Drug of Choice

I don't know what it's like in other places, but here in East Texas the anti-abortion activists are quite a spectacle.

They begin by creating a tiny fake cemetery alongside a busy road, with foot-tall wooden crosses painted white. Then they kneel down in the center of it and begin to wail, to cry, to scream, to rage, to "pray." Then they pack up their signs and go home.

They say their beliefs are based on Science™, but that veers towards the absurd. Science is not in a position to determine the moment that inanimate matter becomes animate, or life becomes sentient.

They say their beliefs are based on religion, but that's not quite true, either. Their bible, although oddly specific in some respects (they can't eat lizards, for instance), doesn't bring up the topic of abortion. They're taking a few verses and extrapolating them out to get the result they want. Other people, fooled by Satan no doubt, extrapolate out and get different results.

And the thing is, they've already won. Christian terrorists murdered a few doctors and torched a few clinics, which scared most doctors out of the business, and legislators have made the process so onerous and expensive that it's virtually impossible to get an abortion in Texas. There are no clinics at all in East Texas. Republicans have packed the court with partisans, so soon they'll be able to outlaw abortion openly, but that's just awarding the trophy after the contest has been decided. It doesn't really matter anymore.

It's not really about the issue, anyway. What this is really all about is their addiction to Outrage. They get high from Righteous Indignation.

Once Roe v. Wade is overturned, they aren't going to go away. They're going to pick a new issue to dwell on. My money is on The Homosexual Agenda, but they may have a go at restoring mandatory prayer in public schools. We'll see.

They're going to talk about science, and they're going to talk about religion.

They should be talking about dopamine and serotonin.