The Weekly Screed (#641)

In search of the immortal fetus
by David Benjamin

MADISON, Wis. — Ever since the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, Americans have been waging an ideological war over abortion eerily similar to the “Wet vs. Dry” conflict that led to the passage of Prohibition in 1919.

“The difference now,” said my friend Wilhelm Bienfang, America’s foremost “idea man,” “is that the ‘wets’ are conservative. Liberals are the ‘dry’ camp now.”

I admitted that Dr. Bienfang — who thinks at the speed of light — had lost me again. He said, “Look, kid. Your basic fetus is a fish, floating around in a uterus full of water. As long as he’s wet, that little minnow is the darling of the right wing, its life holier than a mile-high stack of Old Testaments. Right?”

Indeed, most conservatives believe that the life of the unborn baby — as far back as the moment a sperm cell wiggles through the wall of an embryo — is so sacred that to kill it is a mortal sin tantamount to murder.

“Exactly,” said Bienfang. “But once you’ve popped him out of his mother and dried him off, and he’s got no more mojo than a groundhog on February 3rd.”

I sensed that Bienfang had not only found a solution to this social injustice, but had devised a way to make a fortune from it. I asked what he had up his sleeve.

With a classic Bienfang flourish, he opened a curtain. Behind it stood a contraption whose main element was a transparent cylinder containing 50 or 60 gallons of clear fluid. Projecting from the cylinder was a ribbed rubber suction tube eight feet long and perhaps a foot in diameter. Also, there were dials, pipes, gauges and tubes sticking out of it, and an electric cord snaking out underneath.

“I call it Womb-Vac,” said Bienfang.

I mouthed the thing’s name but couldn’t utter it aloud. “What does it — ”

“Do?” said Bienfang. “First, let me explain. The worst thing that can happen to a fetus in America is to graduate to childhood. While he’s wet and unborn, the little guy has a million fanatical people fighting for his life, his safety, his nourishment and his Constitutional rights. But, once the doc slaps his ass and Nurse Betty wipes all the goo off of him, he’s totally without political, religious, social or moral significance. Worse, if he’s poor, fatherless, homeless, sick, disabled or drug-addicted at birth, he’s a parasite on society. He’s every Christian taxpayer’s worst enemy! The little tyke’s an object lesson to be reviled from a thousand righteous pulpits as passionately as — before he was born — he was glorified. And all those friends he had a minute before? Gone. Never to be heard from again. They’ve got flocks of yet-unborn unborns to save, fresh fetuses to fight for.”

As usual, Bienfang was starting to make sense — which always scares me.

“Everybody loves a fetus,” he said. “It epitomizes human life, but poses none of the drawbacks of human life. It’s as perfect, inert and undemanding as an egg.”

“Yes, but people love babies, too,” I insisted. “Even more!”

“For the first few hours, maybe. But then, they start crying. They crap, they make messes, they grow, they break things, they cost money, they become teenagers, rock musicians, criminals, lawyers. One of them became Hitler,” said Bienfang. “But think about this! What if Hitler had never grown beyond the womb. What if he’d remained forever a fish — his head bowed, his little fists curled up, his big soft blind eyes staring blankly into the saline solution all around him?”

“You mean, that’s what that thing does?” I asked.

Bienfang fondled his invention. “At the instant when mommy’s cervix dilates to ten centimeters, before the unpredictable fetus can worm his way into the cold cruel world and take his first fateful breath, the doctor (assisted by a technician from Womb-Vac LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bienfang, Inc.) fits the suction pad snugly in place. Suddenly, a powerful vacuum reaches into mommy like a giant hand and snatches the fetus from his cozy womb, shooting him into an identical aquatic environment, uncontaminated but rich in nutrients, calibrated to human body temperature and as comfy as an old shoe.”

I tried to object, but Bienfang was rolling. “But he’ll never have an old shoe! He’ll never wear shoes. Or clothes. Or even a diaper. He’ll never grow! Suspended in oxygen-rich protoplasm in his private artificial uterus in one of a thousand fetal nurseries managed compassionately by Bienfang, Inc., all over America, he’ll not only live indefinitely — perhaps forever — he’ll never suffer the indignity of potty training, or growing pains, having dreams that don’t come true, or fearing death. He’ll be spared the disillusionment of love, the contempt of his own children, the despair of a failed career, the onset of old age and the gradual, inevitable, horrible decay of his faculties. He’ll never have faculties. Nobody will love him (except abstractly) or hate him. Best of all — along with millions of the permanently unborn — he’ll exist, sublimely ignorant of even the most rudimentary feelings, in suspended animation as the supreme symbol of the purity of life before birth.”

“But, but,” I babbled, “who would pay for this giant fetus farm? I mean, the victims you’re planning to vacuum out — they’ll be poor single moms, or teenage runaways, prostitutes, possibly even homeless girls with drug problems.”

Bienfang chuckled. “Son, do pregnant rape victims fund the pro-life movement? Do teenage moms lobby state governors to sign anti-abortion laws?”

“Well, no,” I said. “Rich, white, male, right-wing activists and televangelists do that. They’ll do anything to protect the God-given rights of the unborn.”

“Exactly. So, how do you think they’d react if I said, ‘Boys, I need another billion bucks, or I’m gonna have to pull the plug on two million adorable little live fetuses with big eyes and squishy hands, swimming blissfully in saline solution?’”

“You wouldn’t!” I gasped.

“Hey,” said Bienfang, “don’t forget what Jack Bauer said while tightening a thumbscrew: ‘One man’s sanctified life is another man’s hostage.’”