The "V" word and abortion

On the second-to-last day before Michigan’s House of Representatives recessed for the summer, two state representatives were removed from discussing HB 5711, a bill regulating abortion clinics introduced by Rep. Bruce Rendon.

Rep. Barb Byrum was held from speaking after causing a ruckus by submitting an amendment to the bill limiting vasectomy procedures to men in medical
emergencies.

This amendment elicited a common response in the minds of the male representatives in the room: “But how am I supposed to cheat on my wife without the chances of setting up a franchise?” One thing leads to another, and you become responsible for the life of another young go-hard for the following 18 years.

The next thing you know, you’re using campaign money to pay for your bastard child’s college fund and yearly copies of FIFA so he’ll keep his damn lid shut. No one wants to be the next John Edwards. Let’s face it, you can’t regulate vasectomies. It’s an undue burden on the goals of men.

The other person removed from the room was Rep. Lisa Brown. She was sent out after she used the word, uh, “vagina.”

Ew, I just got shivers, did you? I just get so flustered when women use the “V” word. It’s like, gross and uncomfortable.

The next day, the House leadership put an unintentionally kinky gag order on Rep. Brown for her outburst of an anatomically correct word in a debate about the use of said anatomically correct word. I think we can all agree abortion is a serious issue and needs to be discussed, but like the House leadership has indicated, we must choose our words carefully.

You almost never hear men use the “P” word. It’s such an ugly word. That’s why we use slang and metaphors for our golf set. I’ve come up with a few words for Rep. Brown to use instead of vagina: “floopity-who,” “hula-hooey” and “joosy-jay.”

All of these would take into account the appropriate level of awkwardness we all feel while talking about our bits and pieces and the sex. This way we can have intelligent discourse about how women can use their joosy-jay.

HB 5711 understands the awkwardness of the situation. It only refers to a woman’s hula-hooey once, and that’s only when the bill dictates how to dispose of the non-baby, odds and ends of pregnancy.

That’s impressive, especially in a document that is more than 40 pages long.
Most of those pages are spent defining detailed variations of the word fetus and reminding everyone it is illegal to coerce a woman into getting an abortion.

It makes that point more than 20 times and requires the patient sign a document saying she wasn’t coerced into her decision. As if the only reason anybody ever gets an abortion is because someone is forcing them to. 

The goal of the bill is to make the process of getting an abortion difficult. It also wants to increase the costs of running an abortion clinic. HB 5711 makes abortions economically prohibitive and will likely significantly lower the number of abortions performed in Michigan.

The bill was passed onto the senate judiciary committee and will be discussed further after summer break. That is, barring the use of the “V” word by representatives with floopity-whos.

­— nicjacob@indiana.edu