Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #073 (7/28/13) – ABORTION IN TEXAS
Scheduled to air July 27, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/ZxR-DF7zXb0
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of July 28th, 2013.
Remember the Alamo? It was the last time someone put Texas in its place, and perhaps another whuppin’ is long overdue. Texas wants to be in the forefront of stopping legal abortions in this country. This is ironic because Texas is the state of the union with the most people in it who should have been aborted.
Last week, governor Rick Perry signed a bill that would prohibit abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy. That’s four fewer week than Roe v. Wade, which is federally protected by Supreme Court. So basically, Texas is saying: you gotta squash the little blob before it sprouts fingers.
On the surface, rolling back abortion’s legality to five months rather than six isn’t that horrible. Premature babies have been born at 22 weeks and lived. They went on to work at the DMV, but still . . . If a fetus can be extracted, incubated, and turned into a viable human being, pro-life activists have a point in saying that abortion at that stage is murdering a person. Granted, these same conservatives have no problem putting grown-ups in the electric chair and letting the poor starve to death, but teeny-weeny babies, ooh, gotta save every last one.
That’s what gets me about so-called pro-life activists. They’re all for rescuing little souls, but once they’re born, it’s everybody fend for themselves. If the mother goes on welfare, she’s a lazy leech. If the child grows up abused and unloved, there’s no money for free counseling and social services. If the kid turns criminal because that’s the only decent employment option available to him, lock him in prison for thirty years and let him get beaten, raped and demolished. Hey, but at least he didn’t die in the womb, `cause Jesus would have a problem with that.
The new Texas law also says abortions can no longer be performed in clinics but have to be done in centers equipped for surgery. That sounds reasonable – mothers should have safe and sterile hospitals to go to in case the kid is born with two heads. But remember, if you take away the clinics, and the doctors who’ll do the procedure for $300 and some homemade pastries, you’re sending poor people without health insurance to places they can’t afford. Which really means you’re sending them to a cousin in a basement with a coat hanger and pillow.
The middle-aged white men of the great state of Texas even want to control birth control. Thanks to their new law, Texas women can no longer take RU-486 at home but have to be under doctors’ supervision. Which means, again, that if you have the money for continuous doctor visits, you’re granted more rights under the law than the underclass who don’t.
And I love how the pro-lifers always say that every soul is precious, and that the fetus you abort could be the next president. That embryo you just sucked out was the girl who’d grow up to cure cancer. You never hear the right-to-lifers say, “That unborn soul could’ve been the next Hitler.” They never think, “That future human floating around in your belly? Next marathon bomber. Next Osama bin Laden. Next Donald Trump.”
I, Rabbi Sol Solomon, go on record as saying that I am pro-choice. Not only that, I am pro-abortion. Early term, late term, rape, incest, frat-party mistake. If the child isn’t wanted and cannot be properly raised, don’t bring it into this overpopulated planet. I’m so pro-abortion, I think it should be retroactive. If I’m on an airplane and there’s a two-year-old screaming in the seat behind me, get the knife and pop the head. At that age, you can still de-vein them like a shrimp.
And, of course, the abortion battle still comes down to that age-old problem of religious zealots, mostly male, who want to control women. Not that I blame them; when was the last time a Jewish man controlled the women in his life? But seriously, if I get a tumor in my abdomen, God forbid, I go to the doctor, and he says, “It’s not cancer, but it’s like cancer. I recommend taking it out, but it’s up to you.” Nobody tells me what I have to do with my body. If I wanna leave the tumor in and watch it grow like those bulges on Dr. Phil’s head, that’s my business. If I wanna remove it and keep it in a jar near the gefilte fish – my choice. Don’t you dare tell me that something growing inside my own body is regulated by the church or punishable by law. And don’t tell a woman that the growth inside her is your business.
If abortion laws in this country become more restrictive for women, I say we should make dentistry illegal for men. If a guy has a rotten tooth, he has to keep it in his mouth for nine months – or, until it falls out of its own accord. If he doesn’t like it, he can go in a back room with a string and a doorknob. Come to think of it, that’s the way I used to do circumcisions.
Anyhoo, let’s keep a very sharp eye on Texas because the state that gave us George W. Bush, the assassination of Kennedy, and Astroturf has no business regulating morality or maternity.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
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