My Radical Centrist Proposal -- Something for Everyone to Love and Hate

Or:
 
How a Fetus is Like an Illegal Immigrant

 

 

In American today, liberals and conservatives are both inconsistent in their politics. They’re both hypocritical in some ways. What I propose is the perfect political compromise, which will force both sides to be consistent. It is such a perfectly balanced compromise that it will never happen. (This  idea seems so obvious to me now that I can't possibly be the first one to think of this. I have to assume that someone else has come up with this before, probably Bill Maher or Dennis Miller).

So, here’s my new rule for American law:

Anything you can do to a terror suspect or illegal immigrant you can do to an embryo/fetus, and anything you can do to an embryo/fetus you can do to a terror suspect or illegal immigrant.

 

You can’t be a conservative who argues that non-citizens are people when the people are unborn but then treat non-citizens like non-people when they’re immigrants. You can’t be a liberal who says that non-citizens are people too no matter where they're born and then deny non-citizens rights just because they aren’t born yet. One side wants to deny equality for those not born in a particular place, and others want to deny equality for those not born.

 

Because, basically, a fetus is an undocumented alien. It’s not a citizen, because under current law a citizen has to be literally born in order to be a citizen. There’s an actual “place of birth” on all the forms, whether it’s a birth certificate, passport application, etc. Being born in a particular location requires that you are actually born.

If a fetus is to be treated as a citizen, then you will have the really awkward legal situation of one citizen living entirely inside another citizen. When you look at how the U.S. government treats “Indian nations,” which are officially nations living inside another nation, you get some idea about how well that one-inside-another works out in practice. Not so great. Those reservations are great foreign countries, aren’t they?

 

Then there's the really tricky scenario for anti-immigration and anti-abortion conservatives -- what do you do about pregnant illegal immigrants in the U.S.? Being born in the U.S. automatically makes a person a U.S. citizen, so does that mean all immigrant fetuses are also citizens? Or, are conservatives suggesting that some fetuses need protection and others do not? Tough call.

The federal government has done nothing to formally approve the existence of any particular fetus in America. There is no visa for it, and it doesn’t exist in any government records anywhere – no Social Security number, no citizenship status, no eligibility to get a job, and no driver’s license (the ultrasound ID photos tend to be really hazy). No paper trail at all, just here without anyone in authority giving it permission to be in this country. So, why not treat all fetuses the same way America treats *all* undocumented aliens?

Just declare your fetus an “enemy combatant,” and conservatives have to let you do whatever the hell you want with it. If conservatives protest, just tell them that they have to take your word for it, that for reasons of national security you can’t explain why your fetus is a risk to the entire country, because telling them all the details would compromise intelligence sources. Just refer to abortion as “enhanced interrogation of a terrorist suspect,” and conservatives should stop asking you questions about what you’re doing. Ask them if they're willing to risk a repeat of 9/11 by refusing to give the "good guys" all the tools they need to fight the "bad guys."

 

If they protest that the aborted fetus is innocent, just tell them you had to strike in a pre-emptive military action because the fetus was clearly showing the intent to acquire Weapons of Mass Destruction. Call it the Uterine Corollary of the Bush Doctrine. Call them bleeding hearts and suggest that they are giving aid and comfort to the enemies of freedom. They're pretty big on that whole "enemies of freedom" schtick.