They all take care of me: the church, the state, the doctors and judges. For nine months they all wish me the best. I am something precious and they protect me.
As an unborn I am supposed to grow and flourish. Ignorant as to my gender, my language and my race -- with meals on tap and free bed and board -- I can have a good time without worrying about what tomorrow brings. You see, we unborn get it good even if we don't know who we are.
Come to think of it -- and thinking is something I'm not usually noted for -- for all I know I could be an orangutan or some other life form as my zoological attributes are presently unapparent to me. Such ready scholarship is not my forte and besides I am yet to learn to read or speak and have no idea what my kind looks like.
But let's assume I possess 23 chromosomes and may pass my born days as human. Give me nine months to get my X's and XY's together and I'll be dilated to meet you.
In the meantime, they all take care of me: the church, the state, the doctors and judges. If someone should get it into their head to harm me, she (it is usually a "she" apparently) had better watch out. I belong to the state. The church owns my soul. And the doctors and judges ensure that nobody inflicts pain on me.
But after nine months I'm on my own. For 50 years of my life to come nobody will care for me. I'll just have to help myself. A job? It'll be up to me. An education? That's something my parents should pay for. If I should steal for my own relief, a judge will put me in jail. If I am desperate the church will comfort me, but it won't get me a job, or feed me, or house me. Don't harm others, I'll be told, especially not the unborn.
Encouraged by this message I may make a good fist of it. If of a religious persuasion and fostered by the church I may be enrolled in the God-Man-Boy-Love Association because the church abhors abortion much more than it does paedophilia.
As I said, it will be up to me. Pretty soon I'll be on my own and my transgressions will be my own fault. But for the time being, while I remain trapped in this woman's body, I'm everybody's business but hers.
To be cared for by so many is a wonderful feeling. (Whatever that is. I have not, as yet, experienced an emotion but I'm looking forward to it). For nine months I'm the apple of everyone's eye. Don't mess with the foetus, they'll say, that's where babies come from (and babies grow up to be workers and soldiers).
People who I don't know and whom I may never meet are watching over me. Aren't I the lucky one? But tell me: why doesn't it stay this way?
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Original audio source (LOR_18_11_05.mp3)Adapted ( expanded) from a piace by Karl Krauss
