Sarcasm Rebound

I find it hilarious that in an article calling people stupid for their band names, the authors tell the band Def Leppard to "save people the energy of mocking you," but then illustrate the post with a shot from the made-for-VH1-so-bad-it's-good "Hysteria, the Def Leppard Story" and not the actual band. Hey Cracked guys: This is the band.

The "civil rights" fallacy.

There's an internal contradiction in position of gay marriage supporters who insist that marriage is a civil right, but claim that civil unions not called marriage but affording full marriage benefits are not sufficient. Is it the "rights" you want, then the rights you should get - why should you care what they're called? The answer, of course, is that what they want is to be considered "normal," so they want to their relationships called the same thing that "normal" relationships are called. By insisting on the name, you're changing from a negative right to a positive right - you want to force others to have to call you married, no matter what their consciences tell them to do.

Neither am I convinced by the argument that two gay people married doesn't affect whether my husband and I get divorced. It's my kid that I'm worried about, the culture she's going to grow up in. I want her to grow up and get married to a husband she loves so that she can experience having children of her own. I want to have the legal right to teach her morality and to express a preference for heterosexual marriage within the strictures of my conscience and faith without having her public school teachers undermining me. I want children in need of adopting to have the opportunity to be placed in a home with a mother and a father. I want religious-based adoption services to be able to express a preference for heterosexual married couples without being shut down (see: Catholic charities in Massachusetts).

Definitionally, marriage cannot be between two people of the same gender. Marriage is between a man, a woman, and God. Homosexual behavior is forbidden by God. So that's where the religious people are coming from. Calling a state-sanctioned homosexual union a "marriage" is an affront to their beliefs. That's not negotiable for people of faith. But I think they do a disservice to the cause of religion in general by stopping there, because the fact is, a lot of people hear you say "God" and go, "that doesn't apply to me." I think religious people should do better explaining why marriage should be between a man and a woman in secular terms when appealing to secular people. Otherwise, they are going to think that your statement of faith is merely arbitrary bigotry and they're going to become even more prejudiced against believers.

I think there are purely secular reasons for allowing the state to define marriage as between a man and a woman. The state has a HUGELY compelling interest, I would say primary interest, in its own self-preservation. Procreative unions are necessary both for the continuation of the state and the continuation of the state-as-we-know-it. Husband/wife led families can raise children who are knowledgable and comfortable with the idea of procreative unions of their own. Can gay people raise heterosexual children? Of course, but if you're talking about incentives, pushes, that could make the next generation engage in reproductive unions occur earlier and more frequently. With birth rates falling to below replacement rates in industrialized nations around the world, I think the governmental differentiation between hetero- and homo-sexual unions passes legal muster. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than other government social engineering plans (see: mortgage interest deduction).

I also see danger in expanding the definition of marriage because it is susceptible to being defined out of existence. I don't have a problem with the state recognizing heterosexual marriages that will not result in children because of the enforcement problem - bad enough for the state to interfere with one's uterus, but God help us when it starts burrowing up into the ovaries to take a peek before issuing licenses. But if definitionally non-reproductive unions are permitted that are called "marriage," protected by law from having people express any preferenecs contrary to those unions, but conferring all the same benefits, that 1) dilutes the benefit to the state that accrues by favoring heterosexual marriage and 2) in doing so, places a higher calculus on legal reasons, as opposed to procreative reasons, when determining whether to bond. I don't think even the gay marriage activists can deny that allowing two people of the same gender to "marry" requires a radical cultural shift from any kind of understanding of "marriage" that has existed in the past. The nonmarried will feel like suckers for not marrying, for example, their college roommates to get in-state tuition as a married spouse, because everyone knows that you just sign a piece of paper and get benefits. Unlike heterosexual marriages, there is no accompanying risk of children to offset that legal benefit.

I see the defining out of existence thing happening with "human" rights. Animal rights people who want to grant some limited rights to chimpanzees as our nearest human relatives (see: France), and then how it's a violation of animal rights to eat meat at all, even though humans have been doing so since the dinosaurs (that's a Sarah Palin joke), but purportedly serious people think that robots and plants should have rights too (see: "flowers shouldn't be decapitated needlessly" people - which, flowers don't have heads, those are really their reproductive organs you're cutting off when you pick a bloom, but that's not somewhere you really want to go, do you?). And then human rights mean nothing, people wonder why we treat chimps any different than babies, and actual human fetuses aren't entitled to everything because we're all the same and we eat meat, so why should that matter. Ditto animal-human hybrids geneticists work to create in the name of medical research. WTF? Conclusion: You start defining things away from their essential meanings, and then your definition no longer means anything and the meaning itself is devalued.

I hate the way these gay "rights" debates have created and calcified divisions in our society. These debates always seem to presuppose that, for example, I am a heterosexual because I am wholly fulfilled in a relationship with a man, notwithstanding that there are extremely few men and probably a very few women with whom that could be the case. There are so many ways for human beings to be intimate with each other, sexually, emotionally, psychically. But if one kind of intimacy is stimulated by one kind of situation, you have to jump into the gay box or the straight box or the bi-box. If you enjoy/need emotionally intimate relationships with girlfriends, even physically affectionate relationships, then you're a lesbian, even though you may not want those same girlfriends touching you certain places (I'm thinking of Anne Shirley's "bosom friends" - people don't touch each other the way they used to). And because I don't get out much, I'm thinking of Dumbledore and Grindelwald - here we've read about this faceted, intense, tumultuous, and meaningful relationship between the two men, but then here comes J.K. Rowling months later saying "Dumbledore is gay" and now we're not thinking about the relationship in its uniquely fascinating ways, we're thinking (I'm thinking) oh, Dumbledore likes male members in a certain portion of his own anatomy, throw him in the queer box, now we know where to put him.

Everything about today's debate reduces human relationships to orifices and appendages. I think it's sad.

The end of bigotry? Um, no.

I'm interested to see how the newly dominant leftists will disclaim their bigoted fringe. Expressions of racism on the left (for example, the Clarence Thomas hearings) haven't been seen as part of the Democratic mainstream because of the Democrats explicit focus on promotion of minority issues. Pro-border enforcement Republicans get unfairly tarred as racists because there are some racists that support enforcement and there is no real focus on minority issues in the Republican platform (because the focus is on equality of opportunity for all people, not particular groups). What will the Democrats do if the American mainstream starts to believe that the Democratic agenda is a mere pretext for anti-Christian bigotry?

The Christianist popular front began with the Romney strategy. Then it morphed into Prop 8, funded by $20 million of Mormon money. The leadership of the LDS church has every right to do this; but equally gay people and their families now have every right to highlight the Mormon church as an enemy of civil rights and of gay people everywhere. This will be decried as bigotry. But gays are not fighting to remove the civil rights of Mormons; but Mormons have successfuly campaigned to remove the civil rights of gays.

. . .

Gay people have every right to regard the Mormon church hierarchy as a mortal enemy.

This today from everyone's favorite anti-Israel gay gossip conspiracy blogger at the Atlantic, to whom I will not link. Note how he admits his own bigotry and then doubles down, justifing bigotry as a political counter-tactic and proclaiming that the faith leaders of millions of Americans are his mortal enemies.

There are undoubtedly anti-Christian bigots. There are, in all likelihood, Democrats, the party most overtly concerned about the separation of church and state. Their platform provides no cover for this particular expression of bigotry. But does the Democratic mainstream want us to believe they're all engaged in a battle against "The Christianist Front"? I'm very interested to see how the mainstream left deals with its bigoted fringe.

87% of Americans self-identify as Christians. Letting Andrew Sullivan set the tone of Democratic governance is not, I'm guessing, going to serve the Democratic party well electorally.

Yes Yes Yes!

Obama-voting Althouse asks the exact right question:

So who are the frontrunners for 2012?

That's the wrong question. The right question is: What can Republicans do to make us want them again?

And I'm going to put the "lameness" tag on this post in anticipation of the answer: Sit back and wait for the Democrats to screw up.

We need to make the case for our candidates and our message and start doing it now. Human beings aren't perfect, politicians especially, but we need to not only keep the supporters we had, but convince MORE people.

Sarah Palin, I'm looking at you. She's one of our most promising up-and-comers, but after her public filleting we're going to find a way to get more people on her/our side. This is going to take discipline.

It feels like morning in July.

It's going to be a very long day. The Republican party needs to rebuild the brand, making the most of the current retreat to build its strength back up and get ready for our next moment of opportunity. We're going to have to be smart about it.

Knives out for Obama is not going to work, not for awhile. The fact is, Obama doesn't need us. He's got the votes, the House and Senate, and the "mandate." For right now, let's let him have it. We believe in conservative principles because we know that's what leads to the best results for Americans. Let's let America see the full effect of the policies of the left now that the Obama/Reid/Pelosi Democrats don't have the political cover of "ooh the nasty Republicans wouldn't let us HELP you." It will be easier to take power from the Dems if we let them self-destruct.

We know so little about Obama, but there's one thing we know for a fact: Obama wants to be popular, but he'll always take the path of least resistance. Obama wants us right now, to prove his bipartisan unity credentials, but he doesn't need us. If we send the message that he cannot win us over, he will not try. We won't help ourselves by undermining what little power over public opinion we may still have. And ultimately, being seen as not trying to tear him down will add to our credibility and hasten the day when power will shift back to us.

In shaping the new party, we need to get past ideology and back to values. Ideology is too flimsy a tentpole for the big one we need. We can't all agree on the best way to achieve a good, safe, prosperous country, but we need to make sure that American knows that those are our goals. We don't believe in, for example, free trade or free markets for their own sakes, we believe in them because as a practical matter, these policies work to actually help people. America doubts our motives.

We need better candidates. Drumming the non-ideologically "pure" out of the party isn't going to help us. We're better off with Peggy Noonan with us than against us. Intra-party wars aren't going to help. I don't want to see the hinted-at Romney vs. Palin bloodbath. Let's not let the Democrats win this war through attrition.

Finally, we need to build a better grassroots, with the aim of getting our message out no matter what the media does. The MSM knows its got egg on its face for its campaign coverage, and it's going to try to regain credibility by picking at its newly annointed. There are those on the left who believe that the media is biased against them, and the media's newfound "integrity" is going to add fuel to that fire. We need to build a culture that marginalizes and dissipates the power of the old media. Turning off the TV seems like a good place to start. Any kind of information monopoly needs to be busted. The more channels of information everyone has, the better it is for us because our message is better.

I'm relieved that the election is over. We know where we stand. We don't need to lose anymore soliders fighting this one. We lost. All of our resources need to be put into making ourselves better, because America is going to need us, and probably sooner than it thinks.

Things are not fine for the middle class as I know it.

I listen to right-wing radio and for the most part agree with what I hear, but I can't help getting annoyed at the pundits who keep insisting that the Obama tax refund plan is meaningless to the middle class. Twice today I had to stifle the urge to call in (Gallagher and Hewitt) to tell them that I don’t care anymore that we’re not technically in a recession yet. It’s coming. It will hurt. And it’s going to hurt families making on less than $150,000, all of whom are, we are told, getting a refund. But when a man promises my family $1,800, that’s not nothing.

I could use that money for the great Democratic boogey-man, those “unexpected health care expenses” used to justify every ill-advised expansion of welfare boondoggles. Oddly enough, I have some of those. My toddler started day care eight weeks ago and has been ill for the last seven. We have world-class health insurance through my employer, even though it takes a big chunk of out of my take-home pay. Still, ER copays aren't cheap. At least competition in healthcare is alive for now -- we’ve gotten to to try the sparkling new local ER, where a child-phobic respiratory therapist accidentally hurt our toddler with a too-large suction catheter, and then last week we got to visit the run-down dump of a downtown children’s hospital where the cheerful effociency of the pediatric nurses nearly distracted us from the holes in the drywall. End result, we’re down hundreds of dollars this month in copays. But finally, we pray, she is safe and well. Our family is happy. Our fundamentals are strong.

Our finances are not.

According to the Interactive Class-Finder on New York Times website (how British!), I’m high-upper-middle because of my “prestigious” attorney job, but Obama just thinks I’m middle-class. I make less than $100,000 per year, but I’m likely to hit that number in the next 2-3 years. We live in a decent older house in a nice city just 30 minutes commute from downtown. Our daughter goes to a lovely church-run daycare while my husband goes to graduate school. We’re the American dream family: just starting out, working hard, and stretching, stretching to reach something better.

But there’s a pretty good chance we won't make it. We gambled by buying a high-priced house at what turned out to be the market peak. We hedged out bets by paying extra to fix the rate, which apparently makes us suckers - no balloon-payment holiday for us!. The mortgage is hefty. Both of them are, actually. They eat 80% of what I take home. In the meantime, the family eats well enough, because I now cook everything from scratch. Even though we’re poorer now than ever, I actually feel more connected to traditionally conservative values – it’s hard not to identify with my foremothers while I’m baking bread, soaking beans, boiling sugar for desserts and jams. But some of the fun leaves my one-time hobby when I have to calculate the cost-per-head of everything that goes into the dish.

But we get along ok as we dance right along the line, generally spinning just this side of solvency but occasionally skipping over it. We still buy books and lunches and basic cable TV, and if our kid wears clearance Garanimals then at least she always has the expensive best-quality diapers next to her skin. Scrimping is our new normal; our definition of "splurge" has changed radically. We’re lucky enough to have student loans and credit cards get us down the home stretch, just 24 months until my husband gets his professional degree and starts working. We've bought the American dream, and are leveraging into it everything we can grasp. The expectation of riches doesn't make the rags anymore fun to wear.

$1,800. That's a lot of money to buy nice things with, things that would make a difference in our daily lives. It's a smaller dream, to be sure. But it's the bigger Christmas celebration with more people I've been wishing for. A trip to the overseas military base to see my brother's new baby. New suits for a new body instead of wedging into the industrial Spanx (generic-brand, of course) to fit into pre-pregnancy clothes. Hell, it’s three pairs of earrings! Or it’s one little thing every month with the money freed up by paying down a credit card.

So what’s the problem? I pay taxes. I wish I paid fewer taxes. I’m not going to have to pay more, if I can take Obama at his word. I’ll get what I want and others will pay. I ought to be happy that Robama Hood wants to steal from the rich and give it to me.

But I'm not. Why?

Obvious knee-jerk lefty response: I’m too stupid to know what’s good for me. But that’s not it, precisely the opposite. I’m against this stupid “tax cut” for pure self-interest. If I let him soak the rich now, I’ll never be rich. Debts must be paid, books balanced. If he taxes the rich and the corporations, there will be fewer jobs. When my husband graduates, his student loans will come due, job or no job. There is no way we can pay them on my salary alone. If we default, we’re just contributing to the financial downward spiral. That’s not going to help the large financial instutitions. Any more bad investments and the insurance investors are going to feel the squeeze, giving them less to spend on . . . cha-ching . . . lawyers like me! As the maxim goes, good attorneys are easier to replace than good secretaries, so let’s see where that leaves us. . . ah yes, not able to make the mortgage payments we were making previously. Thus continueth the circle of failure. And that presumes that everything that Obama is saying is true: that there will be a tax cut, and that I will get it. Already one of my state's U.S. Representative had the brilliant idea of having the federal government cut tax cut checks directly to the states, not the people. Federalism, indeed.

The country needs economic growth. I need economic growth. I’m not selling my future for 1,800 pieces of silver, even if it comes from “the rich” or corporations or robber-barons or even those making just a little bit more than me. I don’t give a rat’s ass about fairness in the tax code or “helping” the middle class at the expense of anyone else. Obama is right that things are not fine. They’re not fine for me. But there’s not-fine for right now and there’s looming disaster, and I’m ok with sucking along at not-fine for awhile while we regroup and beat it together, instead of whining about who should be hardest hit.

So when I hear right-wing pundits claim that no one needs any of Obama’s tax-refunds, I get frustrated. That argument doesn’t persuade me, and I’m on your side. But in the meantime, there are people suffering as there always are. We don't need to belittle the plight of those desperate for some relief who reach for the dreamlet Obama dangles. We need to tell them about the better dream they’re selling out.

I am middle class. I am struggling. And I am voting against Obama so that one day I won't have to struggle.

Defending the indefensible - with nice gory personal details at the end.

It's funny that the conservative blogosphere seems to have largely ignored the debate quotation that has the liberal bloggers going out of their minds. Make that air quotation - McCain's reference to the "health of the mother" justification for abortion.

While fully recognizing that most Americans would disagree with me, I think that McCain's position is insufficiently pro-life. But that doesn't stop this HuffPo guy from deciding that McCain is the devil for using scare quotes around the term "women's health" when used as a justification for abortion. I think McCain deserves to be defended.

HuffPo guy ignores the fact that "health of the mother" has been used to justify abortions, even late-term abortions, for problems most people don't consider health problems. According to the LA Times:

The official position of NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group that endorsed Obama in May, states: “A health exception must also account for the mental health problems that may occur in pregnancy."

It's not a far leap to get from there to purely emotional distress. Which, don't get me wrong, I don't want pregnant women to be upset. Even when it occurs, however, it's never fetus intentionally trying to make your life miserable. Why should the fetus be the one to pay the ultimate price? But in today's world, if you dare to believe that emotional stress doesn't have the same moral weight as killing someone, that makes YOU evil. Question the morality of the pro-abortion folks, and watch the liberal villagers come charging with their pitchforks.

Which is appropriate, because they can't resist using them on straw men.

Arguments in this area always seem to assume that any questioning of the "health" exception as most broadly applied means that you would rather women just die. Actually, though, Senator McCain doesn't think your concern for your health is extreme. He thinks your concern for your "health" is extreme ("health" defined as mental stress, emotional turmoil, or inconvenience). His air quotes are appropriate because actual health as traditionally defined is not what he's talking about. McCain supports the health of the mother exception for abortion when it's talking about physical health. Obama distanced himself from the overly broad NARAL "health" exception also.

Tellingly, Ms. Jezebel's real-world example has nothing to do with actual health either:

[G]o read Gretchen Voss's story about hers [second trimester abortion]— why she had one, how it wasn't avoidable and how ridding the world of such procedures would have made her life much harder.

So I read it. What did I find? Ms. Voss's fetus was diagnosed with a severe neural defect that made it likely to die in utero or shortly after birth in gruesome fashion. That is enough to cause no end of mental distress to Ms. Voss and her husband. That would have happened either way. But how much emotional distress was saved by not letting nature take its course? How much emotional distress was saved in not letting the pregnancy miscarry a few weeks down the line, a few months, a few years of short birth? Is that distress more or less than the distress caused by this:

Unlike a simple first-trimester abortion, which can be completed in one quick office visit, a second-trimester termination is much more complicated, a two-day minimum process. He started it that day by inserting four laminaria sticks made of dried seaweed into my cervix. It was excruciating, and he apologized over and over as I cried out in pain. When I left the examining room, my mom and my husband were shocked -- I was shaking and ghostly white. The pain lasted throughout the night as the sticks collected my body's fluids and expanded, dilating my cervix just like the beginning stages of labor.

That's horrifying. To be asked to kill your child is horrifying too. Is it more or less distressing to have to hold the power of life and death over your child? Is it more or less distressing to do it when family and friends are trying to help you, the person they know and love, by advising you to terminate the life that you're making and that you love? Even if you don't love your fetus, how much stress is enough to justify killing someone?

Ms. Voss's experience colored her experience of her second pregnancy:

As the rest of our prenatal testing results started to pile up, all of them completely normal, we began to let hope back into our hearts. Of course, we know that anything can happen at any time. We'll never forget that. There will be many more months of worry -- and then, I guess, a lifetime more.

Anything can happen at any time. Why kill the fetus? What chance of futile mental distress is worth what chance that doctors may have gotten it wrong? How much distress is worth a life?

The ready availability of abortion detrimentally impacts women's and babies' health. Why spend resources pushing difficult and expensive in utero surgeries when you can just start over with a new pregnancy? But if there's no one pushing the envelope with this treatment, medical science will never progress. The hospital nearest my house has a policy that if you come in with a miscarriage at less than 20 weeks, they will not try to save the pregnancy. Start over. Let it die. Death doesn't matter when you're spared the gory details.

I believe that death does matter. Or better stated: Life matters. The lives of babies born and unborn, and the lives of the men and women they grow up to be. All of these statements presuppose that the "tissue" growing inside a woman is a human and a life, and that human life is worth protecting.

Because let's not play games about where life begins. We know a fetus is alive. It's alive just the same as I'm alive and our betta fish is alive. My hamsters used to be alive, and rumor has it that the brown plant on my patio may be alive even yet. A fetus, or embryo, or blastocyst is alive the way tasty cows and corn plants are alive, until they're butchered and harvested to make my dinner. The question isn't when a fetus is alive. The question is "should we care."

We don't care when some things are killed. I'm happy when roaches are killed. My only regret when celery plants get killed is that I might have to eat them too. But are human cells at the earliest stages more like celery plants or more like babies? If anything, right at the outset, they probably look a lot like bacteria, single-celled organisms. But I'm an educated person, so I know that two things can share similar characteristics, but still be very different. Bacteria and blastocysts are freakin' tiny. But so are hydrogen and helium atoms. Only one explodes. Terminating the life of a fetus isn't quite like cutting off a pinky toe either, even though that's living human tissue. Limbs don't have a separate chromosomal identity. Fertilized eggs carry human DNA, a complete set of unique chromosomes. Obliterating a fetus obliterates all of the descendants that won't be created from itself - preemptive tribal genocide. Fetuses are human, and they are alive.

If that sounds overly academic, that's because it is. By six weeks, that living human has an eye spot, upper and lower jaws coming in, buds for arms and legs. How many women even know they're pregnant then, especially if it's unexpected? Click through the graphics, watch it grow. It's got these weird nubbly arms and legs, but it's still a living human. God help us if the standard is that it's ok to kill the weird-looking humans. (I, for one, would be screwed.)

Analytically, life begins at conception. Human life. A separate human life. Should we care? Only if we care about human life at all. If we don't care about human life in general, we wouldn't care about protecting a mother's health, comfort, and dignity either. How much should we care? After all, the pre-viable fetus needs the mother to live, and that is not without cost.

I recognize that the interests of mother and fetus may not always be in accord. But protecting human life has to be the highest moral value. When you weigh the competing interests of mother and child, life trumps all. If the mother is going to be inconvenienced, the fetus wins. Mental distress versus life? Life is more important. If the pregnancy risks the mother's life? Whoa, there. That's different. Pro-life doesn't say that the fetus is more important than the mother. Life = life. Arguing against a pro-life position by saying you are anti-woman makes no sense in this moral framework and certainly isn't persuasive. Couching the question in mom versus baby begs the question of how to compare the moral weight of the interests at issue. The emotional toll brought on by a difficult, unwanted, and or seemingly-futile pregnancy can be devastating and profound. Preventing that emotional and mental distress would be worth great cost. But not the cost of taking someone else's life.

I sympathize with Ms. Voss more than I can properly explain. But I wonder too about her family, her "Catholic father and Republican father-in-law." They seem so hopeless. "Anything can happen," she says, while acting as though death is certain. I can't help but wonder how much of the residual sadness she feels could have been avoided or relieved by taking solace in the fact that she did all she could do. Physically and emotionally, she wasn't ready to go. She admits fighting the anesthesia to hold on to being pregnant just a few minutes longer. How can we know what would have happened had she let things go on? How can we know what damage was done to her soul (or psyche, if you prefer) in deciding to kill the child she so desperately wanted. By having the abortion, we'll never know. We can never know, in this world, how it would have been different if all the people who were killed had been allowed to live.

I used to be pro-choice, rabidly so. I hate government, and I don't want it fiddling in my uterus. I was fiscal conservative/social liberal because I thought people were almost always better off being left alone. Life disabused me of this misguided notion. The culture we live in matters. There are people who are vulnerable, who are sick, and who need help in any society. If the culture doesn't care about them or their problems, humanity suffers.

In our culture, abortion is legal. It is, to be blunt, less messy than other ways of having a pregnancy terminate. Pregnancy is awful in ways you cannot possibly imagine, and I could not possibly explain. And other women have much worse pregnancies than I did. Add this to tremendous social and institutional pressure in favor of abortion for poor women, black women, school-age girls and women, women with "imperfect" or disabled fetuses. Pregnant women are treated with contempt and loathing in many parts of society, especially the workplace. I don't think people like to be reminded so viscerally of the fact that we're so animal. Birthrates decline as countries prosper.

So much as I hate to admit it, the culture matters. If our culture truly valued human life in all its forms, women wouldn't walk into hospitals while having a miscarriage and wait in the waiting room as a low priority because triage determines that there's not really anything they can do for you. A medical system that valued human life in all its forms wouldn't send you a doctor who just shakes his head while you try and fail to get the words out, to explain through your tears that you've read articles about 21-week old fetuses that lived and you're at 19-and-a-half so please, please take a chance on me. A life-loving culture wouldn't tell you it was hospital policy not to even try and as a matter of fact, there's a separate wing of the hospital you have to check in to if you want to save your baby but you haven't hit the "right" gestational age to qualify.

Abortion is the easy way to get out of the messy facts of life, like neural tube defects and downs syndrome and otherwise unexplained miscarraige. It's the easy answer we let doctors give when they don't know what to do, and trust me, when you're pregnant, you discover how frighteningly little anyone knows about the awesome act of creating life.

* * * * *

The emergency room doctor gave us some privacy while he left to go schedule the D&C. I didn't want to face delivering the remains of my dead child at home. They'll just take it out, he said. A friend in the same position only took one day off work when her first fetus was determined to be "growing too slow" and removed. It was New Years Day. I wouldn't even need to take vacation.

My ob-gyn came in a few hours later to do the pre-op. Yet another pelvic exam left me so sore I could hardly move. Hospital policy required a Foley catheter for an ultrasound that hurt every second it was in. Insult to injury - the ultrasound showed that my body was having severe contractions. I don't know what it showed the baby's body as doing. All they told me was "dead."

"Schedule the procedure," I demanded. I know my rights.

I was angry when my doctor told me it was better not to do any medical intervention if at all possible. What were we supposed to tell our families? "Oh hey, my dead baby is going to fall out of me any minute. And Happy Holidays, by the way." Ever tactful, we told them exactly that.

And then we waited.

How many days are you supposed to wait for your dead baby to fall out of you?

We waited 22 more weeks.

There is such relief in not having to be God.

She is so beautiful it will make your heart stop.

I nearly killed her.