The Administration today made public its new program to add the "Sticky Uterus" chemical to the nation's water supply. Nidation-- the implanting of a fertilized egg into the wall of the uterus-- fails about 40% of the time. "This federal and state partnership will save the lives of some two million children a year," the President explained. "That's two million children a year we never knew we had, but who will now impregnate."
Phenoimplantitol, more commonly known as the "Sticky Uterus" chemical, improves the chances of fertilized egg implantation by breaking down the natural defenses of the walls of the uterus. In blind studies, where the female subjects were told they testing a high blood pressure medicine, women became pregnant about a third more often, probably as a combination of the effects of uterus-barrier-negation and decreased efficiency of birth control pills which otherwise contribute to nidation failure.
The Sticky Uterus Initiative is designed as a partnership between the federal government and localities. The federal government will mandate that localities introduce the chemical into the water supply and local governments will pay all the costs. Health professionals identified as experts by the White House proclaimed that this was a natural and necessary outgrowth of considering conception to be the beginning of life. The medical philosophy and politics leading up to this decision are detailed here.
*phew* This is a much better plan than the White House's original plan, code-named "Maple Syrup", in which men were to have spigots inserted to drain valuable sperm that otherwise go wasted. Billions of sperm go wasted each year without impregnating anyone! A fertile young man can make up to 1000 sperm a second! Are we getting 1000 babies out of him per second?!!? NO and no again!
Sadly, "Maple Syrup" was deemed unreasonably intrusive as it required the Federal Government to tell men what to do with their bodies.
Posted by: Shannon | May 11, 2006 at 12:51 PM
The story I linked to is worth the read, even though it's very long. Concerns about contraception from the President's friends revolve around a worry that our society has devalued sex until it's simply a bodily function. Their answer to that is that we should make contraception impossible to get-- except for the wealthy-- so that everytime a man has sex with a woman he'll worry about causing a pregnancy. In other words, the government should tell men, "If you have sex, your woman gets punished."
Again, the link is one of the most valuable pieces of reporting I've seen this year.
Posted by: Rev. Transit | May 11, 2006 at 01:18 PM
I would like to take this opportunity to present some thoughts about the obesity epidemic in the United States. It is high time that our morally bankrupt society comes to terms with its gluttonous self. We need to realize that Americans have long devalued eating. The act by which we take in the substance that gives us life has been debased to a thrice-daily orgy of flavor sensation. Have we forgotten what it means to be given our daily bread and become a bunch of keen-palated, metrosexual, seasoning-fetishizing, crypto-French, grotesquely obese gastronomes? I’ll answer that! We have and it must stop.
Everyone knows that it is not simply the content of the foods available, but also their variety which is driving this mania of mealtime malfeasance. People, in their state of nature sitting in ersatz bistros and roaming the aisles of organic markets, are greedy. They want it all in its diverse splendor. They will eat more if there is more variety and thus contract diabetes and exhibit sloth. They will eat less and be more regimented in their behaviors if when consume edibles; they do so only by the bland necessities of biological imperative.
So, right here and now, I am proposing that the USDA and FDA ban all flavorful and flavor enhancing substances made popular prior since the end of the Cold War. Chicago’s foie gras ban is a good start, but I think it must be taken much further if we are to curtail the crippling engorgements of our cosmopolitan tastes. Henceforth there shall be a ban on products not limited to, but especially: cardamom, fruit-flavored vinaigrettes (especially raspberry), pomegranate juice, quinoa, non-peanut nut butters, porcini mushrooms, crème fraiche, bruschetta, artificially de-carbified breads and pastas, coconut milk, and anything inspired by the flavors of Indonesia/Java/Sumatra
I thank you for your support and hope you join me in the fight to reclaim the tongue as a secretor of digestive enzymes and not allow it to be whored out as a taste dildo for yuppies, couture hounds, and creative vegans.
Posted by: evandebacle | May 11, 2006 at 09:40 PM
Bully, bully, bully! Transit/Debacle '08!
BTW, Mu reports that Rev Transit's link to the long article didn't work for him, requiring a sign-in...'Course, Mu lives in Ohio, so may not possess the cognative abilities to actually click on the correct link. Who can say?
Posted by: Shannon | May 12, 2006 at 07:08 AM
I'll save it as a pdf and send it to him.
Posted by: evandebacle | May 12, 2006 at 08:32 AM
The link probably requires a NYTimes free registration. It's worth getting just for this article and I'd especially like to know what Mu thinks about the article.
Maybe I just don't have a sense of humor this morning, but even though my original article was satire, I really do consider this a hugely serious issue. This administration is pursuing an ugly policy of controlling women's bodies without a reasonable state interest.
Posted by: Rev. Transit | May 12, 2006 at 08:42 AM
What a downer. I thought that was the best satire I've come up with in a while. Or maybe the foie gras deprivation is impairing my judgment.
I, of course, agree whole-heartedly with the Rev. that this push to limit or eliminate access to birth control is a blatant attempt to legislate behavior based on religious belief. Furthermore, it is one that is inherently gender-biased. Doesn't Viagra make "whores" of women just as much, if not more, than condoms? Am I to believe that all those grey-haired men lined up at the pharmacy counter are there because they want to once again enjoy the blessings of fatherhood? No. They want to recapture their youth by ravaging their womenfolk.
But I'm also feeling a bit conspiratorial this morning. Am I reaching to far by wondering whether there may be a hidden racial issue underlying some of this? Considering that such initiatives are likely to take hold in rural areas rather than inner cities, it seems that white women will comprise the majority of victims. Considering pockets of paranoia on the extreme Right about non-Hispanic whites being reduced to a mere non-majority plurality (if not an outright minority in some areas), could some people being looking further than simply altering sexual behaviors?
Posted by: evandebacle | May 12, 2006 at 09:28 AM
The Debacler's satire was fine; I'm just not seeing the relevance to this subject. You should cut and paste it to your blog as is. Sorry to be a downer. Again, my anger about this issue may be clouding up my humor this morning.
The people pushing these initiatives have a mix of motives, of course. There's a great concern over devaluing human life, which I think we all can understand. And then there's the uglier wish to restrict women from having sex, except for purposes of procreation or within the bounds of a marriage. The same people may be acting on both desires or one or the other-- mixed motives.
Whichever theoretical reasons for these restriction come into play, laws enacted and enforced tend to weigh heaviest on those with the least power in our society. Granted, anti-abortion activists would contend that fetuses have the least power of all, but that proposition usually begins with the notion that fetuses are human beings from conception. That's a philosophical theory. On the other hand, we know for sure that girls and women are human beings and, while I feel our laws should respect all life, government policy already takes aim at the least powerful of these undebatable humans-- girls. These odious parental consent laws get passed at the state level because teenage girls are not in a position to defend their interests.
When states enact laws to regulate abortion, they seek to divide women into the "deserving and undeserving pregnant", as if some women deserved to have to carry fetuses to term because of how they became pregnant. And even if states write laws that treat all fetuses the same, women with money and power will still be able to avoid abortion laws by going out of state or even overseas. State regulation of abortion weighs heaviest on the least powerful among us.
Posted by: Rev. Transit | May 12, 2006 at 10:13 AM
I actually may repost it because I have nothing interesting to say today. As far as it's satirical relevance, I was hoping to make a point regarding the notion that the rectitude and health of a society can be measured on whether we extract pleasure from a sensual function which does not have as its primary function as said pleasure. And, as usual, I chose to do that in the most absurd way I could come up with.
Back to the topic. It reminds me of something that a woman said to me this week about what feminists and feminism have become. Her opinion was that they have become a shadow of their former selves. This was in the context of having seen a documentary on Billie Jean King and what she was able to accomplish as a feminist icon and as a generally strong and visionary woman. I suppose the question to be raised is this: now that many victories have been won on the road to equal rights, both legislatively and culturally, and with many of the remaining fights to be won being smaller and less uniting, how will people, specifically leaders in the feminist movement, be able to best fight for those women and girls most hurt by these initiatives?
Posted by: evandebacle | May 12, 2006 at 12:05 PM
Ok, I see the relevance of your satire better now.
First of all, I think it's fair to acknowledge that feminists have achieved almost all of their objectives. There's a minority of people who want to drastically roll back abortion rights and many of those are people whose primary interest is protecting the unborn. It's only a subset of a minority who want to restrict women to having sex for procreation and within marriage. The problem here is that that subset of a minority has become very powerful within this administration. Plus, the appeal for the rights of the unborn, which is pretty much a brand new interest for American Protestants, has obscured motivations and enlarged their base.
The second thing is that many, many people are concerned with where stem cell research and abortion and cloning may eventually lead us with respect for how we value life and individuals. There are some tough decisions to make regarding using abortion to choose the sex of a child, for instance, or for materialistic reasons. What the government's role should be is another question, of course. Those of us who are left of center need to acknowledge these concerns and admit that the government is going to need to protect developing fetuses somewhere between nidation and term.
And we also need to promote abstinence among teenagers. That shouldn't be the entirety of sex ed programs, but it should a noticeable component. Another part of sex ed-- and this is what separates those concerned for the unborn from those who are prudish about sex-- should be suggesting that sex acts which can't result in pregnancy are preferable if abstinence is out.
And once those acknowledgements of respect for life are out there, those concerned with women's rights need to self-righteously attack those who are mostly trying to punish women for having sex. And, as CR has pointed out, that's exceptionally ugly when men get off scot-free.
Posted by: Rev. Transit | May 12, 2006 at 02:15 PM