Arizona has a new state law, specifically designed to make it more difficult for women to get abortions.
I am not going to get into a discussion about abortion, the moment when a soul is created, who has the right to decide such things, or any of the other myriad issues orbiting so much as the mention of the word "abortion" in... well, I was going to say "in polite company" but the truth is I can end that sentence immediately after the second quotation mark.
What I am going to comment on is a truly, massively, frighteningly absurd premise of the new law.
Part of the language in the bill establishing Arizona's new abortion law, just as in every other bill in the United States that deals with the issue, defines when a woman is considered pregnant. More specifically, it defines a temporal starting point for "gestational age" -- the age of the [baby / fetus / embryo / insert your preferred term here] .
In their infinite (lack of) wisdom, Arizona's lawmakers have decided (against a great deal of scientific, medical, and otherwise educated advice) that the zero point in an unborn child's age is the first day of a woman's last menstrual period. NOT the day of conception, but the day on which the most recent pre-conception menstrual period began.
If you do a (very) little research on basic human biology, you will see that the lawmakers of the state of Arizona have decided that a woman is officially pregnant approximately two weeks BEFORE egg and sperm ever meet.
Take a moment to think about that. Go on, I'll wait.
dum de dum dum de dum dum de dum...
Got it? That's right. You can Google it. According to the lawmakers in Arizona, pregnancy does not begin when the cell membrane of an ovum is penetrated by a spermatocyte (in plain English, when the sperm fertilizes the egg, aka "conception"). It begins two weeks before sperm and egg come in contact -- quite possibly a point in time when the sperm and egg are separated by a gulf measuring thousands of miles.
This means (what a miracle!) that women in the state of Arizona are essentially pregnant each and every time they begin a menstrual period. One has to wonder how much longer it will be before one of the same group of geniuses who came up with this idea that the end of the menstrual period, or the taking of any medicines to lessen the unpleasant effects of menstruation, should be considered "abortion" as well.
Even without that... pregnancy begins two weeks before conception? REALLY?
I've had concerns about the future of this nation... but now I see the light at the end of the tunnel is indeed attached to a large, fast, and very badly driven truck...
Two weeks before conception?!?!
God save us.
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