God and a Super PAC Make Pretty Cozy Bedfellows This Election Season!

by Debra Chappell


View from the Front Porch:

Mood Reading:  ZZZ’s (howling wind last night – someone needs to tell Mother Nature that Winter is bullying our newly arrived Autumn!)

Thus far in my illustrious career as a blogger, I have tried to remain non-political on this page as not to offend my so-called “reading demographic”, god forbid.  (Notice I did not say apolitical.  I am not apolitical, but I can be non-political for short bursts of time, mostly when I’ve had a sedative along with that second glass of Sauvignon Blanc.) So… against my intuitive tendencies, I have tried to find myriad subjects to write about that don’t involve the upcoming presidential election.  This has been only marginally successful — and so categorically against my nature that I find I am not only tongue tied when trying to avoid the subject, but can simply no longer contain myself. 

Besides, for anyone who knows me and has witnessed my prior campaign organizing, traipsing around hill and dell plastering the countryside with Obama signs, risking life and limb on the conservative doorsteps of a county overwhelmingly enthusiastic about their gun and private property rights, I’m not fooling anyone with some absurd notion of my feigned objectivity.

Hey, we are all adults here.  I trust the intelligence of my readership and think we can all handle it just fine if we don’t always agree.  Though I’d certainly understand if you wanted to avoid the blog for the next two weeks until after the election, I would rather see you offer a dissenting comment and/or thoughtful discussion at the end of it.  I would love nothing more than to see an open an honest debate by those most affected by today’s topic rather than the entire issue being hijacked altogether and redistributed to a bunch of white guys in suits who have no idea of what they’re talking about (and are probably NOT in my “reading demographic” anyway.)  I am of course speaking about the subject of women’s reproductive rights…abortion, freedom of choice, call it what you will.

Yesterday yet another politician running for office — Richard Mourdock — opined in his local Senate debate that even in cases of rape and incest, any resulting pregnancy “is something that God intended to happen” and therefore would not qualify as an “exception” in any proposed abortion legislation.  Both of the quotes in that last sentence make my skin crawl, and should set off the alarm bells in anyone with two X chromosomes.

First it was Todd Aikin claiming divine intervention vis-a-vis slamming fallopian tubes that could somehow distinguish between the shock and ahhh of friendly fire and a legitimate hostile assault by Conan the Barbarian sperm. These are just two in the latest crop of GOP candidates possessing the same misguided notion that they are not only judge, jury and witness in the legal definition of rape, but are exclusively on God’s Twitter account for immediate notification of when precisely, a woman’s egg is fertilized… presumably before she even knows it herself! (As if God would choose the most untrustworthy among us — the smarmy politician — to impart this most delicate, private and intimate information on the rest of us.) The scary thing is, there are several others lined right up there behind them, including Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who believe they alone have been anointed “God Inabsentia” as well!  And if you think for a moment that this is not a problem, that candidate Mitt Romney is more moderate than these extremists,  and that he respects women’s legal reproductive rights and family planning choices , then I’ve got a truckload of condoms to sell you only ever so slightly used.

What these candidates ALL have in common (including Governor Romney) is that they have all, to a man, supported the Personhood Amendment – that says that life begins when sperm meets egg… no foreplay, no champagne, end of argument, end of discussion.  The recently converted “moderate” Romney has claimed recently in a campaign stop “there is no legislation regarding abortion that I’m aware of that would become part of my agenda” as President.  But mark my words, there would be in a hot minute if even a handful of these self-proclaimed  fertility deciples make it into the Senate, a frighteningly real possibility. And Governor Romney is on the record saying he’d not only be delighted to sign such legislation –  but is in favor of overturning Roe V Wade as well, calling it “a bad law and bad medicine.”  The Personhood Amendment isn’t limited to the unsavory business of abortion and unwanted pregnancies either.  It would ban stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, some types of birth control and more.

Who it is exactly, that is going to be available to raise, nurture, feed, educate and financially support all these unwanted babies that a Romney out-of-my-business-but-not-my-bedroom, smaller, “less intrusive” government would force to be born is anybody’s guess. If Romney wins this election, there won’t be Planned Parenthood for preventative care, Obamacare for obstetric care, or even Big Bird around to keep the screaming toddlers sufficiently entertained.  And I’d bet my last trickled down dollar that the jokers in suits blowing this insidious hot air inside the belt way have no intention of staying home to baby sit either.

 

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