Ok, next infringement of freedom brought to you courtesy of Christian Right Old White Dudes (I’m gonna call them the CROWD from now on. You might not find it particularly catchy, but I thought it was amusing. The CBS story has snippets of both sides, but it seems that the supporters of the bill, which makes it illegal to transport minors across state lines to get abortions in states without parental consent notice, have a fluffy happy bunny mentality, so far removed from the reality that is driving young girls to get help in avoiding a parental confrontation, it’s just not funny. Of course, a girl who gets pregnant at a young age has a fluffy happy bunny relationship with her parents. In fact, it may be so fluffy and happy that her Dad or Uncle is the daddy! And maybe they have a fluffy happy bunny time at home getting beaten up when the parents are drunk or high! That sure would be a great family moment to break the news and ask for a ride to the clinic, dontchathink?

Parents who have good relationships with their daughters don’t need parental consent laws. They’ve talked to their daughters about the facts of life, they’ve taught them about morals, about actions and consequences, but at the same time, let the daughters know that they will be loved and supported no matter what.

Who needs parental consent? The parents who haven’t given their daughters enough support to give them things to do other than sneak out and fool around unsupervised. The parents who’ve imposed a strict code of behavior and brooked no deviation from that, warned of dire, frightful consequences if their rules are not followed to the letter. The parents who abuse their children. The parents, in short, who had a hand in getting their daughters into the situation in the first place. The ones that the girls are so afraid of that they have to have the procedure done in utmost secrecy. The ones who, in all honesty, don’t really deserve to know or have a say in it.

Mr. Bush said in regard to this, “Transporting minors across state lines to bypass parental consent laws regarding abortion undermines state law and jeopardizes the lives of young women”. Well, of course. Because unless they have a boatload of money and time, they’re going to be forced to have it done on some hack’s kitchen table. The abortion is expensive. Transportation is expensive. Parental consent laws make it so that the procedure is delayed, and the later the pregnancy is, the more difficult and expensive the abortion is. And physically dangerous. Given that, a poor girl, finding herself in that situation and afraid to tell her parents is going to find someone to do it illegally, cheaply, and sometime in the next week. So, yeah, if they didn’t have to get parental consent or go across state lines, they’d be able to go somewhere close and have a real doctor do it in a sterile environment, so bypassing the laws jeopardizes their lives. Oh, wait, no – it’s the law itself doing that. But that’s not what the CROWD wants to believe, or wants us to believe.

In actuality, the CROWD has it all worked out! Check this quote:

Abstinence is the best way to prevent teenage pregnancy, responded Senator Tom Coburn, R-Okla. “How many people really think it’s in the best interest of young people to be sexually active outside of marriage? Does anything positive ever come from that?” Coburn asked.

This is sheer genius. To clear up the whole abortion issue, we’ll just tell kids not to have sex. I’m absolutely stunned by the simplicity and elegance of this solution, and I can see how it can be applied to all the other problems in the country. . .

Eliminate welfare by telling everyone to go get a job.

Eliminate hunger by telling people to eat something.

Eliminate homelessness by telling people to find a place to live.

Eliminate the healthcare crisis by telling people not to get sick.

Eliminate the war on drugs by telling people not to take drugs.

Oh, man, it’s so simple, and it’s been right here under our noses the whole time! You go, Mr. Coburn, your grasp on crisis management is spot-on, and if you aren’t on the Republican presidential ticket for the next election, then something’s definitely wrong with this world!

So, there’s an article in the Observer today subtly, yet not-so-subtly, standing behind Mr. Bush’s veto of the stem cell research bill. Oh, in case you want to know, you can find out who voted how by clicking here. Anyway, the author supported the ban in part by revisiting the public announcement Bush made after signing the veto, with the 18 children who were born from leftover embryos from other peoples’ in vitro (I’m not that easily grossed out, but I personally wouldn’t be too keen on carrying a child in my body whose genetic parents were strangers to me, but that’s me. . .). His statement was “these children are not spare parts.”

Well, Mr. Bush, their estimated 400-500,000 brothers and sisters are. Unless you act definitively and follow up this stem cell research ban with not only a ban on future IVF procedures, but also a bill that will forcibly implant each and every one of these 400,000-plus embryos into women of childbearing age so that they can be born, it will all be just another neocon piece of hypocrisy!!! The only difference that your veto has made is that these hundreds of thousands of embryos will either age to inviability or be destroyed without having served any purpose whatsoever.

The whole IVF/fertility enhancement thing just sends me into spasms, rolling on the floor and clutching my head because of the onslaught of gross hypocrisy from people who are selectively christian. I have to give the Catholic church props on this one in particular – the pope has, indeed, seen that if they’re going to say that life begins at conception, then they have to oppose procedures that produce spare embryos. However, your average John and Mary Bornagain don’t seem to have that sensibility. They head off to the fertility clinic and take that Clomid and make those embryos, and when the doctors say that they really shouldn’t leave all those half dozen babies in that one womb because they’ll face a lifetime of suffering from underdevelopment and premature birth, suddenly they go all “against God’s will” on us. Look, it was God’s will that you not have kids, or you wouldn’t have needed the fertility clinic, so what’s one more violation, for the good of the kids, eh? Don’t you care about them? Oh, wait – no, you actually don’t, because you’ve plopped a few more of them into the deep freeze for later, and since life begins at conception, there’s not much difference between trapping a soul for several decades in a mass of cells without sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch, and giving birth deliberately to a disabled child – one who might not have been disabled if you’d done what the doctors told you. My brain is hurting already, and it’s not even 8AM.

OK, so we have a scorecard here – Have babies through scientific enhancement, God happy! Give babies best chance at long and healthy life, God mad! Make thousands of extra embryos and freeze them for 30 years until they’re dead, God happy! Use extra embryos for research so they do some good instead of letting them rot, God mad! If this makes my head spin, I can only imagine what it’s doing to poor God.