When the Circus Came to Chicago

Here’s a fun fantasy for you. Imagine you had been one of the five thousand fervid delegates at last week’s Democratic National Convention. A chilling prospect, to be sure. But there you are, seated amid countless screaming delegates in this huge, cavernous hall. And suddenly you realize you’ve got a whole hour to kill between speeches. So, what do you do? 

You’re not going back to your hotel room to fact-check the lies you’ve just been hearing, that’s for sure. Besides, why would you be there in the first place if you didn’t already believe them? And you’re certainly not going to want to venture too far outside the fortified walls of the Convention Center. I mean, you’re in Chicago, right? That means, at the very least, the real possibility of being either murdered or mugged. Not to mention the certainty of being surrounded by a hundred thousand or so pro-Palestinian protestors trying to persuade you to be even more anti-Semitic than you already are. 

So, where do you go? Well, there is one option close at hand and perfectly suited to meet the needs of not a few of your fellow delegates. Thanks to the good people at Planned Parenthood, there’s a mobile health van parked nearby offering free vasectomies and abortions, along with a hotdog or two (also free) just for showing up. Who can resist?

So, if you’re a guy worried about a future overrun with unwelcome children, there’s a solution waiting for you. Plus, you get to feel good about yourself for being a responsible steward of the environment. And if you’re a gal worried about an unwanted pregnancy, there’s a solution for you, too.

Talk about an hour to kill.  

Something for everyone, right? And, really, hasn’t that been the centerpiece of the entire Democratic ticket all along? I mean, besides bashing Donald Trump. Complete reproductive freedom, along with lots of government funding to subsidize it. No compromises: no consequences. Like a two-year-old who always gets his way. Who wouldn’t want that? An autonomy so absolute that even God Himself must hesitate to get in the way of it. As for Trump and his legion of benighted supporters, the march of history will soon grind them into the dust.

In the meantime, lines are long outside the free health mobile, so you stand around admiring the massive inflatable IUD floating in the sky, while filling out the requisite Google forms to determine which of the two services you’d like. And you think to yourself: “Wow, this is not the Democratic Party my grandparents signed on with!”

So, what in the name of God has happened to the Democratic Party? Perhaps not the best way to frame the question, of course, with people who have long since distanced themselves from the Deity. But do they really want to put Death in His place? Thanatos at the top of the ticket? “Meet Mr. Moloch, your new Commander-in-Chief!” Not a whole lot to commend there.  

Nevertheless, the party of joy is determined to keep abortion front and center. How else are they to reach the young and independent voter on whom the election will very likely turn in November? Especially suburban women, whose greatest fear, we are told, is the looming prospect of an unwanted child growing in their womb. Can anyone imagine a state of bondage more complete? No wonder women have unsexed themselves. So frightened have they become by the fact of finding a child in the womb that the very thought of pregnancy must be banished from their minds. As if lacking total reproductive freedom they cannot function.

“Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts,” cries Lady Macbeth, their patroness, invoking the gods of death: “unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood;
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse, 
That no compunctious visitings of nature 
Shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts    
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,   
Wherever in your sightless substances   
You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,    
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,   
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, 
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark   
To cry ‘Hold, hold!’

This is how we are to imagine the choice made by so many to kill the child in the womb: the obvious outcome of a heart filled with “direst cruelty.” A soul so hardened against the helpless child that no amount of persuasion exists to aid “th’ access and passage to remorse…” Let’s face it. There will be no “compunctious visitings of nature” to awaken the maternal instinct to nurture and protect the most innocent and vulnerable among us. And if you have any doubts about the matter, just go ask any delegate how they feel about abortion. They will most emphatically tell you that it is the most necessary and indeed liberating exercise of their absolute right to reproductive freedom. Period.

Or so we have repeatedly been told by the talking heads of the party. Now and again, however, they will let slip a descriptive phrase that shifts the narrative in an unexpected way. The other evening, for instance, in an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News, one of the co-chairs of the Harris-Walz campaign, a true believer by the name of Cedric Richmond, used the phrase “gut-wrenching” to indicate the quality of anguish women often experience when deciding to abort their child. “The decision to have an abortion,” he said, “is a gut-wrenching decision. And I don’t think either party should talk about it as if it were an easy decision.”

But which, he then added, must never be used to question or invalidate the woman’s claim, which is absolute, to decide the matter for herself. Isn’t it a bit odd, though, that he should seize upon that particular phrase, repeating it three times no less in the interview? Because the approved position on killing babies is that it is always and everywhere the absolute right of the woman to do as she pleases when it comes to her own body. And as for the procedure itself, it is everywhere alleged among proponents of abortion that it poses no greater threat to the health of the mother than, say, a tooth extraction. 

“Gut-wrenching”? Surely that applies only to the child.