thousands? That would be Mt. Fetus. Also, whose job is it to go wading through this pile of goosh? There's an episode of "Dirty Jobs" you're not going to see anytime soon.

- A chemical abortion is only used in the first trimester, and this fetus was allegedly 28 weeks. And it's not like napalming your uterus -- it's a pill.

- Malachi is a stupid-ass name. Why not just name it New Testament?

I looked all this up here. (Among other places.) It has a copy of the photo we saw. Apparently there are two versions of this photo -- one where the color has been altered and another where it hasn't. The real photo shows the fetus with gray skin. That means that it died in utero.

We saw the doctored-up photo where it's all pink, because I guess they want their mangled fetuses to look as cute and cuddly as possible. The moral of the story is that the fetus was technically aborted, BUT that it was aborted because the fetus was already dead. It's removing dead matter from your body, not terminating the pregnancy.

(And that is what a late-term abortion typically is, not sucking the brain out of an otherwise healthy fetus. And if someone tells you otherwise, punch them in the fucking neck.)

Anti-choice groups are notorious for taking pictures of miscarriages from various places and using them as examples of abortions. They particularly like to use the third-trimester ones.

Once again, a conservative pet cause is masterminded by a small group of people who know what they're doing (in terms of propagandizing) in order to make a large group of well-meaning but intellectually weak people support something by relying on emotion and misinformation.

The debate is not over whether abortion is good or bad. I don't think anyone honestly thinks that abortion is some wonderful thing. The issue is whether it should be legal or not -- of course, the answer is yes. When abortion is criminalized, it doesn't stop. It just becomes more dangerous. If the anti-choice protestors like we saw today were really about helping babies, then they'd be lobbying for more readily available birth control, free condoms, and better sex education for kids and teens. They'd also give half a shit about these children after they're born and support programs like WIC.

Instead, these protestors are pawns in an emotional game meant to manipulate women and punish everyone for having sex without the desire to have a baby.

The men behind the curtain in this particular scheme are Santorum and his ilk. They want a society that is all the same -- because if we're all followers of his philosophy of life, then he can control us. He and other reptilian right-wingers want nothing but power and they will do anything to get it. They masquerade as pious men because piety is still revered by most. Then they take up causes that fit in with this false piety. Suddenly they're damn near holy. And what do idiots do?

They herd themselves to the polls.