will do anything for the unborn,
who are revered like angels
- until they're born
and lose their symbolic nature,
neatly womb-enclosed,
and become flesh
in blood and pain,
and start to scream and shit.
After birth - that's it -
you're on your own, baby.
There are too many of you on this earth.
6 comments:
Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked...
- George Carlin
www.georgecarlin.com
One aspect of Conservatism and Conservative Family Values that should be clear to everyone is the solipsism at the centre of it. Conservatives are always for giving themselves the right to voice opinions for others who, literally, cannot voice their concerns for themselves. Speaking for the unborn is the perfect example. The corollary is them refusing to hear the voices and ideas of those who are alive and who can speak for themselves. This deafness/ solipsism and the limits of it's concern is the paradoxical drive towards uncharitable, over individualised modern Social Conservatism.
I love this post and that George Carlin quote. Apparently personal responsibility starts from the moment you exit the womb. Of course they can't come right out and say that so then they start to put the responsibility upon the parents. Even though we know many, many people are recklessly irresponsible with their own lives and hence it's nothing more than a fantasy to expect them to become magically responsible when it comes to the care of their offspring.
"After birth - that's it -
you're on your own, baby.
There are too many of you on this earth."
I wonder if there is a subconscious knowledge among humanity that more people = less quality of life for us all and this is what leads to the contradiction of people championing the inherit worth of human life while simultaneously supporting the death penalty, ignoring starvation in other locales, etc.
"I wonder if there is a subconscious knowledge among humanity that more people = less quality of life for us all..."
There absolutely has to be this subconscious knowledge, otherwise 'humanity' would not be so desperate to overpower it with sentimentality, and by means of a capitalist system which requires more and more people to spend and consume, along with an underclass to do their cleaning and look after their offspring... The merry-go-round of capitalist expansion mimicking that of the universe.
Srikant wrote in a personal e-mail:
"Anthony, I didn't know you were that pro-abortion."
MY REPLY:
Well, Srikant – my mother tried to abort me THREE times. The third time she decided to swim out to sea…but couldn’t do it, and swam back to shore. She was a primary schoolteacher, so she went through a terrible time (having to move to Britain during the war, in 1941, when a permit was required) to give birth to me. In fact she had to join the Women’s Auxiliary Air-Force. She planned to have me adopted, but then couldn’t bring herself to give me away.
So, as a final resort, I am pro-abortion.
Her life was ruined by men: a hypocritical puritan father whom she despised; a macho brother who joined the Royal Navy as a Surgeon-Lieutenant in 1940; a crypto-fascist doctor (who was also a naval surgeon). The latter two ruined my life by strongly advising my mother to send me to a private school (though half the fees were paid by the state) where the teaching was mostly terrible.
This was “to make a man of me”, and “knock the corners off”. I (formerly a "cissy") thus became a “problem child” - and am now a nihilist-anarchist-quietist-antinatalist-feminist-theriophilous blogger !
Pity Carlin had a kid himself, though. Oh well, experience is a great and brutal teacher etc etc
Post a Comment