The Washington Post’s “humor” columnist Alexandra Petri published an opinion piece Tuesday that was supposedly satire, but it wasn’t the slightest bit funny or clever. Because of state laws challenging Roe v. Wade, she imagined America would soon be a dystopian state where women were treated as little more than men’s property. How original!
Her piece was entitled, “Woman savoring last few hours before getting turned back into vessel,” was just as silly as you might think from the title:
It had been so long — nearly 49 years, with a few scares along the way — that the illusion had held, that she was a citizen, a person with rights to be respected in her own right….
Those 49 years had flown by. But when the court’s clock struck, her run would in all likelihood begin to end. She would stop being a person with autonomy over her own body that the law was bound to respect. She would go back to being a vessel that might potentially contain a person, a vessel whose rights ended once that possibility was considered.
It had been so nice, thinking that she could go anywhere in the United States and the laws would have to acknowledge her right to decide whether she wanted to be pregnant, that any doctor who treated her could give her correct information about what risks she faced, that if her life were threatened, her life would carry weight.
Of course being a journalist for the Post, lies abound. The Mississippi law to which Ms. Petri is alluding to, does allow exceptions for the life of the mother, just like many other pro-life, anti-abortion laws. But the media won’t tell the truth about that.
She continued crafting her tall tale about how women would soon be stuck inside the home with no rights of their own:
She pondered what to do while the Supreme Court heard arguments about Mississippi’s abortion law and deliberated upon them and formed an opinion. There were so many person things she had liked getting to do. She was glad she had gotten some voting in, earlier in the month. Maybe she should sue someone in court, or hold a job outside the home, or try to express an opinion in print somewhere. Maybe she could go feed some birds. Maybe she could pursue a little happiness. She could get a latte!
It only got more obnoxious and unfunny from there. Despite Petri and her pro-abortion cohorts insisting that an unborn baby was less than human, she complained it was the pro-life side who viewed people as less than human:
She had watched people be born during that time who did not know what it was like to be anything other than a person. It would be hardest for them, to be so forcibly reminded they were not. To have their autonomy wrested from them. Not only women, either — plenty of people who would be shocked to find themselves downgraded because they possessed parts the state felt were public domain.
"It had been nice while it lasted, being a person. Getting turned back into a vessel would be unfortunate. But maybe she would not stay a vessel long," she wrote. Petri ended her piece defiantly rallying the Post's liberal troops to fight back against anti-abortion laws:
She could see them salivating already at the prospect of having so many people transformed so quickly, and overnight. They seemed to think it was a real possibility.
As if they got to decide. As if she would not fight.
Petri’s callous attitude towards unborn children has reared its ugly head before. About two years ago she published a piece mocking a Pennsylvania state law that would allow parents who wanted to burry or cremate their miscarried child rather than have it be tossed as “medical waste.” Petri sarcastically wrote in response, “State legislators, stop being cowards. Mandate funerals for all spermatozoa.” She sure has a lot of sympathy for women who want to kill their children, but very little for grieving parents.
