Slaughter of the Innocents

Sometimes I just seem to be at one with The News. It’s one of the reasons that I’ve turned to Citizen Journalism. It’s not for the money, after all. Lol!!

You may have seen the story that, over the weekend, A prominent US abortion doctor called George Tiller was shot dead while at church by somebody who disagreed with his decisions to carry out what are called Late Term Abortions; terminations that are done when the woman is a long way through the pregnancy. This shooting is a tragic event, for sure, but the timing couldn’t be better in terms of the debate currently raging in the world of Newsdesk.

I’m not pleased about it from an ethical point of view, don’t get me wrong. But when you’re all about the news, as I am, you become detached from the emotions and you just see the news. A bit like Neo in the Matrix, if the Matrix was all made of news, instead of ones and zeroes. I am The One! Ha ha ha. Seriously, though, our thoughts are with Dr Tiller’s family at this difficult time. Tiller steered a difficult course, you could say. Or maybe puns are inappropriate. I’m a journalist, not a sub editor, so I don’t know.

As you know, though, Gill is planning to get rid of baby Dave the Roofer; she’s going to have an abortion. And lots of people think abortions are very bad indeed. These people think there’s no real difference between the act of murdering George Tiller, and the work that he did, which they think is murder, too. Then there are the vegetarians, who think meat is murder, but we’ll leave them be for now.

The question, really, is whether or not you class the unborn child as truly alive. Does it exist as a person, because only if it does, really, can it be murdered. The Catholics, for example, they call abortion “The Slaughter of the Innocents”. Weirdly, the Catholics seem to think that only during the period of their own gestation are human beings in a state of innocence, because once you’re born they spend the rest of your life telling you how guilty you are.

Nope, slaughter of the innocents is a very emotive term and I think it’s used to whip people up into a fervour about the whole thing. And religious extremists love a bit of that fervour, they’re always at it. It also sounds a bit like a title for an Iron Maiden album. A really good Iron Maiden Album, actually. I can just see Eddie dressed up as a doctor on the cover, fighting the Pope and all his minions, while sexy nurses cling to his legs. Although that probably wouldn’t get past the killjoys at the censorship bureau.

Anyway, proper tub-thumping Bible Bashers, like a lot of people, especially in the US, say that the best way to stop unwanted children being born into lives of poverty and horror is not to give out abortions but to preach celibacy. But we’re programmed to want sex, it’s what we do. When we can, anyway, and when we haven’t got so bored by the person we live with that we fantasise endlessly about Susie Dent from Countdown. Just imagine what it would be like with Susie whispering endless streams of complicated words into your ear and telling you what they mean, or allowing you to trace erotic lines on her body with the pen-cam. She never seems to age, Susie Dent, does she.

Back to celibacy, though, and I think we know that on this issue the Catholic Church has a few skeletons in its closet – literally, in some cases, I expect, and is perhaps guilty of hypocrisy. You can’t just tell people not to have sex, unless they’re under age, of course – and even then most of them don’t listen. But the Catholics are always saying people shouldn’t be given birth control, because it’s denying life, because the purpose of sex is to procreate. I wonder where they stand with blow jobs? Out the back in the choir’s changing room, I expect! Lol.

People in favour of abortions – they call themselves pro-choice – argue that it’s only really down to the woman to decide what should happen. It is, after all, her body that the baby’s body resides in. And although as a man I think it’s a little bit unfair for women to decide whether or not the man becomes a father, I guess if it was my body I wouldn’t let anybody tell me what to do with it. Gill was always going on at me for drinking too much Cobra, for example, but when it comes to Cobra, I’m distinctly Pro Choice!!! Lol.

But it should be the woman’s choice because, I’ll tell you something personal here, if it wasn’t the woman’s choice, you wouldn’t be reading this. One of the things my Dad told me before he left – I’ll give you the whole story one day – was that he never wanted me in the first place. That’s why I love my Mum; she gave me life.

I bet bloody Roger would like to do away with me too, just like Dad, so he can have Mum all to himself. It’s not going to happen, though. She’s my Mum, and that’s always going to come first. Always. So Roger can shove it.