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There are days…

There are days when – glad as I am to be outside the U.S. border – I wonder if we exaggerated the dangers of staying. This is not one of those days.

Meet Senator Patricia Miller, Republican, Indiana State Senate. While Patricia was passing long nights working the geriatric ward of the Wishard Memorial Hospital, she read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. She thought, “My god, this woman is BRILLIANT! A – a true utopia! A Braver, Newer World. Mrs. Atwood, I solute you. And what’s more, I can help.”

And so, Pat ditched nursing for a more productive career in the Indiana legislature. Carrying the About the Author photograph of Atwood in her wallet for inspiration, she worked hard to be elected and has served Indiana for twenty three long years, winning multiple awards including Outstanding Guardian of Small Business from the National Federation of Independent Business in 1996 and Legislator of the Year from the Mental Health Association of Indiana in 2002.

But when the voting machines in Ohio reported that George W. Bush had won another four years, Patty knew there would never be a better time to act. She drafted new legislation that she was certain would begin America’s shift towards Atwood’s Promised Land.

Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make marriage a requirement for motherhood in the state of Indiana, including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do become pregnant “by means other than sexual intercourse.”

According to a draft of the recommended change in state law, every woman in Indiana seeking to become a mother through assisted reproduction therapy such as in vitro fertilization, sperm donation, and egg donation, must first file for a “petition for parentage” in their local county probate court.

Only women who are married will be considered for the “gestational certificate” that must be presented to any doctor who facilitates the pregnancy. Further, the “gestational certificate” will only be given to married couples that successfully complete the same screening process currently required by law of adoptive parents. – Suburban Guerrilla, via Nobody Knows Anything

Flushed with the anticipation of her success, Patty-Pat sat down to write a long letter to her hero, beginning, “Dear Mrs. Atwood: My life’s work is just beginning. Once the bill has passed, I plan to draft legislation requiring all women in Indiana to wear robes that cover their bodies. This is, as you know, simply a protective measure…”

I know of a single woman who went through five years of fertility treatments before finally becoming pregnant. Are there thousands of children begging to be adopted? Yes. Can single women adopt? It’s rare. It’s very, very rare.

This bill would affect single women and gay/lesbian couples. It would even affect unorthodox straight couples who express parenting ideas contrary to the Gestational Certificate social worker’s mores, like the family bed, or breastfeeding past six months.

Let’s say Bill and Sarah can’t conceive. They don’t adopt, because the adoption process is deeply fucked all to hell and they’re terrified of stories like the girl who was ripped away from her parents because her bio-parents said, three years later, “Oh…whoopsie!” Or they want a white male newborn, and everyone wants a white male newborn. They’re like Cabbage Patch Kids at Macy’s in December of 1983. They just ain’t there.

But Bill and Sarah get along just fine with the Gestational Certificate social worker, who coincidentally attends their church. They have their certificate in less than a year, and in only eighteen short months Sarah is pregnant with twins. And everything is simply perfect until Sarah gets a liiiiitle too friendly with Mr. Peterson, Kayla and Kyla’s kindergarten teacher, and they run off to Saint Etienne together, never to be seen again.

So where does that leave the five year old twins? With one parent. Good thing their parents got a certificate, huh?

Senator Miller says:

We did want to address the issue of whether or not the law should allow single people to be parents. Studies have shown that a child raised by both parents – a mother and a father – do better. So, we do want to have laws that protect the children.

Listen, Patty. If you actually gave a fuck about the children, you’d be drafting legislation to gut and re-tool the adoption laws so that single people and gay/lesbian couples could adopt the children who are growing up right this minute in foster homes.

I mean, JESUS.

Update And here’s an unexpected bit of good news – Miller dropped the bill , saying, “The issue has become more complex than anticipated and will be withdrawn from consideration by the Health Finance Commission.” (Translation: “Oops! People noticed. Memo to self, hide legislation in boring corporate tax bill next time.”)