Whenever I’m looking for thoughtful social commentary on the most challenging issues of the day, I turn to Speide Bahl
Speide Bahl is an anti-choicer and an anti-feminist, it’s true, but unlike so many of his tribe, he’s also an original thinker. Time after time Bahl has brought a new perspective to the problems that divide Americans, and his most recent contribution to the abortion debate is no exception.
As Bahl writes with admirable candor, “One of the biggest problems facing us Pro-lifers is how ugly fetuses are.”
Yes! Finally, someone on the anti-choice side has the intellectual honesty to tackle this issue head-on. And what’s even better is that rather than insisting, as so many anti-choicers do, that women be forced to continue their pregnancies, Bahl proposes a couple of non-restrictive measures designed to make fetuses more appealing:
* Saturday morning fetus cartoons depicting the fetus as a fun, adorable plaything, or even as an action hero. Or both.
* A MySpace or Facebook account for each fetus to create a social network that will make Mom think twice before aborting. “After all,” as Bahl writes, “it’s one thing to make a quick trip to a clinic…it’s something else to have to answer 100 angry e-mails and delete an account.”
Of course I’m not actually endorsing these ideas; the problem with abortion in this country isn’t that it’s happening too much, but that it is increasingly unavailable. I’m just appreciative of Speide Bahl’s novel approach to the issue. If more anti-choicers were like him, this thing would have been settled a long time ago.
5 Responses to “Whenever I’m looking for thoughtful social commentary on the most challenging issues of the day, I turn to Speide Bahl”
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BAC says:
He does have a humorous point of view. I agree that the real problem is availability. Another problem is access to comprehensive sex education and birth control. And a final problem is that schools and communities don’t provide enough options to keep kids busy. Music and arts have disappeared from schools. That always kept me too busy to get into trouble when I was a kid. And community centers and other summer activities could keep kids busy, and supervised.
BAC
August 19th, 2007 at 7:59 am EST -
Violet says:
BAC, I think everyone else must be so awed by Bahl’s brilliance that they’re too intimidated to comment. Well, I’ve been there myself.
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Badger3k says:
MySpace has age restrictions, so the fetus-Americans couldn’t sign on. I have no idea of Facebook. Maybe we can do FetUSpace (or something like that). We’d have to police it to keep out the predators, of course (sorry, just watched Dateline), and we’d have to find some way of getting the internet inside mommy (would wireless work?). Hmm - could be big bucks for someone.
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Violet says:
Um…predators? Fetus predators?
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B. Dagger Lee says:
I find intestines ugly. There, I said it.
