Howsabout a compromise?
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| Image by Augusto Ordóñez from Pixabay |
This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted. Best perused on a screen large enough for even your parents to see and navigate easily.
Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.
"Wait a minute! Perhaps we should hold off on deciding this [issue] until cheap birth control is available at every convenience store and science develops a morning-after pill that’s available over the counter." -me
This is the third time I've written a column about abortion, "but I'll repeat myself at the risk of being crude..." -Paul Simon, from the song 50 Ways to Love Your Lever.
{Wait-wait-wait. It's leave your lover not love your lever, and there's no such word as howsabout.}
Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe.
{And I only recall one column.}
Well, the first was written in 2015, and you hadn't been born yet, Dana. It was the first time I suggested that perhaps a civilized compromise was the best way to resolve a controversy that's been raging since 1973 when the Supremes, invoking pretzel logic, declared that the Constitution guaranteed a woman's birthing person's right to have an abortion.
{Well, it's obvious where you stand on the matter.}
Yes, obviously the Constitution doesn't guarantee the right for birthing persons to have an abortion any more than it guarantees the right for gay Homo sapiens to get married.
{I meant that you're obviously pro-life.}
I mean that I'm pro-Constitution.
The founding pasty patriarchs codified the fundamental Rules&Regs — including a bill of rights — that apply to all the kids on the playground and that can't be altered without going to a great deal of trouble.
They were aware of the power of the K.I.S.S principle (keep it simple stupid) more than 150 years before the late, great engineer Kelly Johnson named it and applied it masterfully in the middle of the last century before America started losing its mojo.
The unspecified details were left up to the individual states, where the people actually lived, for the sake of what nowadays might be called that liberty thing. But I drift.
{Goes without saying. Hey, what do have against gay people?}
Nothing, and I don't care if gay H. sapiens get married. In fact, if I were king, I'd authorize generous (means-tested) tax deductions for every child gay couples were willing to adopt that had been created by illegitimate parents and/or were innocent victims of circumstance.
{And?}
And what?
{This is where you would normally mention that you had a gay roommate back in the late 70s long before having gay friends was officially cool, a fact which you never seem to tire of mentioning.}
I don't know what you're talking about.
I'd also proclaim that unrestricted abortion be available for the first trimester, with exceptions for rape, incest, and health problems beyond that. It just so happens that a majority of my future royal subjects feel the same way, and I'm a very responsive and benevolent monarch.
{But meanwhile, back in the real world...}
Let the people decide, state by state.
{But the pollsters say most people don't want Roe v. Wade overturned.}
Well, then the people's representatives to the Swamp are going to have to pass a law. But given that Congress these days tends to be more performative than productive, don't hold your breath. Twice a year, year after year, they threaten to decide whether to make daylight savings time permanent or get rid of it and save us all a lot of unnecessary trouble and aggravation.
So far, no good. And speaking of threatening...
{I knew it! You're an alt-right extremist!}
Nah, just a center-right, slightly cranky (more or less) Normie endlessly striving to keep my epigenetic mordancy under control so as to retain some semblance of the cardinal virtues — as passed on to me by the late, great Sister Mary McGillicuddy — in the midst of a culture currently in decline.
{Doesn't Pfizer make a pill for that?}
Now, where was I? Oh yeah, speaking of threatening, Uncle Joe has recently announced his support for pro-choice members of the IUPPPP&PPVTTOT (International Union of Professional Perpetually Protesting Protestors & Perpetual Victims of This, That, and the Other Thing) taking it to the streets.
The streets where the judges and families of the Supreme Court of the United States of America live — as long as the protests are peaceful.
However, according to federal law...
"Whoever...with the intent of influencing any judge...pickets or parades...in or near...a residence occupied or used by such judge...shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both."
It would appear that Uncle Joe has encouraged people to break the law.
{That sounds eerily familiar... Maybe Congress should launch an open-ended investigation.}
I just hope that the protesters are more peaceful than the mostly peaceful protesters of 2020.
Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day
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