The Electron Pencil

The Loved One and I take regular, weekly drives through the hinterlands of southern Indiana. Now, before you tell me I ought to get out of the car and walk or hike a bit, please be aware I can hardly walk due to still having one hip joint with Category 4 osteoarthritis. That means the ball and socket no longer have any cartilage cushion between them. It’s bone on bone, baby, and that’s a formula for howling pain.

But enough of that. Today’s screed has to do with people who seem to have a one-track minds.

As we make our way through small towns and winding farm roads, we see an endless stream of billboards addressing abortion. And the topic ain’t controversial. Every single one is an anti-abortion scold.

Some examples:

My heart began beating at 23 days — accompanied by a picture of a cute little toddler with a blanket partially covering her head.

I felt pain before I was born — with a similar aww-inspiring pic alongside it.

A baby is God’s miracle gift.

Black people didn’t choose slavery. The Jews didn’t choose genocide. Babies don’t choose to be aborted.

And of course, the old standby:

Choose life.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

If we were to try to count the number of such signs during any of our Sunday drives, we’d soon become overwhelmed by the immensity of the task.

Now, for the sake of this post, I’m going to give the people on whose property these sign are erected, as well as the people who pay to have them put up, the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume they honestly and truly believe ending a pregnancy before birth is a crime, both morally and, now that the Trump Supreme Court has had its say, legally. I’m not always so generous, though. My sneaking suspicion long has been that a lot of anti-abortion-ists simply can’t bear the idea that women like to have sex. They think all women have to do is not engage in it. Problem solved.

But, damn it all, these women keep spreading their legs and getting pregnant and then blithely murdering the infants inside them. And they do it again and again and again.

Let’s ignore the blatant falsehoods in that line of thinking. Let’s ignore it all right now. Let’s, as I say, give these folks the benefit of the doubt.

Today, we were behind a guy in a pickup plastered with anti-abortion bumper stickers, including this one:

93% of Woman Who Had Abortions Regret It.

Which is rather presumptuous on his part, wouldn’t you think? In his mind, those seven percent who are cool with their decision to abort must be ghouls.

Again, let’s assume these folks hold dearly in their hearts the unshakable belief that all human life is precious and to end one is the most heinous crime of all.

Why, then, is abortion the only ending of life that drives them to put up signs, to hang banners down from highway overpasses, to harass women trying to enter abortion clinics? Why, why, why?

They’re not out hanging banners calling for an end to the murder of already-born people. They’re not calling for an end to war. They’re not agitating for safer cars and highways, where tens of thousands of Americans each year are killed in crashes. They’ve yet to weight in on the Flint, Michigan water supply crisis that was responsible for countless deaths. The don’t have bumper stickers calling for the arrest and conviction of the Sackler family for their part in the opioid epidemic.

I don’t see any such signs, placards, billboards or bumper stickers decrying anything but the ending of a pregnancy prior to term.

They don’t march around their town squares demanding an end to rape.

They don’t hint at any concern for industrial pollution or global warming, both of which already have caused immeasurable sickness and death around the world.

That’s why I refuse to call their crusade “pro-life.” It’s not.

It’s solely anti-abortion. Anti- a few other things as well but, as I say, let’s ignore that today.