The Scathing Atheist

by Noah Lugeons

According to the Alabama state senate, you don’t need a brain to be considered a person in their state. You don’t need a beating heart or a functional nervous system… hell, you don’t even need to be multicellular.

SB 301 passed the state senate by more than a 3-1 margin yesterday. The bill, which still has to pass in the House, would redefine the term “person” to include zygotes. In the bills own words, “The term ‘persons’ as used in the Code of Alabama 1975, shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization and implantation into the womb.”

This is actually a slight back pedal from the original wording, which would have defined personhood as beginning at fertilization with no requisite implantation. Luckily, they compromised to a position that is only 98.945% insane.

This is, of course, only one in a long list of anti-abortion measures that various red states seek to implement on this legislative calender. In a brazen attempt to fire up the base of their opposition, Republicans rode to majorities nationwide by promising fiscal responsibility and then used that victory to claim a mandate against women’s reproductive rights.

The fact that such a law is scientifically untenable and reduces a complex ethical dilemma into kindergarten logic left the senators unphased. In a 23-7 vote, they decided it was alright to classify abortion as murder. The bill makes no provisions for rape, incest or the safety of the mother.

It is also, of course, political masturbation. It likely won’t pass in the house and even if it did it would be quickly struck down even by today’s conservative leaning Supreme Court. It is a theatrical and inhumane way of courting religio-tards. It is a mere spectacle of Jesosity. And, of course, while the state senate pisses away resources debating the rights of the unicellular, the people’s work goes undone.

There is, of course, strong opposition to this bill from within the state. But the strongest opposition comes from the voices who say that the bill doesn’t go far enough.  While there are certainly progressive voices within the state battling this draconian misogyny, they are being drowned out by those who say that life begins at fertilization, not implantation.  They’ve gone so far as to cite extremely rare cases where women carry babies to term outside of the uterus.

But I say why stop there? Why should we wait for fertilization? I say that, in the words of history’s greatest comedy troupe, every sperm is sacred. I say that every thirteen year old boy with a bottle of hand lotion and an internet connection is a murderer. Hell, with the advent of cloning, every cell on the body has the potential to become a human being so shouldn’t scratching at a sunburn count as murder as well?

I think it’s safe to say that, as a general rule, if your position on an issue is so indefensible that it requires redefining what a human being is, you’re on the wrong side of the issue.