FACT: Everyone has a mother.
Today's evil news brought you by motherfucking Rick Perry who has decided to re-open the debate by calling for a new special session to reconsider it. As if this were the most important thing going on in the world right now. As if time stands still so that they may continue to regulate women's reproductive functions. As if there aren't enough children already alive in the world in need of food, clothing, shelter.
Anyway, in case you missed it, SB 5 -- a draconian piece of legislation that would effectively outlaw abortion in Texas -- was defeated. After a heroic nearly-13-hour filibuster by Texas State Senator Wendy Davis, the gallery in the Texas capitol erupted to prevent voting on the bill until after midnight.
Here are the final moments if you missed them:
This is being discussed as a victory for women. But what is not being discussed is that this is not a "women's issue." Conception does not occur in a vacuum. So whether we believe that life begins there or not is not, ahem, germane to the issue with SB5.
It shouldn't take speaking for more than half a day and a gallery full of women screaming, to serve a reminder that women are only 50% of the cause of a pregnancy and should not be tasked with shouldering 100% of the fallout in the event of a medically dangerous or unwanted pregnancy.
The effects of legislation do not exist in a vacuum, either; we cannot isolate one gender from another in a society. This is not a case of a woman taking on a man. It's a case of a woman standing up for half of a whole society.
That is to say, if anyone suffers, we all suffer. What we do to each other, we do to ourselves. It seems ridiculous that we're, even in Rolling Stone (!) referring to Wendy Davis and opponents of this bill as some "feminist army." I would like to propose a HUMANIST-LET-US-STOP-BEING-DICKS-TO-EACHOTHER-MERELY-BECAUSE-WE-ARE-DIFFERENT army? (Or, if we must, I am officially requesting a team jersey with a caricature of my uterus on it. Thank you in advance.)
It's not about when human life starts...it's about creating an "OTHER" out of people with differences (different skin, abilities, gender, beliefs) and using that otherness to exert power.
That is so UNCIVILIZED. You animals!
And that is coming from someone who got spanked with a fucking ping pong paddle at Charlie Munger's New Year's Eve party last year after I crashed it with someone I met on the internets. OK? OK. So just fucking behave like humans, will you?
There are few things I would like to see in this next time-wasting special session. We could start with some more dudes-who-like-fucking-women (and I don't mean "fucking" in the proverbial sense...there were enough of those elected to be there already) in the gallery of that state Capitol.
Because babies don't make themselves, guys.