Hissy Cat

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September 20, 2005

He Forgot To Ask About The Legal Status Of The Undead

I bring to you, in today's post, two wacky current events stories in a just-shy-of-timely manner:

1.

One of the most bizarre, fucked-up crazy and perversely-fascinating episodes of the Roberts conformation hearing was surely the abortion-issue "questioning" of Roberts by Senator Bareback-- oops, I mean, Brownback.

Let's just walk through this one, shall we?

In our legal system, everything's either one of the two: you're either a person or you're a piece of property.

Ok, ok, I can accept this premise. Let's go on.

If you're a person, you have rights; if you're a piece of property, you can be done with as your master chooses.

Right. For example, let's take women. Ok, so if women are people, then they have rights. They have self-determination. Gotcha. But if, on the other hand, we consider women to be but property, then they can be done with as those in power please. Without self-determination or recognized moral agency or, um, complete personhood, a woman could be made to, you know, do things against her will, according to the will of those who have greater power. Like carry a pregnancy to term, for instance. Alright, Brownback, I'm wit'cha.

And I believe everyone agrees that the unborn child is alive. And most agree that biologically it is a life, a separate genetic entity. But many will dispute whether it's a person.

Wait, what? Oh-- oh, I see. . . you're not talking about whether women should have the rights of persons. No, no, no. You were talking about fetuses. Ri-ight, and we all agree that-- wait, wait, we do? Oh, you just mean "alive" as in "a seperate genetic entity" like, um, a virus or, um, a spore. Things that have genetic codes but aren't independently viable and certainly not pers-- oh, wait, are you saying fetuses are persons? Yeah, um, NO? But hey, maybe this is more of your cutting edge "Kansas science." The kind that has really broken ground in the political arena, if not in the scientific or intellectual ones.

I hope you would agree with me that this is at the core of the issue, obviously, the competition between the woman's right to choose and the legal status of the unborn.

Phew. See, for a moment I thought you weren't going to get back to the issue of women. Silly me! Of course you are going to address the rights and status of women. I mean, there's no way you were going to just skip over the rights of half the population that is definately alive--

In Plessy v. Ferguson, it's been cited yesterday along with the Brown decision, which my state is the proud home state host of Brown v. Board of Education. And I personally knew two of the lawyers that practiced in that case, and they were noble gentlemen.

So, you're not going to talk about women?

And I want to take another point on that to tell you -- we talked a lot about the disability community, and well we should, and the protection needed for the disability community. And that's important, because I think it really helps people that need help, but it helps the rest of us to be much more human and caring.

Well, we're moving right along, aren't we?

Senator Kennedy is helping me with a bill because a number of children never get here that have disabilities. Unborn children prenatally diagnosed with Down's Syndrome and other disabilities -- I don't know if you know this, but there was a recent analysis, and 80 percent to 90 percent of children prenatally diagnosed with Down's Syndrome never get here -- never get here. They're aborted in the system.

That's what he said, never get here. Because of prenatal genetic testing (evil, evil, non-Kansas science!), pregnant women and their partners now have access to the information that allows them to chose whether carrying the fetus to term is the correct choice for them or whether terminating the pregnancy is the more manageable, feasable, moral-- yes moral-- action. Outrageous! Those fetuses never get here, the man said. They're aborted in the system. Notice he didn't say in a uterus. He said "system." Because women aren't really individuals, just extensions of the "system," tentacles extending from the Senate floor. And of course he spoke in the passive, because it's not as though women are full agents capable of acting. It's like, women don't make ethical choices. Stuff just happens. They don't choose abortions, or anyway, if they do, they're just being manipulated by the system. Big government. Or something.
I'm gonna warn you: it's just gonna get wackier from here on out.

And people just say: Look, this child's got difficulties. And we even have waiting lists in America of people, today, willing to adopt children with Down's Syndrome. And we will protect that child -- as well we should, under the Americans with Disabilities Act and other issues -- when they get here.

We even have waiting lists in America of people, today, willing to adopt children with Down's Syndrome. You did know that, right? And Sen. Bareback is one of them. You know, the financial, not to mention emotional and psychological, cost of raising a child with Down's Syndrome is so overrated. Because this country so obviously has an affordable, accessable health care system as well as schools with fantastic, widely available Special Education programs for students with severe developmental disabilities. Not to mention the subsidized childcare that allows mothers to ensure that their children are adequately cared for while they working.

But so much of the time, and with our increased ability of genetic testing, they don't get here. Diagnosed in the womb, system that encourages this child to be destroyed at that stage -- and this is all in the records.

And we are the poorer for it as a society.

It's a damn shame all the opportunity, all the resources. If only there were Americans who actually need opportunity and resources. America's offer of opportunity, protection and equality is just withering up on the branches as it waits for any takers. But there aren't any. And we a are a poorer society because of it.

All the members of this body know a young man with Down's Syndrome named Jimmy. Maybe you've met him, even. He runs the elevator that takes the senators up and down on the Senate floors. His warm smile welcomes us every day. We're a better body for him.

See? This isn't about women at all. Never was. It isn't even about the disabled. This is about us, isn't it Bareback? This is about how much more fun Senate hearings can be when they begin with a good-natured ribbing of retarded Jimmy in the elevator. Every abortion deprives you, Sen. Bareback, of more lovable "characters" like Jimmy from the elevator.

He told me the other day -- he frequently gives me a hug in the elevator afterwards. I know he does Senator Hatch often, too, who kindly gives him ties, some of which I question the taste of, Orrin...

(LAUGHTER)

... but he kindly gives ties.

Heartwarming, indeed. Let's all share in a good-natured laugh about Jimmy and those ker-aazy ties Orrin gives him because he thinks it is funny to see a retard in a kooky tie. Ha ha ha. Christ's asscrack, this is creepy.

2.

If in the midst of Katrina, the hearings, and the public radio pledge drive you missed this story about incensensed parents intent to rid the school libraries from "horribly obscene, explicit, pornographic books" by Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Francesca Lia Block, E.L. Doctorow, Julia Alvarez, Bret Easton Ellis, Alice Sebold and that perennial favorite of book-burners, Judy Blume-- well, consider yourself lucky.

Laurie Taylor, the indignant mother who demanded the school library purge its shelves of such filth, and her organization, the sinesterly titled Parents Protecting The Minds Of Children has posted on its website not only a list of the offending titles but synopsis and juicy excerpts as well. On the page titled Shocking Pornographic Children's Sex Education Books in Arkansas School Libraries the featured link, in bright purple font about thrice the size of the next largest on the page, is Link to Shocking Pictures in Elementary books at Fayetteville, Arkansas School Library. Because we all know that there is nothing that anti-"pornography" nuts love to look at more than anything else, it's porn.

Not that it's not obvious that children need to be protected from vile pornographic images such as this:

or this:

No joke, these images are posted there as examples of pornography. Poor Taylor, what a sad, sad life hers must be for her to see a cartoon woman drawn seemingly by the hand behind a whole line of Hallmark greeting cards examining her vulva in a hand mirror and think "porn! evil, sexy, graphic, obscene, hard-core porn!" Or the couple. I mean, the corny cartoon couple, who are clearly in a loving, committed relationship, as they are shown in a bed canopied by a goddamn sprinkling of hearts-- hearts, for god's sakes, hearts. But maybe it was the caption that offended her so:

Most often, they have sexual intercourse because it feels good

Putrid vice, indeed.

Posted by hissycat at September 20, 2005 03:11 AM

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