I wrote this after reading the various threads that were spurred by the late-term abortion ban.
Pro-Life Patter
what if he’s
the next
Mozart
if he cures cancer
could end
racism
have you
thought about
adoption
what if
you want
children someday
if not now
when?
you should
be grateful
you’re the
kind of
person who
should be
having children
there are children starving
in China
& some people can’t
have kids
of their own
real mothers
give up everything
you’re a murdering
slut you bitch
cunt spread your
legs should be
raped i’ll kill
you myself i ought
to pull you apart
joint by joint
and see
what you think of
bodily integrity then
abortion is
genocide
it’s eugenics
Margaret Sanger was
a racist
it’s a modern
Holocaust
doctors can
be wrong
have you seen
its tiny
hands
feet
heartbeat
how can you end
a tiny life
what if mary
had said no what if
your mother
had been
pro-choice?
sometimes you have to
stand up take
responsibility
be an adult
pay for playing
you said yes
once you let
him come it’s your
problem now don’t
come crying
to me for
sympathy
you spread
your legs and now
you have to
handle it
yourself.
*applause*
(as an aside, I don’t suppose a straight-faced “Who cares if Mary said no? The Messiah hasn’t come back yet” wouldn’t score any point.)
Brilliant.
Mandolin nails it.
This is freaking awesome, but then, I’d expect no less. ;-)
Great job!
And hey, pro-life knuckleheads: my mother is pro-choice. She chose to have me. Ergo she wanted me, and wasn’t forced to give birth to me. Yay! :)
With only minor variations on the theme, these are the same “arguments” my friends and relatives – threw at me when I decided – after considered thought, and at great expense – to have an (illegal) abortion.
Thirty-nine years ago.
The more things change …
Wow. This is a very creative, rhetorically powerful, seamless mashup. Brilliant.
I love the “what if Mary had said no” ones. You’d think that if she’d said no originally, God would’ve, you know, NOT KNOCKED HER UP. Since He’s God and all-knowing and all that.
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Great post.
Stepping outside the poetic sphere of license…I was thinking… Mary didn’t KNOW she’d been knocked up until Gabriel told her, that is, she didn’t know G-d had been messing with her until the annunciation. So, if Mary decided she didn’t want G-d’s child she’d have had to tell Gabriel where to go, so to speak.
Mary was not informed that she was pregnant; she was informed that God wanted her to bear the Christ. When she assented (“let it be done unto me as you have said”), she became pregnant.
Mary was not informed that she was pregnant; she was informed that God wanted her to bear the Christ. When she assented (”let it be done unto me as you have said”), she became pregnant.
Setting aside the Christ issue, yep. No passive vessel, she; God had to get her permission.
The stuff about being the next Mozart and curing cancer is why I was against abortion and stem-cell research–when I was twelve, and didn’t know anything other than what my parents had told me.
Most of the rest of the lines in your poem, the rest of the anti-abortion arguments, are the sorts of things that seriously pissed me off when they were written on signs on my (Catholic) campus in April.
So with all that in mind–I love your poem.
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No passive vessel, she; God had to get her permission.
It wasn’t really a situation where she was free to say no. Here was God, who could and often did, torture people for all eternity for “sins” such as eating the wrong food or just saying his name in ways that he doesn’t like, who can blast her and everyone she loves to hell right now if he feels pissy, and she’s going to feel able to make an uncoerced choice about whether to say yes or no to him? I don’t think so.
what if he’s
the next
Mozart
if he cures cancer
could end
racism
What if you’re the next Mozart, will cure cancer, end racism…but only if you’re free to follow your own desires and talents and not limited in your choices by a child that you aren’t ready to have and raise–or a pregnancy that will kill you before you can do any of the above?
Silly Diane! Women don’t end racism or compose music. We have babies who might end racism or compose music! That’s our contribution.
Now get to birthin’.
Here was God, who could and often did, torture people for all eternity for “sins” such as eating the wrong food or just saying his name in ways that he doesn’t like, who can blast her and everyone she loves to hell right now if he feels pissy, and she’s going to feel able to make an uncoerced choice about whether to say yes or no to him? I don’t think so.
Technically the idea of eternal damnation hadn’t been introduced to the Judao/Christian mythology yet…
What if he’s the next Hitler?
–I know, they’ll blame the mother. Dmaned if you do, damned if you don’t…
Technically the idea of eternal damnation hadn’t been introduced to the Judao/Christian mythology yet…
Naja, so I’m a little fuzzy on the details of Abrahamic religions…I’m pretty sure the Jewish deity of the time was known for abusing his followers in this life when he was miffed or bored if nothing else. Regardless of the specific threat, if it’s immoral for a boss to ask an employee or a professor to ask his student to incubate his kid for him (and it clearly is) because of power imbalances, how can it be moral for a diety to ask his follower to be the same?
Now get to birthin’.
Heh. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, came close enough to dying to get a get-out-of-further-reproduction-free card from all my relatives (seriously, when your mother starts begging you NOT to give her any more grandkids because she got so scared last time you were pregnant, it’s time to climb out of the gene pool and towel yourself off for good). If abortion becomes illegal I’m moving.
so I’m a little fuzzy on the details of Abrahamic religions
Now there’s an understatement.
how can it be moral for a diety to ask his follower to be the same?
It isn’t immoral to have a relationship where there’s a power imbalance because of the power imbalance; it’s immoral because very few humans (if any) can resist abusing a power imbalance, and a relationship makes such abuse more destructive. It’s the destructive abuse that’s immoral.
God doesn’t abuse the power imbalance.
Hi Robert,
Thank you for correcting the incorrect theological assertion, but you’re now assaying theological opinions. I have asked you not to post on my threads. I’d appreciate it if you’d respect that.
mythago: Well, what do you expect from a second generation atheist anyway?
mandolin and robert: I apologize for provoking Robert to post on a thread where he was requested not to post by adding to a discussion I knew he would want to join in on. I was previously unaware of mandolin’s wishes and will drop it now that I do know.
Sorry, my bad – forgot (and got sucked in, as Dianne said.)
Feel free to delete this and my other contributions.
what if he’s
the next
Mozart
Other thought on this classic pro-life line: It could be extended to situations like, “If you just say yes to me tonight, we might conceive a kid who could be the next Mozart…saying no is the same as murdering my kid and a potential brilliant composer!” And from thence to “It wasn’t rape. She said no, but that no meant that we’d never have a kid together and that kid could be the one to cure cancer…I’m not anti-woman I just wanted to stop her from MURDERING MY UNCONCEIVED CHILD!” What do you think? Would it work as the premise of a dystopian story or too close to The Handmaid’s Tale
what if
your mother
had been
pro-choice?
I have always thought that line of “reasoning” to be particularly stupid. If my mother had been pro-choice, I may or may not have been around to argue with you. So what? That is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand.
“What if he’s the next Ted Bundy? What if Stalin’s mother had had an abortion?”
They don’t deal with those too well.
Well, what do you expect from a second generation atheist anyway
Better than that. I thought atheists were supposed to be the rational ones. And you don’t have to be a Christian to know what the Bible says, any more than you have to believe in fairies to be familiar with A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Third generation atheist here. I did bible study in elementary school, though.
When Dianne says, “I’m pretty sure the Jewish deity of the time was known for abusing his followers in this life when he was miffed or bored if nothing else,” I think of Job. Is that illegitimate?
I’m not sure what you mean by “illegitimate”. Is it “illegitimate” for me to ask about that myth where Zeus turned into the Trojan Horse to carry off Athena to the underworld and that’s why we have six months of summer? Probably not, but it shows I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, regardless of whether I worship the old Greek gods.
Okay. I take it you’re saying that’s an incorrect interpretation.
I’ll admit it’s a flip one, certainly.
Close. Hades. Persephone. Winter. Just to be annoying.
I think she was making a point that the interpretation of God as a bored person poking sticks at Job is as bad a misinterpretation of the bible as what she wrote was of Greek myth.
Anyway, to swap up and reply to Bonnie:
“If my mother had been pro-choice, I may or may not have been around to argue with you. So what? That is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand.”
I think the problem is that you’re not assuming that your existence is the most important thing to ever happen ever. ;)
Close.
Yes, that would have been the point.
I think she was making a point that the interpretation of God as a bored person poking sticks at Job is as bad a misinterpretation of the bible as what she wrote was of Greek myth.
Here’s how I remember the Job story. Yes, I know I can look it up on line, but I’m doing it pop quiz style, without references. People can tell me where it goes wrong, if anyone’s still interested.
God and Satan were having a conversation. I have no idea why or how, but they were. God said something like, “Aren’t my people the best? Check out how wonderful my servant Job is, how devotely he worships me, etc.” Satan says, “Sure, as long as good things happen to him he praises you.” God says, “It’s not like that.” Satan says, “ha”. This goes on until God decides to test Job to prove the point. Without running the proposed protocol by the diety IRB (ahem, excuse me, that was a 21st century add on).
Anyway, back on earth, bad things begin happening to Job. Servants keep showing up and telling about disasters that have occurred on his property, ending with the line, “And I alone escaped to tell thee.” His wife and children die. He is inflicted with painful boils. His neighbors decide he’s cursed and drive him away. He praises God anyway. God wins the bet. God tells Satan, “Devil, just come on back if you ever want to try again” (oops, different reference). God restores Job to health and wealth and gives him a new wife (or is it wives) and kids. Because, after all, one wife is much like another and Job won’t mourn the loss any more if he gets a new one, right? But I digress.
So, the diety who one presumes is the same diety that is addressing Mary, doesn’t mind abusing his followers (and killing them if one assumes that Job’s wife, kids, and servants were also followers of the biblical diety) just to make a point to his worst enemy/drinking buddy Satan. His first two commandments are not about protecting people but rather about how to worship him properly. He sends his followers wandering in the desert for years until they all die, rather than take them to the promised land as, well, promised, just because they made a friggin statue. This does not sound like someone that one could comfortably say, “Thank you for the honor, but I’d really rather only have children with my fiance. Please find another to bear the messiah” to me. But perhaps I’ve got it all wrong and really God had a good reason for testing Job, the commandments make perfect sense, the golden calf really represented something reprehensible, and Mary chose without coersion. Mythago?
This poem is being reprinted in gender-themed issue of the political magazine Diet Soap.
Yay Mandolin!
Congratulations!
Such a humanitarian! What if he’s Mozart, cures cancer, ends racism? Or what if he propoagtes hate and anger like the writer? The potry is sophomoric, the sentiment is that of a non-rational, hate-filled person who, in all liklihood, had an abortion or wouldn’t have such strong, negative feelings about it. What if my mother was pro-choice? She was and so I never have to doubt that she wanted me, that I was not a burden to her and that I was no accindent. Being raised by a pro-life mother who resented my existance would probably be enough to engender this kind of hatred. Too bad for the writer.
Feather,
Do you know what patter means?
Wow.
I hesitate to say that it’s a “great” poem (wrong word, obviously), but so powerful. I consider myself something of an abortion activist and work for a clinic and the way you’ve brought together all those arguments is painful and also sharply evocative of the sense of shame and powerlessness that unfortunately can often go hand in hand with being a woman in the 21st century. Well done.