If you’ve been reading The Split—which, let’s face it, you have, so don’t try to deny it—you know all too well that the whole freaking plot of the novel is based on abortion being absolutely illegal in the Confederation of Conservative States of America (CCSA). Ostensibly this is because its citizens are avidly, not to say, rabidly, “pro-life.”
Or so they pretend. In fact, however, as in the case of their real-life counterparts in today’s modern-as-now USA, the conservatives in CCSA don’t give a tinker’s fuck about “life” as it is actually being lived by actual living beings. If they did, they would use government to try to assure that every life-living person had the basic necessities to remain alive: pure foods, safe drugs, a non-dangerous social and natural environment, and affordable healthcare.
You will have already noted that, in the CCSA as in our red states, the prevailing attitude is to be against government providing such things. Making them available would impinge on our “freedom” by “forcing” “communism” or “socialism” down our “throats.” Or such boons to civilization are considered luxuries that “we” can’t “afford,” lest our billionaires be deprived of yet even more additional billions. Or the providing of them must be left to the sadistic mercy of the market, because capitalism.
But if the CCSA is not really pro-life, what is it? If doesn’t care about life, why does it nonetheless ban abortion?
Well, that’s easy. It’s pro-fetishizing-fetuses in the service of being pro-controlling-women. But it’s more than that. Because recall that one of the ongoing nationwide campaigns in the Confederation of Conservative States of America calls for its citizens to “Maintain the Population.” From that standpoint, abortion is bad, not because it’s immoral, or because every fetus is a “person,” or because the Bible, which never mentions abortion, forbids it. Rather, abortion is bad because the country needs workers. It needs consumers. It needs bodies.
Why? Because (as explained in the sacred text of The Split), for two years after the CCSA was created, during a period called the Great Moratorium, any citizen of either CCSA or USA could emigrate from their country and immigrate to the other, with minimal red tape or official hindrance. The result was pretty much what you’d expect: smart people; people who were not religious maniacs; non-whites; and just all-around normal folks, realizing what kind of society the CCSA had in mind for them, fled the place and flooded into the USA. This left the CCSA (with its predominantly agricultural economy and its hostility to immigrants) with a population shortfall from which it has forever been trying to recover. Not to mention that in the years since the Great Moratorium, smart, capable people have continued to escape, or attempt to escape, to the USA.
Hence, “Maintain the Population.” Which is, like, dystopian fiction, and political satire, and such. Right? This, of course, could only be a plot-point in a work of dystopian fiction.
You’d think. But…
Meet Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho—three (real-life!) states that have recently sued the Food and Drug Administration. It seems that the FDA’s ruling on the availability, by mail, of certain abortion medications have left these polities in the outrageous and intolerable position of not having enough pregnant teenagers.
As quoted from the lawsuit by our fellow merry Wonketteer Robyn Pennacchia:
Defendants’ efforts enabling the remote dispensing of abortion drugs has caused abortions for women in Plaintiff States and decreased births in Plaintiff States. This is a sovereign injury to the State in itself. […]
Citing some study, the Plaintiff states go on:
These estimates also show the effect of the FDA’s decision to remove all in-person dispensing protections. When data is examined in a way that reflects sensitivity to expected birth rates, these estimates strikingly “do not show evidence of an increase in births to teenagers aged 15-19,” even in states with long driving distances despite the fact that “women aged 15-19 … are more responsive to driving distances to abortion facilities than older women.”
You see, MO, KA, and ID had thought that, with their banning of abortion after the passage of Dobbs, they’d soon be able to cash in on “an increase in births to teenagers aged 15-19.” But now—
What? How is it possible that red states can’t even agree with blue states that getting teenagers aged 15-19 pregnant is a bad thing? Well, first, these are the people who think the US is a Christian nation. Do we have to remind you that Mary herself was probably a teenager (not to mention a pregnant virgin)? And look how important her baby turned out to be.
But the lawsuit doesn’t waste time arguing theology. It makes its case in terms of something which, even to the most self-righteously pious red-stater, is far more important: political power.
Robyn goes on to explain how the Plaintiffs
claim that the FDA is harming them because without all those teen moms making babies, they might have less representation in Congress and the Electoral College.
A loss of potential population causes further injuries as well: the States subsequent “diminishment of political representation” and “loss of federal funds,” such as potentially “losing a seat in Congress or qualifying for less federal funding if their populations are” reduced or their increase diminished.
She goes on to note that “two-thirds of teen moms who move out of their parents’ house live below the federal poverty level. Seventy-eight percent of children born to unwed teen moms live below the poverty level.” And she concludes, “These states are more or less saying that they are willing to condemn a significant portion of these girls and their children to poverty so that they don’t lose a vote in the Electoral College.
“That,” she notes, “is truly sick.”
Well. You, as do we, may think she’s being too kind. But, that said, what else is new? We already know that Republican opinions about pregnancies resulting from rape range from calling them “inconvenient” (JD Vance) to…well, here’s this, re the hypothetical case of a 13-year-old child who was raped. In the opinion of Ohio Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt, “It is a shame that it happens, but there’s an opportunity for that woman, no matter how young or old she is, to make a determination about what she’s going to do to help that life be a productive human being.” Rape is “a shame” and a 13-year-old is “a woman.”
Did somebody say, “But what about God?” Don’t worry. He’s right here, because isn’t He always? LA Rep. Dodie Horton, in voting against an anti-abortion exception for rape or incest, tells us, “we either believe God formed the baby in the womb, or we don’t.” Meanwhile, MO state Senator Rick Brattin said forcing the raped person to carry the baby to term may, “by God’s grace, …even be the greatest healing agent you need in which to recover from such an atrocity.”
To sum up: Forcing a pregnant child or teenager to carry her baby to term is a) good for the victim’s character; b) an opportunity for her personal growth; c) a way of honoring God’s creation; d) the best way to recover from rape or incest; and now e) a way to maximize her state’s Congressional representation, Electoral College votes, and receipt of Federal funds.
If, sooner or later, the red states and the blue states do indeed separate into two separate countries—if we are indeed on The Road to Splitsville—it will have been because the kinds of people in one of those nations are—horrifyingly, appallingly—different from the kinds of people in the other.
Jeezus H Christ.
Horrifying.