Wednesday, April 18, 2007

And You Thought You Were an American Citizen...

I knew it was coming. I think a lot of us expected this as the wave of fundi-ism reaches its zenith before a long descent into oblivion for another generation to resurrect. The Bush Supreme Court has decided that women have no right to life, but the parasite with the potential of becoming a human does. And as conservatives jump up and down for joy (but not in any way that would provoke sexual thoughts), decrying a victory against the "culture of death" and a turn-around towards "family values," we have to wonder where they get this idea that a few cells with the potential for being a human has a greater right to life than its host.

Of course, we all know where they get this idea--their awe-inspiring pseudo-history book filled with smiting, sex, and lies (and that's only the old testament!) Never mind all that "kill all their children" (Numbers 31:16-18 is only one of several examples of sky god not caring if children live or die since apparently they aren't in the womb) and "rape all their women" (Deuteronomy 20:13-18) stuff the Hebrews did to all the people already living in the so-called "promised land" (How's that working out for you guys so far?) When it comes to today's unborn children, apparently sky god loves them so much he wouldn't want a woman to get an abortion even if her life were in danger, right? Right?

Apparently the Supreme Court agrees:

The law is constitutional despite not containing an exception that would allow the procedure if needed to preserve a woman's health, Kennedy said. "The law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice in the course of their medical practice," he wrote in the majority opinion.

Doctors who violate the law face up to two years in federal prison. The law has never taken effect, pending the outcome of the legal fight.

Kennedy's opinion was a long-awaited resounding win that abortion opponents expected from the more conservative bench.
So what was sky god's policy back in the day on miscarriages and abortion? You know, the good ol' "smite" and "strike" days when anyone was fair game?

Exodus 21:22-25: And if men struggle and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
So, if a woman loses her baby due to influences outside of her control... Well, then, the father states how much the child was going to be worth to him, and all's well that ends well. But if the woman herself got injured, the people who caused the injury shall be put to death. Funny that, how a miscarried child is worth only what the father thinks, but if the woman gets hurt, or dies, those people must also die... So sky god could care less about the in utero.

But fundies love this passage to justify their "devil-may-care" attitude about the life conditions of any given woman who happens to get knocked up:

Psalm 139:13-16: For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for Thou art fearfully wonderful (later texts were changed to read "for I am fearfully and wonderfully made"); wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.
The obvious logic (twisted as the fundie's logic is...) is that if sky god cared this much about King David (who himself danced naked before sky god), then how much must he care about every single piss-ant person on this rock of sin he created, right? Never mind that DAVID wrote the song (and assuming sky god "inspired" him), he was the one to be KING, not some poor child on welfare who can't get a job because society failed to educate them properly for the real world (whether through lies about sex education OR a sucky public school system). Sky god must care about everyone this much because it bothers them that a KING might have been more cared about than they.

It seems that only David's womb-forming experience is worthy of sky god's interest, however, and David's enemies weren't as special. In a song (also inspired by sky god, as it's in "The Bible") in Psalms, David prays that the children of his enemies... well, to put it in today's terms, don't end up on welfare, and not in a "I-hope-they-get-good-jobs" kind of way:

Psalm 109:8-12: Let his days be few; let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children wander about and beg; and let them seek sustenance far from their ruined homes. Let the creditor seize all that he has; and let strangers plunder the product of his labor. Let there be none to extend loving kindness to him, nor any to be gracious to his fatherless children.
So much for every womb-forming person, eh? Perhaps this was the inspiration for what sky god did to Job? Or was sky god simply too lazy to write a new plot and decided to rip off what he did to Job? The world may never know...

Of course, Solomon, "special" David's son (so-called wisest of all men), also had an opinion on children who never left the womb:

Ecclesiastes 4:1-3: Then I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun. And behold I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort them; and on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort them. So I congratulated the dead who are already dead more than the living who are still living. But better off than both of them is the one who has never existed, who has never seen the evil activity that is done under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 6:3-5: If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, however many they be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things, and he does not even have a proper burial, then I say, 'Better the miscarriage than he, for it comes in futility and goes into obscurity; and its name is covered in obscurity. It never sees the sun and it never knows anything; it is better off than he.'
Seems like even the wisest man on earth thought those who have been aborted or miscarried were better off than being born! Did he need anti-depressants? Perhaps a few hundred more wives? Either way, it ultimately comes back to sky god for a fundie, so therefore even sky god admits that some kids are just better off not being born. One begins to wonder what the measuring stick is...

Job also seemed to ponder the world in ways that spoke of quality of potential life:

Job 10:18-19: Why then hast Thou brought me out of the womb? Would that I had died and no eye had seen me! I should have been as though I had not been, carried from womb to tomb.
Quality of life seems to be a very important, both the the "wisest" man in the world and the Hebrew martyr of Israel past! And if anyone had a hard-knock life, it was the fictional Job of this fable (inspired by sky god to show off his gambling addiction...).

So what are we left with? Of course, I would not be so crass as to point out that the bible actually encourages abortion or miscarriages, but the same cannot be said of the fundies that our trying to take over our country with their "moral" laws. They take those few verses to try to support some type of "pro-life" faux argument when really, when read within context, none of these verses promote or condemn abortion! And no amount of smoke will be able to change the fact that just as many abortions happened back then as happen now (percentage wise, of course).

Funny also that, in a recent study put out by the Center for Reason found that just as many Christians as non-Christian have abortions, and, in the case of Catholics, have even higher proportions of abortion than any other class of people! (Nothing like the smell of hypocrisy.) Of course, looking back at a much earlier post of mine entitled How Do You Like These Apples?, we already knew the bible belt, or "Heartland of America" (LOLOLOL!!! Okay now, stop laughing... I know, I know, misnomer of the century...) has the highest rate of divorce while still preaching to be the moral center, so why wouldn't the bible belt also have the highest number of abortions? Just goes to show that they certainly live by the "Do as I say, not as I do" rule...

Of course, if one were to follow the fundie logic, one would expect that most of them would be fighting for the rights of infants before they're even conceived! Jeremiah shares this inspiration from old sky god:

Jeremiah 1:4: Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
So sky god knew Jeremiah before he was even a twinkle in his parent's eye! So naturally fundies should be fighting for the rights of the pre-conceived, shouldn't they?

You may think it sounds silly, but I wouldn't put it past any of them...

So women, take heart, and know that sooner or later, someone who is, in fact, in control of a brain will be in charge and laws will be made protecting your right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. As the fundies would tell you,
  1. Don't have sex
  2. Don't get raped
  3. Don't have complications during pregnancy
  4. Don't have a same-sex marriage
and you should be fine! After all, you may be carrying the next King David! And if you're aren't, well, at least you have the knowledge that your fetus has more rights than you...

And you thought you were an American citizen...

Turns out you're just a fetus-maker...

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