Today, a large group of people who care about children in literally no other contexts are taking to the streets of Washington DC to demand that women be forced to give birth against their will. They call it the March for Life, and this year it's packed with even more irony and less self-awareness than usual. Get this -- their theme this year is SCIENCE.

In the spirit of the march, Mitch McConnell, who has been missing for days and has claimed it would be pointless to vote on any bill during the government shutdown, who has refused to even hear any bills to reopen the government, finally decided to make his way to the Senate floor to cast a pointless, symbolic vote to make the Hyde Amendment permanent. You know the Hyde Amendment. It's the extremely gross one that makes it so those who get their healthcare from the federal government -- those on Medicare/Medicaid, veterans and those currently in the military, federal employees, Native Americans, and those in the Peace Corps -- cannot have any part of their abortions covered by their health care. This is something the Republicans do each year, and each year it doesn't happen. This year, it also did not happen. The bill, which would need 60 votes to pass, got only 47.

OI' Turtleface does not give a flying shit about all the federal workers who are going without pay -- many of whom probably even have babies -- but he will sure as hell show up for a bullshit vote to show the anti-choice crowd how excited he is about making sure the poors are denied access to basic reproductive care. Nice!

As mentioned, the theme of this year's march is SCIENCE and how being anti-choice is totally not at odds with SCIENCE. You know, even though they keep having to make up their own SCIENCE in order to make it harder to obtain abortions. They have to make shit up like "fetal pain" being a thing that can possibly even exist at 20 weeks gestation, that abortion is unsafe, that abortions can be reversed, etc. etc.

Thus, to kick things off at the march, Ben "Facts Don't Care About Your Feelings" Shapiro gave a speech that many are describing as "five commercials for products sponsoring his podcast."

And at some point he explained that pro-lifers would not even kill Baby Hitler, which is not a thing anyone has ever suggested they would do.

They would, of course, let a whole lot of babies suffer in detention centers. They would let a lot of babies starve to death. They'd be totally cool with the babies not having health care and maybe dying as a result of that because then they'd be murdered by the invisible hand of the free market, and that doesn't count. Because the hand is invisible. Plus, if you don't let some babies die from lack of health care, then how will the other babies have any incentive to work hard and make money? Checkmate, liberals.

Shapiro, because he loves facts and not feelings, explained to the Washington Post that his opposition to abortion is rooted in SCIENCE, not the Bible or his own feelings.

"When I speak about abortion, I don't talk in terms of religion. I might make a spiritual appeal at the end," said Ben Shapiro, the popular conservative writer and podcast host who will be a featured speaker at Friday's rally. "I always speak in terms of logic and science. I've never cited the Bible."

Shapiro is an Orthodox Jew — not the typical religious background of an antiabortion activist — and he insists that there's no science on the side of those who advocate for abortion rights. "I don't think they make scientific arguments. I think they make emotional appeals," he said. "I don't think there are very good scientific arguments on the other side, which is one of the reasons I'm not pro-choice. The basic scientific definition of human life begins at conception. That is the most basic scientific definition of human life."

That is not, for the record, the basic scientific definition of human life. Ben Shapiro is not a scientist. He is a person who makes his living telling other people his feelings on things while screaming that his feelings are pure logic and reason.

Also in the Washington Post today is an op-ed from "March for Life" founder Jeanne Mancini titled "The March for Life wants you, Democrats, but it's hard when your party has become so extreme."

Too bad my invitation got lost in the fire I threw it in.

Mancini seems to think that it is only the elected officials of the Democratic Party who support reproductive rights, and that they only do so because Planned Parenthood gives them so much money to do so. And that, as a result of this, Democrats don't want to go to their march.

Democratic leadership has become so beholden to the pro-abortion lobby that they have aligned themselves with Planned Parenthood. The group is under investigation by the Justice Department related to the transfer and selling of aborted baby body parts, Politico reported in 2017.

Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that Planned Parenthood reportedly spent $38 million in the 2016 election cycle and $20 million toward the 2018 midterm elections to elect pro-abortion Democrats. And Democratic political affiliation has become tantamount to abortion-on-demand because of groups like NARAL and Emily's List, which pump tens of millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of pro-abortion Democrats.

OH. Except the weird thing is that people actually vote for pro-choice politicians and against anti-choice politicians on purpose. Because they, as voters, believe that reproductive rights are good things and that it is a bad thing to force anyone to have a baby against their will. And no, they are not being paid by Planned Parenthood to believe that. In fact, many of us give our hard-earned dollars to Planned Parenthood, or volunteer with them, in hopes of protecting those reproductive rights.

There are lots of clubs that would probably have me as a member. The Scientologists, the Hare Krishnas, even the Manson Family probably would have taken me, had I been alive at the time -- I could go on! But I don't join those clubs because those clubs are terrible and believe things that I do not believe. There's a Groucho Marx joke in there somewhere.

I'd laugh at these people some more, but the fact is that we are in an incredibly precarious situation right now, and are on the verge of losing our reproductive rights thanks to the appointment of yet another accused sexual predator to the Supreme Court who will almost definitely vote to overturn Roe the very moment he has the opportunity to do so. So while these people may not know anything about SCIENCE (or anything else for that matter), it's likely that they're going to get their way sooner than later and we're going to have to start preparing for that.

[Washington Post]

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