The World O' Crap Archive

Welcome to the Collected World O' Crap, a comprehensive library of posts from the original Salon Blog, and our successor site, world-o-crap.com (2006 to 2010).

Current posts can be found here.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Teens Use Stranger’s Fetus As A Tamagotchi

Remember those virtual pets that were all the rage in the 1990s? Well, they’re back, more life-like than ever, and best of all, they’re in your uterus!
WALLINGFORD, PA. — The bell rang and the eighth graders jumped up, eager to compare notes.
“I named my baby Kyle Patrick,” one shouted.
“Mine is Antonio!”
At the urging of an antiabortion activist, they had each pledged to “spiritually adopt” a fetus developing in an unknown woman — to name it, love it from afar and above all, pray daily that the mother-to-be would not choose abortion.
Ah, another arrow in the Womb Raiders’ quiver. Following upon the success of the pioneering “post-abortive men,” who conclusively proved that the LA Times will give front page coverage to any anti-choice scheme so long as it’s insanely presumptuous, hysterically lachrymose, and slightly more phallocentric than the altpenis.com entry on autofellatio. In today’s page one shocker, the secret anti-abortion weapon involves anonymous, non-consensual stealth adoptions by remote control. I can only hope that after these imaginary fetuses have grown to adulthood, one of them shows up at the door of their “spiritual father” and demands 18 years back child support.
“Maybe one day you’ll get to heaven and these people will come running to you . . . and say, ‘We’re all the little children you saved,’ ” activist Cristina Barba said. She smiled at the students in their Catholic school uniforms. “Maybe you really can make a difference.”
Thirty-five years after Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, opponents are pouring resources into building new generations of activists. Young people are responding with passion.
Today’s students and young adults have grown up in a time when abortion was widely accessible and acceptable, and a striking number are determined to end that era.
Back alley abortions toughed the poor and improved the breeding stock, ensuring that only the strong would survive and providing our nation with an abundant and vigorous working class, which increased productivity while acting as a check on unreasonable wage growth.
Pew Research Center polls dating back a decade show that 18- to 29-year-olds are consistently more likely than the general adult population to favor strict limits on abortion. A Pew survey over the summer found 22% of young adults support a total ban on abortion, compared with 15% of their parents’ generation …
“You look at pictures of marches [over the years] and the crowds just keep getting younger and younger and younger,” said Derrick Jones, an advisor to National Teens for Life.
In Colorado, a teenager last year decided the state constitution should define a fertilized egg as a person. Kristi Burton, now 20, won a court fight about her proposed amendment and leads the campaign to put it on the ballot this fall …
Here in greater Philadelphia, the antiabortion group Generation Life enlists teens to hand out literature on beaches and guides them through role-playing to hone their powers of persuasion.
At a recent workshop, Claire Levis, 17, played the part of an abortion-rights supporter. “My friend got raped and you want her to have the baby? How can you ask a 15-year-old to go through a pregnancy? That’s nine months of ridicule and pain,” she shouted.
Liz Coyle, 16, responded: “It’s not the baby’s fault. He’s never done anything wrong.”
Claire, You have a moral obligation to let your baby grow up feeling unwanted and rejected, develop reactive attachment disorder, a violent temper, and a substance abuse problem before finally murdering his pregnant girlfriend in a drunken rage. Then we can kill him him in good conscience!
Liz then added: “There are plenty of teachers willing to home-school your friend if she doesn’t want to go to class when she’s pregnant. Or she could go to school, and stand up for herself.”
Really? For most teachers, it’s all they can do to cope with the kids they have during class hours. And while they’re generally compassionate and concerned with their students’ welfare, I don’t know any who are eager to make house calls just so you can roleplay Juno.
The dozen teens watching burst into applause.
“I feel like we’re all survivors of abortion,” Claire said.
And miscarriage. We all survived that, too, and yet nobody is organizing an army of teens to take on the forces of Big Miscarriage. And you know, we’re all survivors of slavery too, when you think about it, in that we’re Americans, and America survived slavery, so it’s totally unfair for only black people to get the reparations.
She has five sisters and a brother; most of her classmates, she said, come from much smaller families. The way Claire sees it, they’re missing out on much joy — and she blames abortion.
“I look at my friends,” she said, “and I wonder, ‘Where are your siblings?’ “
Where are your manners?
This sense that millions of their peers are missing motivates many young activists.
Look, you can stop hand-drawing pictures of blastocysts on the side of milk cartons, hun. Even if there were 20 million more kids your age, I’m fairly sure that none of them would invite you to the Spring Formal. At least, not without double bagging it.
They are also the first generations to grow up seeing images from inside the womb displayed like prized family photos — tacked to the fridge, posted on the Web, pasted into scrapbooks. Ultrasound videos even interrupt their TV shows; the conservative advocacy group Focus on the Family bought ad time to air fetal pictures during “American Idol Rewind” and a college football all-star game.
I thought it was tasteless, but those fetuses did sell a lot of beer.
“Abortion feels more personal for us,” said Kristan Hawkins, who supervises 400 college clubs through the group Students for Life of America.
To you, your abortion is a deeply private thing matter that doesn’t concern anyone else, let alone some stranger with a reactionary axe to grind. To Kristen, your abortion is like Jaws: The Revenge. This time, it’s personal!
Abortion-rights supporters are also reaching beyond the old guard of leaders, which veteran activist Nancy Keenan refers to as “the menopausal militia.”
Exactly! Women who can’t get pregnant have no right to express an opinion on abortion. They need to finally just butt the hell out and let us men settle this.

Posted by scott on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 11:32 pm.

33 Responses to “Teens Use Stranger’s Fetus As A Tamagotchi”

She has five sisters and a brother; most of her classmates, she said, come from much smaller families. The way Claire sees it, they’re missing out on much joy — and she blames abortion.
Huh. Personally, I would blame the stagnation of wages, the increase in medical costs, the ridiculous rise in housing prices, the unraveling of the social safety net…
But what do I know? I’m just a liberal…and a youngest-of-seven ex-Catholic on anti-depressants cause of all that “joy” I had growing up.
“I named my baby Kyle Patrick,” one shouted.
“Mine is Antonio!”
“Mine is a ninth level Paladin!”
“Oh, yeah? Mine can fly!”
“Mine had the batteries run out and he died.”
“HA HA! Jimmy killed his baaa-by! Jimmy killed his baaa-by!”
“Mine is hydrocephalic, and she’s gonna make my living conditions so desperate that my wife’s gonna leave and I’ll kill my kid in a drunken fit of resentment and bitter rage before she’s five!”
“Mine’s named Suzie, but I don’t wanna get married, so I’m gonna kill her mom before Suzie’s born.”
Mine’s President!”
At the urging of an antiabortion activist, they had each pledged to “spiritually adopt” a fetus developing in an unknown woman — to name it, love it from afar and above all, pray daily that the mother-to-be would not choose abortion.
Oh, fuck me. That is just revoltingly insane. Their God should be ashamed of them. I’ll be back to read the rest of it when I don’t want to make poppets of these little creeps and spiritually beat the holy crap out of them from afar.
Thursday, thank you for that.
In retrospect, I’m never *not* going to want to beat hell out of these overprivileged little creeps looking for the opportunity to feel victimized by someone else’s rape and to feel special for having been born.
At a recent workshop, Claire Levis, 17, played the part of an abortion-rights supporter. “My friend got raped and you want her to have the baby? How can you ask a 15-year-old to go through a pregnancy? That’s nine months of ridicule and pain,” she shouted.
Liz Coyle, 16, responded: “It’s not the baby’s fault. He’s never done anything wrong.”
She has five sisters and a brother; most of her classmates, she said, come from much smaller families. The way Claire sees it, they’re missing out on much joy — and she blames abortion.
This all just about sums it up, doesn’t it. The reason these kids are anti-abortion is that they are clueless. They haven’t the experience–nor apparently the imagination or empathy–to even be able to envision a life that isn’t exactly like theirs. They don’t understand that not everybody has their set of choices, nor even would everybody want them.
I love my multiple siblings, therefore everybody would. I think the worst thing about carrying a rapist’s baby to term is the “ridicule”, and therefore it must be. It would be easy for me to continue school while pregnant, so it would naturally also be for everyone else. I can’t imagine any other way for people to have smaller families than abortion, so there must not be any. I think a fetus is an innocent baby, therefore everyone must agree with me.
Incidentally, my foolish little propagandists, if a woman has been raped and impregnated by a man you aren’t going to sell her on carrying her rapist’s child to term by reminding her that it might be male and could easily end up looking like her rapist. I don’t suppose that was intentional, I think you little brats just assume that males are more valuable and a male fetus is more persuasive. What’s really creepy is that you probably don’t even think about it, you’re just hardwired to assume human must mean male by default, unless it’s somehow defectively female.
The whole thing is just absurdly coercive, appallingly based on the underlying assumption that women are less human than the clump of cells inside them, the men who will be deprived of fatherhood, her other children who will be deprived of a sibling, and now even complete strangers who will somehow mystically be harmed by the decisions she makes, even while they don’t, in fact, know she actually exists.
Thursday–I just….well….I LOVE YOU for what you posted!
D. Sidhe–nailed it right on the freaking head.
GOD! These perfect STRANGERS who are so fucking egotistical to believe that they can tell OTHER PERFECT STRANGERS how to LIVE THEIR LIVES!
And to these teens from the story, I say this as one former Catholic Teen to another–GET A FUCKING LIFE OF YOUR OWN! MAKE DECISIONS FOR YOU–NOT FOR ANYONE ELSE! You think abortion is a sin? GREAT! WONDERFUL! NEVER FUCKING HAVE AN ABORTION, then! GOD! What fucking little bitches are being trained by other fucking old bitches!
Mind your own FUCKING BUSINESS! Fucking cunts.
Sorry. I just had to let that out.
“Can we keep him, George? I will hug him and pet him and love him forever!”
Sweet Lordy-Gordy. This is just…I’m close to speechless. Of course we’re seeing younger and younger people in the anti-choice movement. Teens and preteens are easier to manipulate. There’s also a touch of pedophilia in parading really young girls in front.
But I wonder-would they let an openly gay man adopt one of these imaginary babies? I’d love to ask, because I’m sure the answer they give will be fucking hilarious.
At the urging of an antiabortion activist, they had each pledged to “spiritually adopt” a fetus developing in an unknown woman — to name it, love it from afar and above all, pray daily that the mother-to-be would not choose abortion.
As a pro-choice activist, I would like to ask that all, regardless of their belief in Invisible Sky Fairies (or lack thereof), to “rationally adopt” an anti-choice organization, and direct some of your karmic harmony towards trying to get them to pull their heads from their anal sphincters, realize how tragically wrong they are, and try and do something to balance out the pain and suffering they’ve encouraged with their anti-choice pro-female slavery rhetoric.
But I wonder-would they let an openly gay man adopt one of these imaginary babies? I’d love to ask, because I’m sure the answer they give will be fucking hilarious.
You could check out some of the discussion from the religiously insane regarding trying to prevent gays from adopting, or trying to take them away from their adoptive parents. I couldn’t find the article I was looking for, where I read about some place in Florida trying to take away the children who have been in an adoptive family for years – because the parents finally came out. All I’m saying is that IMHO it probably wouldn’t be quite as fcuking hilarious as you expect it to be.
But I wonder-would they let an openly gay man adopt one of these imaginary babies? I’d love to ask, because I’m sure the answer they give will be fucking hilarious.
Oh, please, please, please ask! OMG, that would be beautiful. What a bunch of fuckwits.
“Maybe one day you’ll get to heaven and these people will come running to you . . . and say, ‘We’re all the little children you saved,’ ”
If I saved them, then why are they in heaven before me?
Just sayin’.
It would be kinda tragic to go to all the trouble to spiritually adopt (my baby’s name is Muhammad Ibrahim, by the way) only to have the kid die an early death!
I would love to debate these asses, and ask them how come the birth rate in the US hasn’t moved one whit off where it was in 1970, if “millions of their siblings” were killed?
Well, you have to kill them first. Wait until they are in a State of Grace, then they’ll go straight to Heaven without falling to sin and degredation here on Earth! That way, you’ll go to Heaven, too for doing them such a favour!
An old class mate of mine had her husband do that. Five kids killed and house burned down, and the bastard never had the guts to take his own life.
Maryc -
*blush*
Dude, what were you thinking putting that autofellatio link near the beginning of the post? How am I supposed to concentrate on the rest of it when I just have an overwhelming urge to, um, practice yoga?
You guys nailed it. These spoiled brats suffer from an acute lack of empathy, imagination, shit, just a minimum of common human decency would be an improvement.
(TBogg‘s take on this phenomenon wasn’t half bad either.)
Also,
A Pew survey over the summer found 22% of young adults support a total ban on abortion, compared with 15% of their parents’ generation
How come every time I almost succed in convincing my prejudiced Scandinavian brain that Americans as a group can’t bethat bad (after all, the ones I know personally are pretty awesome), someone always manages to come up with a new statistic like that, to show how completely fucking barmy your countrymen are?
Hold it – I wouldn’t go blaming the kids for this.
What’s being presented to them isn’t anything real, any more than the Tamagotchi of the title was: it’s an exercise in using their imagination. They aren’t being asked to imagine the trials of the potential parents, but rather to imagine they have a new toy.
These “adoptees” aren’t humans at all any more than Tinkerbell is to kids watching Peter Pan, or fantasy characters in any juvie novel, or blacks in Soweto were to white children in Johannesberg during apartheid.
The kids do have empathy, but it’s being directed, and thuslimited, by the instructors of this insane directive.
The kids are getting the same emotional reward my parents getwhen they froward yet another “OMG!! MISSING GIRL!!” spam mail to me – they can feel better without actually doing anything. And who could resist that kind of temptation?
Mocking kids for their awesome naivety? I can do that, and happily.
Blaming them for using their imaginations? Well… I’m gona wait until they get through high school before then.
Tom, I think you misunderstood my point. The fundie opposition to gays adopting children is at all funny, of course. My point was, if a gay man asked whether he could “spiritually adopt” a stranger’s baby, what answer could they come up with that wouldn’t be utterly ridiculous?
I’m imagining my fetus as made by two lesbians with a turkey baster. I call her Squirt!
““I feel like we’re all survivors of abortion,” Claire said.”
No, Claire, you’re obviously a survivor of in utero oxygen deprivation.
I’ve mentally adopted the daughter of two lesbians with a turkey baster. I’ve named her Bulby. She’s half-Jewish…
As if you couldn’t tell, Constance and I were chatting about this and came upon the same point at almost the same time.
Do Americans have small families because “abortion”??? Living in a technologically developed country, I thought they could afford some other family-planning approaches (like… let’s say… condoms?)
(like… let’s say… condoms?)
Generation Life appears to be a Catholic organization — at least much of the leadership has a Catholic background.
The Church teaches (perhaps not in these words) that condoms and the Pill abort gamete-Americans, even before they have an opportunity to become zygote-Americans.
Thursday: If we don’t mock them, how will they ever learn?
Yeah, I get where you’re going. I grew up a Catholic kid, too, and got the same bullshit. I once spent a three day prayer-and-fasting retreat in a room with a bunch of other teenagers, and watching hour after hour of, let’s not be clever, brainwashing. They waited till our blood sugar had dropped and then started showing us videos explaining why condoms are murder, pot makes Baby Jesus cry, and watching MTV is the same as spitting in the Pope’s eye. It wasn’t, I should note, the first time we’d seen “Silent Scream”, but it seemed to influence the crowd more. So I know what adults are capable of with a handful of teenagers, and I have nothing but loathing for those adults.
But I also know that to get to seventeen without any grasp that the people around you believe different things than you do takes a lot of willful ignorance. These are kids who got a glimpse of the world around them and pulled the covers up to stay cozy. Most of them will, in a few years, creep out into the world and start learning that They Are Not The Cosmos. They’ll develop empathy for who people really are, rather than empathy for who they think people are. They’ll learn to evaluate information. They’ll learn to think for themselves, and stop imagining that the world is some melodramatic version of Goofus & Gallant in which they are Gallant.
Until then I get to mock them. And even after that, I get to hate their youth leaders. Because this shit is *sick*.
I’ve named her Bulby. She’s half-Jewish…
Left by Ferrari
Then it should be spelled “Bulbeh”, bubbeh…
I thought they could afford some other family-planning approaches (like… let’s say… condoms?)
Left by Rebuscado
Where’s the fun in those???
D. Sidhe -
Fair enough. I always hope for the binary thought (a Goofus & Gallant reference! Dude!) to fall away when a child reaches double digits.
But I have to admit I’m still smarting a bit after “Jesus Camp” – maybe it made me too soft, but that movie damn near made me cry for the children.
Okay, that’s it: I’m gonna go shoot an infomercial and run it late night on Bible Belt mini-stations.
Gotta Save The Children!
actor121 – As mark pointed out, using condoms is a sin… so, it should be fun! (no so fun as an abortion, but fun anyway)
Yea, Reb, but if you DON’T use condoms, you get to have illicit sex AND gamble!
You just can’t beat that!
Yea, Reb, but if you DON’T use condoms, you get to have illicit sex AND gamble!
You just can’t beat that!
what if you have teh sexxors standing up? then it’s almost like dancing too
While drunk!
As the mother of an only child, I am shaking my fist and thinking “Curses! Foiled again!” now that I know his wily classmates will eventually be on to me and my 11 abortions.
Well, it was either that or subfertility, a couple miscarriages, and finally, realizing there was no possible way we could afford to have two kids in daycare even though we’re all “middle class” and stuff. I forget which one, now.
I haven’t had much coffee yet, but I’m wondering whether the “where are your siblings” girl really thinks every woman with a small family has therefore had a number of abortions, or if “abortion” to her sort of vaguely encompasses any and all efforts to avoid conception and pregnancy rather than a specific medical procedure (spontaneous abortions notwithstanding). Either way, it’s telling, but the latter is more interesting to me.
My point was, if a gay man asked whether he could “spiritually adopt” a stranger’s baby, what answer could they come up with that wouldn’t be utterly ridiculous?
What if you told them you were only “spiritually ” gay?
“Maybe one day you’ll get to heaven and these people will come running to you . . . and say, ‘We’re all the little children you saved,’ ” activist Cristina Barba said.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are now entering seventy-two virgins territory.
Yeah, now we know where Mohammed obtained his seventy-two virgins for every jihadi. (Unless “houris” really meant “white raisins”. Maybe Mohammed mistook aborted fetuses for raisins?)

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