You Can Have My Fetus and Eat It Too

I have always been one of those kids that were way too involved into politics at way too early of an age. I am not talking about those extra large kids who would wear their father’s suit to class every day and were balding by the age of 12, but you know still into politics. I remember being on the playground in Middle School where kids were trying to play bump-out and I would be raging about the ridiculousness of the Iraq War. While other kids were figuring out how to use their boners, I would be reading the Bible, not out of curiosity or a search for a new found spirituality, but almost out of this desperate vindictiveness. I would put myself into a frenzy so I could find passages like Exodous 35:2 that said my mother should be put to death for working on the Sabbath as though that screaming that verse at the Heuers somehow validated my entire claim about religion’s illegitimacy.

It took me a while to realize what the real reason for why I have been so into politics and I think it is because I thrive on uncomfortableness. Even that sentence probably has a lot of my readers nodding their heads up and down. While others try and step craftily away from offending any group, I dive straight for the heart. Offending people with boner jokes and liberally showing my small butt were my bread and butter for so long that I didn’t realize that it just sort of morphed into how I debate politics. And if I can throw a Ja Rule reference in there, the happier I will be.

Using your words to persuade someone seems romantic and noble. Speaking with passion and excitement in your voice is how you begin to show the world your side of the argument, that you have something to say. Throwing some comedy and well crafted phrases in there allowed me to stand above the rest as a new voice in the debate and goddammit if I had to make my points by the swing set, I was going to do it.

Politics isn’t about having the most facts, but presenting those facts in an emotional and appealing way. Everyone has roughly the same facts (except Brian Williams and those babies at Fox News) so its how you view and twist those facts to make your side the victor. It’s by using your diction and charm to string sentences and prose together to hit at people’s hearts. There is no battleground of politics that doesn’t have some sort of emotional aspect to it, and if there was, I probably wouldn’t debate about it.

There is one debate however that has become so emotional that facts cannot be let in. Even the debate itself stops before it begins and any movement one side or the other means that you are weak and moving to the crazy side. I am of course talking about abortion.

49% of America believes abortion to be a moral right

48% of America believes abortion to be a moral abomination.

This is the definition of a lose-lose issue. It can only rile up your party base and alienate the other side. If social security is the 3rd rail of American politics, abortion is surely the nuclear reactor. Say one thing in the wrong light and you become politically radioactive to the point where your entire party disowns you.

Fucking no one wants to talk about this because everyone has opinion and 10 seconds into any conversation about it you either end up a murderer and you’re going to hell or you are systematically trying to control women’s bodies and pushing us back into the 1950s.

Now I could talk about the hundreds of stories that my mother saw while working for Planned Parenthood for 24 years. I could talk about my teachers and friend’s parents protesting in front of my mother’s work. I could talk about the young children who were brought to the picketing lines of Planned Parenthood to yell at vulnerable women as they enter the clinic. I could talk about any number of things and incite emotion and some truth into this debate, and I could win doing it, but that’s not what this issue needs.

Before you click away you beautiful angry conservatives on Facebook who only clicked on this blog post because they too wanted to find something to upend my entire argument, I am not going to get emotional in this post. Hell I am not even going to defend abortion in this debate, so take a breath and let’s have a conversation.

We need to de-escalate how we talk about abortion, because some serious fucking bullshit is going on because of how personal and clouded this conversation has gotten.

I am sure most of you by now have seen this video

Planned Parenthood Caught Selling Baby Parts!

Even the title seems comical. I mean I might have said Baby Guts instead of parts but I still laughed when I first read it. Immediately images come to mind of a blood thirsty abortion doctors ripping out fetus’ hearts and brains with their fangs so they can throw the discarded carcass onto their burning liberal hellfire. #BreakingSpawn #TeamObama #DefeatJesus

But if you have been watching this debate, it isn’t even about abortion. In no way are they talking about a women’s right to choose or even abortion itself. The entire debate, that entire video focuses on what happens after the abortion and what we do with the fetal tissue after the procedure. No one is talking about how to reduce abortions in this country or even the morality of the procedure itself. All this is what we do with the fetal tissue after the procedure.

This a debate where even that most basic fact is hard to get through. Virtually no reason or logic has been proposed in this debate and the Democrats haven’t been helping either. They have just been touting Planned Parenthood’s other successes such as their massive impact on the health care for low income women, their fight against cancer, and their efforts to administer free and low cost birth control to help end abortion all together.

But that’s because they are uncomfortable talking about this.. The Democrats don’t win when they talk about science, they win when they talk about poor women. By changing to the debate to women’s health care they have a high chance of winning. But I love science and this issue needs a healthy dose of something other than images of starving HIV infected women standing underneath Mitch McConnel’s penthouse and babies getting torn apart limb by limb for their precious organs.

What we need to talk about is scientific research. These fetuses have proved to be invaluable in terms of curing diseases, learning about the human body, and yes saving lives millions of lives.

It is really easy to get grossed out by the thought of this or those printed out little mutilated fetus pictures they pass out on your local college campus. But I am asking you to be tough and look at this from a non-emotional aspect. This program is not eugenics, it is closer to the Organ Donor Program. Consent is required for every fetus donation and it is comical to suggest Planned Parenthood is doing this for profit. The video even shows that the fetuses come with a $50 or $60 price tag attached to it. I don’t know where the fuck you have been but you can’t even get out of a doctor’s office with less than a $500 bill now a days. I promise you Planned Parenthood is not even breaking even with this fetal tissue donation.

Even if you believe that a fetus the size of a pomegranate seed is somehow a life, can you not make the rational realization to at least use that fetal tissue to save lives. Isn’t saving lives all what Pro-Life should be about?

Studies by the CDC have shown improved functions with parkinson's disease, autoimmune disease, stroke victims, anemia, cancer, immunodeficiency, corneal damage, blood and liver diseases, heart attack victims, diabetes, prenatal care, and countless other ailments once the patients used experimental therapies using embryonic stem cells. And you know what the most damning part of that is? It's only been in the last 7 years that this progress has been made. During the entirety of the Bush administration a ban on stem cell research was in place and it took until Obama came into office where the ban was lifted and the research had gotten done.

The most damning point of all is that miscarriages have dropped roughly 3% -5% each year and most of it has been attributed to the research done on aborted fetal tissue. Prenatal care and the care of the fetus has improved greatly once scientists were allowed to examine these aborted fetuses and save lives of both women having children as well improving the health of their fetus. They are using the freaking fetuses to save other fetuses! It's like a super fetus!!

And abortion isn’t a small practice about half of pregnancies among American women are unintended; about 4 in 10 of these are terminated by abortion. Twenty-one percent of all U.S. pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion. (AGI).

Are we really willing to throw away roughly 200,000 specimens every year because the religious right found out how to hide a go-pro and how to rebrand scientific research? Not only do I say no, but I say hell no.

I am as guilty as anyone when it comes to hyperbole, but I am sorry if I have more than a few hesitations when I hear the "baby organ farm argument" side of this. Especially because this is coming from the same group that told us homosexuality was an abomination, that abstinence was the only thing we should be teaching our children, condoms should be illegal, and that if you got pregnant from rape that means you liked it.

With politics it is hard to cut through the bullshit. There are a million ways to spin an issue and it can look like your side is 100% correct if you don’t back away from it. Maybe it's time we realize that Planned Parenthood isn’t hawking baby organs to cloning farms and that maybe there is a more reasoned way to debate this issue.

So Planned Parenthood you can have my aborted fetus and use it however you like. Just when you send it to the clone farm, remember that I want the Donald Trump option.

Live Deliberately
John Danger Kelly