I didn't get any permission to write this

I saw this picture on a link a friend put up on Facebook.  The link was for a story in The Mudflats called Help! Help! There's an Elephant in my Uterus!  and I laughed and laughed because that's ri-DIC-ulous!  An elephant?  In my UTERUS!?  HA!  It would never fit!  And how would it ever come out!?  Yikes!  Talk about a hibernation plug! (gross, lol!)  So I clicked on the link to read more of the outrageous hilarity.

It was a story about how the state of Alaska is the latest state to consider a mandatory ultrasound law for women who seek abortions.  What's this "mandatory ultrasound," I thought to myself, (still laughing about the elephant in my uterus),  I could hardly get approval from my health insurer for an ultrasound that I wanted to have when I was pregnant and had no intention of getting an abortion.  About this time I was realizing this was not a hilarious humor article about stuffing enormous animals into small spaces.  Oh.

Alaska (along with Idaho, Pennsylvania, Texas (of course),and Virginia) is trying to pass a law so a woman who seeks an abortion must have a medically unnecessary ultrasound whether she wants it or not.  I actually heard about this a few weeks ago on a blog called The Middle Voice.  The title of her post was called Virginia's New Honor Rape Law, and she brilliantly compared the way some countries in the Middle East punish women by raping them (which nobody in this country would disagree is appalling) with this new law.  She said the only ultrasound that would be able to pick up an early first-trimester pregnancy is a transvaginal ultrasound.  Here's a picture:

So a woman who wants to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy must first be subjected to being penetrated against her wishes for no medical reason, whatsoever.  Hey! That sounds an awful lot like rape! What the FUCK?

The Mudflats article also reported on how the aptly named Alaska State Representative, Alan Dick, said at a House Health and Human Services committee meeting that he doesn't believe when a woman is pregnant that it's really her pregnancy.  He thinks that if a woman wants to get an abortion she should have a permission slip from the impregnator.  A fucking permission slip.  He said,

 “If I thought that the man’s signature was required… required, in order for a woman to have an abortion, I’d have a little more peace about it…”   

He'd feel better if a man gave his permission for a woman to decide whether or not she wants to spend the next eight months carrying a baby she never intended to have.  Because lord knows, men know WAY more about what is good for women than women do.

Representative Dick, a man whose terrible judgement allows him to walk around in public with an Amish chin beard, wants anyone with a uterus to have a permission slip if she decides she doesn't want to carry a pregnancy to term, and then face motherhood or the adoption process; because to him every sperm is sacred.  To be fair, after Dick made that appalling statement, he heard from a LOT of women and he apologized for his "artless" comment and said that maybe a not a permission slip, but the woman should definitely be required to inform the impregnator.  I can't say it any better than this: (from The Mudflats)

There was no clarification about what would happen if the impregnator was a woman’s rapist, or father, or abuser, or how paternity would be determined beforehand. No word about how it would be enforced, or what would legally happen to a woman or a doctor if it wasn’t. No word on how a signature would be validated, or what notarization or witnesses might be necessary to prove the signature was real. Nothing about what happens if a man and a woman disagree, or if a man refuses to acknowledge the notification, or if he can’t be contacted. 

Ladies, we have to wake up and take a role in preventing our country and our bodies from being taken over by neoconservative nutjobs who want to simultaneously prevent the poor and middle class from receiving affordable health care (because, let's be honest, if you have enough money, these particular laws can be sidestepped), but also forcing us to go through with pregnancy whether we want to or not.

We have to stop entertaining ourselves with hilarious ideas of cramming gigantic animals into small spaces ("Help! Help!  There's a narwhal in my small intestine! OMG! LOL!), hibernation plugs (gross! LOL!) and chin beards, and start paying attention to what the people who write the laws are trying to do to us.

I say "vagina" 23 times in this post!

Mitch likes to tell me wild stories and try to make me think they are true, and when I don't believe him he says he wants to bet on it.  Usually when he goes as far as betting, he's right, no matter how ridiculous the bet.  Did you know that that Neil Diamond song Turn on Your Heartlight is about ET?  It is. No kidding.  I lost five bucks on that one.  Did you also know that the University of Minnesota used to have cows with windows in their sides so you could see their insides?  They did.

Last night we were watching some show that made reference to The Vagina Monologues and Mitch said something in passing about the character "Vagina Bob" from the Vagina Monologues.  I tried to let it go.  I really did.  I've never actually seen or read the Vagina Monologues but I was pretty sure there was no character named Vagina Bob, so I said, "No Mitch, I'm not falling for that.  There is no Vagina Bob!"  He joyfully said, "Wanna bet?"  And so began a midnight Google search for Vagina Bob.

I love Google so much.  I love that they take the first word or two and try to guess what you are searching for based on what other people have searched for.  I really love that I can see what people googled to see my blog too.  Yesterday someone was directed to my July 2010 archives by googling, "fat ugly wiener dogs that are stupid."  Last night, tired and punchy, Mitch was about to type in "Vagina Bob" and got as far as "Vagina" and Google said, "Vagina smells like vinegar?"  No Google!  OMG! LOL!  So then we got silly and totally off track and googled "Vagina smells" and learned that some poor women ask Google why their vaginas smell like a variety of things like turnips, wet garbage, buttered popcorn, Taco Bell meat, "sea creatures," a dead mouse, or ketchup.  Oh ladies, just go to the doctor! (especially you, Turnip Lady)

So anyway, back to Vagina Bob.  There is a character named Bob in the Vagina Monologues, but he is not known specifically as "Vagina Bob," so I declared that I had won the bet.  And then Mitch said, "No fair!  He's a vagina, and his name is Bob, hence: VAGINA BOB"  And then it struck me that OMG, Mitch thinks The Vagina Monologues is a play where the vaginas are the ones doing the talking, so I said, "You do know, vaginas can't talk..."  He said, "In that play they can!" and then he did some puppet-like miming with his hand and said, "I'm Bob, and I'm a vagina!"  in a deep, manly voice.  I didn't even get into the fact that even if vaginas could talk and put on plays, they are most likely female.  We declared a stalemate and went to bed.