On Rights for the Unconceived

                    On Rights for the Unconceived

  

               I start this blog with a quatrain celebrating one of the blessings of modern life:

               Enfettered by the seed of men?
               This wheel, darling, guards for thee
               Affection, passion, love and yen;
               A month of women's liberty!

               I refer to contraception, of course; which is now suddenly the Republican party's signature issue. They're against it.

                At first the Catholic church didn't want to pay for birth control; so the centrist technocrat Obama said that the insurance companies will be glad to pay instead; but a handwashing that Jesuitical didn't suit the bishops this time, and the rumble was on.

               Sandra Fluke tried to argue a subtle point; that the pill has other uses, including in some cases saving a woman's fertility. She tried to say "it's complicated", but a certain creepy radio demagogue wasn't into complications, or subtlety, or reason, or R-E-S-P-E-C-T, or any class at all. His mortified advertisers whapped him over the snout with a rolled-up newspaper, so he apologized for two of his libelous insults.

               Nonetheless lines were drawn, and positions staked out. As of now, the Republican party no longer believes that life begins at conception; instead they affirm that life begins at ejaculation. Every sperm is sacred! A potential human being need not come to term, nor implant in the uterine wall, or even have a genetic code yet. Even the unconceived have rights, ones which trump the rights of adult women!

               Rights for the unconceived! The idea fascinates me, as a paralogician. Do the unconceived have rights? If so, then anti-contraception laws make sense; but also laws against masturbation. But how to enforce such a law?

               If contraception is a violation of rights, then whose rights? Who are the unconceived? I can’t even conceive it! But if I deny them any rights, then isn’t that a prejudice?

               Define “existism” as denial of the rights of the unconceived and the otherwise nonexistent. I can think of no more deeply engrained bigotry.

               An old jest states “It’s better not to exist at all; but how many are so fortunate? Not one in a million.” This Non-Existentialist jest brings into focus the existism built into all existing institutions. Since they exist, they only count what also exists. It's systemic discrimination against the nonexistent. 

               But the city of Chicago offers the hope of reform. In most cities, the unconceived have no votes; but Chicago is a leader in political innovation; for Chicago extends the franchise not only to the unborn, but also to the dead! This broadens the anti-existism front. Do all of the nonexistent have rights? And what are those rights?

               I can think of three rights, inalienable from the nonexistent:

      1)    Freedom from all obligations.

      2)    An alibi for all crimes.

      3)    A vote in Chicago.

               But alas, that last right is contaminated by existist bias; as I shall explain tomorrow.