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The Stupidest Idea in the History of the World
By Jeff Fecke | July 1, 2006
Bethany: Then – I don’t mean to sound ungrateful – but what are you doing hanging around?
Jay: We’re here to pick up chicks.
Bethany: Excuse me?
Jay: We figure an abortion clinic is a good place to meet loose women. Why else would they be there unless they like to fuck?
–Dogma
Sometimes a column comes by that is so insane, so totally divorced from reality, that it is almost a pleasure to read. About 85% of the time, those columns are up at Men’s News Daily, the online epicenter of the Men’s Rights Movement.
Today’s bit of insanity comes from Denise Noe, who has come up with a solution that will end abortion forever. Really, it must be dissected to be believed:
The pro-life movement is, at least in America, allied with conservatism. This leads to an inevitable contradiction. Any additional law means more government. This is especially ironic now that we are about to save taxpayer dollars through welfare reform.
That’s true, of course–a ban on abortion would represent a significant government intrusion into the personal lives of every woman in America.
Oh, wait, that’s not the “more government” Noe fears–it’s the specter of more welfare spending. But give her full marks–she wonders how the horror of slightly higher taxes can be avoided:
Is there a way to radically decrease abortions without asking the government to do it? Adoption is often suggested here and that is a good alternative but I think there is another as well.
Ready for the crazy?
Marriage.
That blessed event, that dream within a dream…what?
I am not talking just about a return to the “shotgun marriage”…
Oh, well thank…
…[R]ather, I think an offer of marriage from a man who is not the father but will assume all the traditional responsibilities of fatherhood would be accepted by many unmarried pregnant women.
What?!?
Okay, let’s pause for a second; can you consider anything less romantic than the following? “Sorry your boyfriend got you knocked up and then left, woman I’ve never met. Wanna get hitched?” Any woman who would fall for that line has far deeper problems than can be addressed in less than a treatise.
But Noe thinks this is what women want, and she’s got rock-solid data:
The motif of a man proposing marriage to a woman pregnant with another man’s child is a common one on soap operas that are a fairly good gauge of female fantasy. These stories represent the truth that many pregnant women don’t really want to abort, and would not, if marriage and commitment were offered to them.
Yes, that’s right: soap operas are now a beacon of truth. Indeed, this is why our nation is rife with evil twins, children can age from zero to twenty in about eight weeks, and the average person has twenty-three marriages, nine of them to the same partner (well, eight–because one of them was to their partner’s evil twin, who impersonated the partner while locking him in an underground cavern.)
Grooms For Life could be facilitated on a practical basis by computerized matching of pro-life single men with unmarried pregnant women interested in carrying to term. Certainly, the number of Grooms For Life would fall short of the million and a half abortions per year–but the government would be able to ensure birth quite imperfectly as well.
I would suspect that Grooms for Life would fall short of the million and a half abortions a year by about 1,500,000,000 abortions, but that’s just my suspicion.
Additionally, female pro-lifers and married men could spend their time recruiting bachelors to their cause so that the screaming demonstrators outside abortion clinics would soon be replaced by swains in bow ties, holding rings and serenading the pregnant women.
At which point Kevin Smith’s joke becomes reality: men hanging out at abortion clinics, hoping to score with the women going there.
Other objections are surely being raised.
No!
Such couples would not be in love, so what chance would their marriages have of succeeding? It is a peculiarly Western–and modern–idea that says marriage must be based on love.
“Arranged marriages” are still common in many conservative cultures–and their record suggests that romantic love is not the only basis for a lasting marital union.
Of course, in those countries arrange marriages endure because the husband is given authority to beat his wife should she get out of hand, and divorce is illegal. But those aren’t objections that the Men’s News Daily crowd would consider dealbreakers.
Pro-life marriages would have major advantages over other unions: the men would know they have done a good deed in saving a baby from abortion and, thus, keenly look forward to the birth; the women would respect the moral sincerity of their new husbands.
You know, my ex-wife and I once saved a cat from the street, and that was a good deed and all. It didn’t make my marriage last despite the “moral sincerity” it showed in me. And more to the point, “moral sincerity” isn’t exactly a basis to build a marriage around, is it?
A second objection is that if men offer to marry pregnant women to insure the baby’s birth, women will deliberately get pregnant in order to nab a pro-life hubby. This is unlikely.
Whew! For a second I was thinking that women would rush right out and go get themselves pregnant if only they had the chance to shag a Ben Shapiro or an Adam Yoshida of their very own! After all, if there’s one thing every woman I’ve ever known has done, it’s use pregnancy to secure the affection of someone they don’t even know.
Most women are quite rational people and will realize that the number of Grooms For Life will not exceed the demand for them.
I can think of a few more reasons a woman would avoid this, but yes, that’s one of the reasons that any sane person would choose not to get pregnant in order to win a pro-life stranger.
Additionally, most women are pro-choice and, therefore, will have no incentive to abandon their current practice (whether celibacy, lesbianism, or contraception) in hopes of marrying a pro-lifer.
Most women pro-choice, you say? Few lesbians willing to give up lesbianism for the chance to marry a Jonah Goldberg-worshiping winger? I’m stunned.
Now, in a well-written column, you’d expect a concluding paragraph here, but Noe upholds the fine editorial content of Men’s News Daily by bravely letting her column simply peter out there. The editor in me won’t let it go, though, so I’ll present her closing for her:
Even though most women are lesbian pro-choicers, and no person in their right mind would want to get married to a stranger on the off chance the stranger would choose to support them and their children, I think this is a great plan. And what I really hope is that people don’t think to long or hard about this, or they’ll realize that the biological father hasn’t even been mentioned here. And while the Father’s Rights Activists will appreciate that he doesn’t have to pay child support–child support being the Worst Thing Ever–they may just wonder why some other guy is raising the kid.
Topics: Abortion, The Men's Rights Movement | 3 Comments »
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:25 am
Yes, kind of bizarre.
A living wage tied to the number of children and backed by the tax code would do a better job in stopping abortions, since contrary to her belief, most abortions are to limit family size. Taking away the economic necessity to do that would stop many such heartbreaking decisions. It would also allow more shotgun marriages, especially if we paid college students with families.
September 23rd, 2006 at 10:33 pm
Even better–free contraception on demand. I’d be thrilled to have my hard-earned money going to fund the pill for every girl under the age of 21.
Of course, I’m not holding my breath.