Saturday, March 30, 2013

Perhaps the horse might talk.

A court Jester is said to have made a bet with his king that he could make a horse talk within some length of time. When asked why he would be so reckless as to bet on an impossible thing, he replied:  before the time is up, I might die, the king might die and perhaps the horse might talk.  So it seems to be with the anti-abortion crowd and its attempts to overturn a Supreme Court ruling based on constitutional presumptions.

Easter, which has been around far, far longer than Christianity, is the spring holiday when Western traditions celebrate the Moon and fertility goddess Oestra, from whom the name Easter derives.  She was often depicted with rabbit ears like the Playboy bunnies and for the same reason. Easter, like so much of what Christianity has turned into in this third millennium, is all about sex and procreation.

Funny perhaps that they've picked the season to make another attempt to forbid women to terminate pregnancies; usually for any reason. Arkansas and North Dakota passed laws this month forbidding any abortion after sensitive (and vaginally intrusive) instruments could detect a foetal heartbeat.     Other states seem to be considering this end-run around Roe Vs. Wade.  Of course that landmark decision says that states cannot ban abortion before a fetus is viable outside the womb, but this doomed sort of legislative Hail Mary pass is usually done in the same spirit one buys lottery tickets.  The odds are ridiculous, but you never know. 

It also helps keep the pseudo-religious congressmen visible and thus more likely to get those Bible thumping votes.  Too bad there's really no biblical support for the fuss about personhood for something that doesn't breathe, but when did popular theology require anything resembling logical or factual or even Biblical consistency?  We're dealing with passionate groups who worry that the universe will grow dark or that some God-O-Love will not only kill us, but consign us mercilessly to eternal torture should we prevent an ovum from implanting itself in some uterine wall.

Of course having a few pulsating cells in a proto-heart doesn't meet the test of viability as stipulated by the high court, but as I said, it's not about logic, it's about conviction and it's about harassing the courts and being seen to be harassing the courts and to be in support of the Theocratic insurgents who have no interest whatever in popular sovereignty or any real concept of Democracy.

The Court has repeatedly deemed laws of this sort to be unconstitutional but to a group that not coincidentally asserts that the real constitution is the Christian Bible, there's no obstacle here if we can only get rid of the heretics, atheists and other spawn of Satan. Therein lies the real danger to our future. The Christian Bible fails to denounce and even supports slavery and the subjugation of women along with the notion that political power derives from people who can get away with declaring that God appointed them.

This attack will probably fail but like a Zombie Apocalypse, the attackers keep coming at you even if they're chopped in pieces. With endless and implacable onslaughts, who can tell?  With enough time, who can tell?  Perhaps the horse might talk.

 Far more than an attack on the personal sovereignty, the ownership of  one's body and its functions that seem to underlie the self-evident assumptions of our nation, this religious war, the Crusade against reproductive rights and control of one's body and destiny is a denial of the stated fundamentals of our nation, a struggle against Democracy.  Perhaps it's time to spend less time on the hysterical distractions and diversions in the headlines and take notice.

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