Wearing a hideous orange and purple short sleeve buttondown shirt with a color pattern whose arrangement was no doubt based upon the colorblind fashion designer's vomit from the martini binge of the night before, Jake enters the house after Donald lets him in. To be polite, Donald doesn't say anything about the shirt.
"What are you reading?" Jake says, pointing to the pamphlet in Donald's hand, "That doesn't look like a comic."
"Oh, this is one of a bunch of anti-abortion pamphlets I got yesterday," Donald says, handing the pamphlet to Jake.
"Oh," Jake says, "Well, you better hide these before Francine and Masani see them."
"Masani has already yelled at me about them. I am just looking at them from a rhetorical perspective. It is not like I am about to go out and protest an abortion clinic, er, not today anyway," Donald says as Jake hands the pamphlet back.
"Rhetorical perspective?"
"Yes, how they make their argument and all that, particularly these days. I mean there are seven billion people on Earth so I am wondering why abortion is still so controversial."
"I don't follow."
"Well, most of the people against abortion are against it on ethical or moral or religious grounds, but most of those ideas developed during a different time when, relatively speaking, human beings were scarce. Infant mortality rates were high and so forth. Now, the situation has changed and there are plenty of people, yet those old ideas are still out there guiding people's opinions. I am just not sure those ideas fit very well anymore, so I am wondering how people are persuaded today to abide by them. I mean the old man who gave me these pamphlets seemed like a nice enough person, but, with all the problems of the world to choose from, he decided to be really fixated on stopping abortions. What made him believe that was the most important issue in the world?"
"I still don't follow. I'm sorry it's the morning and I'm still used to working second shift, so I'm a little out of it."
"I know the feeling. No, what I mean is that, if anything, now we may be hitting a period in which there are too many human beings."
"Overpopulation."
"Yes, and we are already seeing signs that the environment cannot support this many human beings. Yet population is estimated to continue increasing. Some have even suggested that there will be ten billion people or more by the end of the century. But what kind of lives are those people going to lead? It looks like we will either have to rein ourselves in through abortion and other forms of birth control, or nature is going to do it for us, and I think the second way is going to be worse in terms of human misery."
"But hasn't that argument been made before, and every time we find some way through technology or whatever to provide enough food and other necessities for people? I thought most starvation came from inequitable distribution of resources, and not from any actual shortage."
"I think that is true, but will it be true forever? I am just trying to figure out why people are so worried about abortion, when there seem to be bigger problems on the horizon for the people already here."
"Maybe because they don't want to think that they could have been aborted?"
Francine comes down the stairs, "Are you two men trying to control the bodies of women?"
"Uh," Jake says.
"Er," Donald says, and sweeps the pamphlet behind his back.
"I can't wait until genetic engineering makes it possible for a man to be pregnant. Once that happens, there will be no more debate about leaving the choice of whether or not to have a baby up to the individual or the state," Francine says, reaching the bottom of the stairs and kissing Jake.
"I think I have morning sickness already just at the thought of becoming pregnant," Donald says.
Francine looks at Jake's shirt, "Dear, that shirt should have been aborted. It's ugly."
"Hey!" Jake says, "I like this shirt!"
"That was not very nice, Francine," Donald says.
"Sometimes honesty is better than politeness, Donald. C'mon, Jake, I think I have a large t-shirt that you can wear instead."
"Hey! Don't I have any choice in the matter?" Jake says, as Francine pushes him up the stairs.
"No. Now you'll experience what it used to be like for women!" Francine says.
Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.
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