George Carlin - Napalm and Silly Putty

Once you leave the womb, conservatives don’t care about you until you reach military age. Then you’re just what they’re looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.

Pro-life. How can they be pro-life when they’re killing doctors? What sort of moral philosophy is that? “We’ll do anything to save a fetus, but we might have to kill it later on if it grows up to be a doctor”? They’re not pro-life; they’re antiwoman. Simple. They’re afraid of women, and they don’t like them. They believe a woman’s primary role is to function as a brood mare for the State. If they think a fetus is more important than a woman, they should try getting a fetus to wash the shit stains out of their underwear. For no pay.

Pro-life. You don’t see many white, antiabortion women volunteering to have black fetuses transplanted into their uteruses, do you? No. You don’t see them adopting any crack babies, do you? No, that’s something Jesus would do.

And you won’t see many pro-lifers dousing themselves with kerosene and lighting themselves on fire. Remember the Buddhist monks in Vietnam? Morally committed religious people in Southeast Asia knew how to stage a protest: light yourself on fire! C’mon, you Christian crusaders, let’s see a little smoke. Let’s see if you can match that fire in your bellies.

Separate thought: Why is it when it’s a human being it’s called an abortion, and when it’s a chicken it’s called an omelet. Are we so much better than chickens? When did that happen? Name six ways we’re better than chickens. See? No one can do it. You know why? Because chickens are decent people.

You don’t see chickens hanging around in drug gangs, do you? No. You don’t see chickens strappin’ someone to a chair and hookin’ up their nuts to a car battery. And when’s the last time you heard about a chicken who came home from work and beat the shit out of his hen? Huh? It doesn’t happen. You know why? Because chickens are decent people.

Back to abortion: The central question seems to be “Are fetuses human beings?” Well, if fetuses are human beings, why aren’t they counted by the census? If fetuses are human beings, why is it there’s no funeral following a miscarriage? If fetuses are human beings, why do people say, “We have two children and one on the way,” instead of saying, “We have three children”?

Some people say life begins at conception; I say life began a billion years ago, and it’s a continuous process. And actually, it goes back farther than that. What about the carbon atoms? Human life could not exist without carbon. So is it possible that maybe we shouldn’t be burning all this coal? I don’t mean to be picky, I’m just lookin’ for a little consistency.

The hard-core pro-lifers tell us that life begins at fertilization, when the sperm fertilizes the egg. Which usually occurs a few minutes after the man says, “Sorry, honey, I was gonna pull out, but the phone startled me.”

But even after fertilization it’s still six or seven days before the egg reaches the uterus and pregnancy begins. And not every egg makes it. Eighty percent of a woman’s fertilized eggs are rinsed out of her body once a month during those delightful few days she has. They end up on sanitary napkins, and yet they are fertilized eggs. So, what these antiabortion people are actually telling us is that any woman who’s had more than one period is a serial killer. I don’t mean to be picky, I’m just looking for a little consistency.

And speaking of consistency, Catholics—which I was until I reached the age of reason—Catholics and other Christians are against abortions, and they’re against homosexuals. Well, who has less abortions than homosexuals? Here’s an entire class of citizens guaranteed never to have an abortion, and the Catholics and Christians are just tossin’ them aside. You’d think they’d be natural allies.

And regarding the Catholics, when I hear that the Pope and some of his “holy” friends have experienced their first pregnancies and labor pains, and raised a couple of children on minimum wage, I’ll be glad to hear what they have to say about abortion. In the meantime, what they ought to do is tell these priests who took a vow of chastity to keep their hands off the altar boys. When Jesus said, “Suffer the little children come unto me,” pedophilia is not what he was talking about. He had something else in mind.

One phrase that comes up quite a bit in abortion discussions is “sanctity of life.” What about that? Do you think there’s such a thing as sanctity of life? Personally, I think it’s a bunch of shit. Who says life is sacred? God? Great, but if you read your history you know that God is one of the leading causes of death and has been for thousands of years. Hindus, Moslems, Christians, Jews, all taking turns killing one another, because God told them it was a good idea. The sword of God, the blood of the lamb, vengeance is mine. Millions of dead people. All because they gave the wrong answer to the God Question:

“Do you believe in God?”

“No.”

BAM! Dead.

“How about you? Do you believe in God?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe in my God?”

“No.”

BAM! Dead!

“My god has a bigger dick than your god.”

For thousands of years all the bloodiest and most brutal wars have been based on religious hatred. Which, of course, is fine with me; any time “holy” people are killing one another, I’m a happy guy. But please, don’t kill each other and then give me that shit about “sanctity of life.” Even if there were such an absurd thing, I don’t think you could blame it on God.

You know where the sanctity of life comes from? We made it up. You know why? Because we’re alive. Self-interest! Living people have a strong incentive to promote the idea that somehow life is sacred. You don’t see Bing Crosby runnin’ around talking about this shit, do you? You don’t hear much from Mussolini on the subject. And what’s the latest from JFK? Not a goddamn thing! You know why? Because JFK, Mussolini, and Bing Crosby are all fuckin’ dead. They’re fuckin’ dead, and dead people give less than a shit about the sanctity of life.

The only people who care about it are the living. So the whole thing grows out of a biased point of view. It’s a self-serving, man-made bullshit story; one of those things we tell ourselves in order to feel noble. “Life is sacred.” Makes us feel good. But let me ask you this: If everything that ever lived is dead, and everything alive is going to die, where does the sacred part come in? Can you help me on that?

Because even with all we preach about the sanctity of life, we don’t practice it. Look at what we kill: Mosquitoes and flies, because they’re pests. Lions and tigers, because it’s fun. Chickens and pigs, because we’re hungry. And people. We kill people. Because they’re pests. And because it’s fun!

And here’s something else I noticed. Apparently, the sanctity of life doesn’t apply to cancer cells, does it? You rarely see a bumper sticker that says Save the Tumors. Or I Brake for Advanced Melanoma. No. Viruses, molds, mildew, maggots, fungus, weeds, intestinal worms, E. coli bacteria, the crabs. Nothin’ sacred about those things. Just us.

So, at best, the sanctity of life is a selective thing. We choose which forms of life we feel are sacred, and we get to kill the rest. Pretty neat deal. You know how we got it? We made the whole thing up! Same way we made up the death penalty. The sanctity of life, and the death penalty. We’re such a versatile species.

The latest disaster for the solar system is that the United States has decided go to Mars. And, of course, later we intend to colonize deep space with our Salad Shooters and Snot Candy and microwave hot dogs. But let me ask you this: What are we going to tell the Intergalactic Council the first time one of our young women throws her newborn baby out of a seventh-story window? And how do we explain to the Near-Stellar Trade Confederation that our representative was late for the meeting because his breakfast was cold, and he had to spend thirty minutes beating the shit out of his wife?