More on a future in which used tampons must be submitted for inspection by the government

Yes, I'm in full gross-out mode this week. Just in case you weren't made sick enough by my menopause musings (ModFab sure was), let's talk some more about all those fertilized eggs that the Christofascists think are fully-blown human beings -- a concept that always makes me think of Jim Earl as Sammy the Stem Cell singing "I'm sacred life....I did your wife....I'm Sammy the Stem Cell....dee-doodley-dum-dee-doo..."

It's one thing for me -- a somewhat demented, snarky, small-timer to talk about submitting used tampons for government inspection. But when Jane Hamsher, who's a Serious Blogger, gets in on the fun, I think we're on to something here:

Well now I’m consumed by curiosity about how the wingers address this thorny issue so I cruise on over to the NRO to consult that self-professed Oracle of all things Right, K.J. Lopez, and I found an article by her on in vitro fertilization cleverly entitled Eggheads. It’s filled with the usual NRO “ooh, Science scary” tocsins, as well as a dig at working women (”The demand side of the market comes mostly from career-minded baby-boomers, the frontierswomen of feminism, who thought they could have it all”). But then she goes on to note that 15% of all mothers in this country get a little help on the fertility front from science, and since that probably includes no small number of Iowa fundies looking to increase the flock of the faithful, she stops short of casting Joe and Sally Christian who just want to breed, breed breed into the fiery ovens of eternal damnation if they happen to brew up a few extra embryos they never intend to use along the way. A strange omission.

Or maybe not. I surfed around to various anti-choice websites, trying to find out if there was any kind of consistent voice on this front, and it took me to a lot of dillies, but I found that most of them simply sidestepped the issue altogether. Some didn’t, several of the Catholic ones were vocally opposed to in vitro fertilization, and I tip my hat to them for the consistency of their argument. I can hardly claim to have made a comprehensive and exhaustive exploration of the subject, because, you know, I had to finish the rest of that Coke. But on the whole it seems to be a bit of a sticking point that the fundies would just rather not address.

But it does lead to this other question that nags at me. When John M. Opitz of the University of Utah testified before the President’s council on Bioethics in 2003, he noted that between 60 and 80 percent of all naturally conceived embryos are simply flushed out in a woman’s normal menstrual cycle in the first 7 days after fertilization, and that women never even know that conception has taken place.

(As a side note, at the same meeting, Harvard government professor Michael Sandel, also a member of the Bioethics council, noted that “If the embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions: Alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem-cell research combined.” Although I enjoy Dr. Sandel’s sense of humor and appreciate the presence of a smartass on the Bioethics council, I really do, let’s just chalk this one up to “God’s will” for the moment and proceed with the question at hand.)

Now, I’m certain by most fundamentalist assessments that when I die, barring some sort of deathbed recant of the Lee Atwater variety, I am going to hell. (That last vote for John Kerry probably put me over the top.) But say by some fluke God has a soft spot for unrepentant preacher’s kids who are good to their dogs, and I wind up in heaven. Is 60 to 80 percent of the population going to be filled out with people who never made it past dome stage blastula? I mean — conversation is liable to be a bit thin, don’t you think? What can you really say beyond “congratulations on winning the big swim?”

Of course Jane isn't getting into the legal implications of the reality of fertilized eggs not making the cut almost half the time, but still -- it's something we need to beat the Jeebocrats over the head with like a blunt instrument -- repeatedly -- until they give us an answer.

Meanwhile, have that Pop-Secret ready to go into the microwave. It could happen at any minute, and you want to be ready.