A cupcake design suggestion from the campaign's website. Mmmm...it's murderlicious!
Gentle readers, I am chortling over my morning coffee at this one. Yes, it’s the national “Cupcakes for Life” campaign, coming your way on October 9. Mark your calendars! What is this latest salvo from the “pro-life” movement? Let them explain….
Why Cupcakes? Simply because everyone wants them!
Cupcakes were designed for children’s birthday parties. We love Children [sic] and we love birthdays. We think this would be a good way to tell people that we think that every child should be allowed to have a birthday. Bring in a tray of cupcakes for any group of people and you will find that they will flock to get them. As soon as they take a bite they will probably ask, “Who’s birthday is it?”
Then you answer. “It’s no ones birthday. These cupcakes represent the 50,000,000 children who weren’t allowed to be born, who never had a birthday.” The cake in their mouth will become dry and the moment will hopefully become quite somber. Then you say, “If you and I were aborted we wouldn’t have a birthday party either.”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! :::wipes away tears::: Yeah, let me know how that works out. I’m sure a free cupcake will simply sweep away every principled belief that people might have about the limiting government interference in our private lives, or a woman’s right to control her own body. If only they’d brought cupcakes to the Supreme Court in 1973, Roe v. Wade might have gone in a completely different direction. Plus, it’s sure to make you extra-popular with your co-workers!
Also, y’all? This makes me want cupcakes. I can only hope abortion stays legal so I can get some of those sweet, sweet cupcakes.
It’s “Thou Shall Not Kill,” and The Bible says nothing about abortion or the fetus. There, that’s over with.
As to the cupcakes — who cares what they say? I’d be liable to come along, pick one up and say “Now that’s an abortion of a cupcake!”, before wolfing it down.
Actually, Newt, Exodus 21:22 specifically mentions that if a fetus is killed accidentally, the person responsible is required to pay the woman’s husband a fine to be determined by a judge. The penalty is deliberately different from the penalty for accidentally killing a person, which is death. This is why Jewish law does not forbid abortion. But Christians are very selective in their reading of the Old Testament, so even though Jesus never said a thing about fetuses that would contradict the established Biblical law on the subject, they have completely contradictory views.
Jesus probably would have enjoyed a cupcake as much as the rest of us, though.
Hahahaha…I think it’s *actually* impossible to do this without coming across as a massive ass, regardless of the beliefs of the “audience”. Who wants to have their cupcakes messed with?
I really hope this happens, so I can respond to their sad-ded-baby schtick by swooping in and grabbing as many cupcakes as I can hold, and yelling “Awesome! More for meeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
Also, that website is a hoot. “Life cakes.” And from the Q&A:
Q.) What if my school won’t allow me to bring in cup cakes?
A2.) Do it anyway and be quick about it! Also be very apologetic and kind if you get caught.
In Hebrew, I think it’s actually “you shall not murder” rather than “you shall not kill.” Sad to say, the anti got it right this time. Even a stopped clock…
Under Jewish law, a pregnancy that endangers the life of the woman is considered a rodef, which means someone who is pursuing you with the intent to harm you. A rodef can be killed in self-defense. The woman’s life is clearly valued over that of the fetus.
Leave it to the antis to make even cupcakes a punitive experience. This is a perfect storm of anti craziness-their insistence that every single event in everyone’s life has to do with abortion, their complete social cluelessness, their willingness to frighten children in the name of their cause, their belief that anything they do to “save the babies” is moral and permissible.
Somehow I don’t see these coming to a cupcake store near you any time soon…
These people are
Sorry, ignore that last fragment. Or fill in the blank!
MM, I hope they bring cupcakes the next time you’re on clinic escort duty!
I would also like to start a new meme based on their spiel about birthdays:
…if you and I were aborted, we wouldn’t fill in the blank.
…be unemployed.
…beat our wives.
…abuse our children.
…drive drunk.
…cook meth.
…drop out of school.
…attend Tea Party rallies.
…live self-loathing, closeted lives until we’re caught trying to get a blowjob in an airport men’s room.
Feel free to contribute your own.
Ahahahaha! They occasionally offer us food or drink, especially in the winter. We make a policy of turning them down, because we don’t want to encourage the attitude that we’re all on the same side or doing the same thing.
Although for cupcakes, I might have to make an exception…:-)
I am really lost for words… I think I would just eat the cupcake and thank them for giving me the sugar rush to join the pro-choice demonstration.
As others have said, the cluelessness of this is unbelievable.
I used to be “pro-life” when I was a kid and a teen. I distinctly remember giving a report about abortion in my 11th grade history class, complete with scary photos and the little tiny feet, etc. I look back and feel horrified at how in-your-face I was, especially since I have no idea how many people in that class may or may not have had experiences with abortion.
No one had ever explained the complexity of abortion to me. All I was told is that some people like to be sluts, get pregnant, and then commit murder to avoid the consequences.
At no time did anyone ever explain that sometimes a pregnancy puts a mother’s life in danger. Or that people in committed relationships might get pregnancy scares, too. Or that abortion is a very difficult and heart-breaking choice for many women, a choice they don’t take lightly.
It wasn’t until I had my own pregnancy scare — while I was married — that it finally occurred to me that the whole abortion thing is a lot more complicated than anyone had explained. He was abusing me, and I was an under-the-table visitor without papers in a foreign country. The fear of having a baby in those circumstances made me pro-choice in a red hot second. And once I stopped going “lalala” with my hands over my ears, I started listening to the reasons people are pro-choice. And it became more than just something about me and my situation.
I don’t wish pregnancy scares on people, but I do wish all of these cupcake-wielding people would stop with the binary thinking.
Becky, not to put too fine a point on it:
Exodus 21:22 – King James Bible
“If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.”
Not fetus – woman with child. Those who wrote scripture had no knowledge of the fetus or human development. ChINOs in modern times interpret in the word, as justification for their belief that God’s command is explicit to prevent abortion. As usual, not many of them actually read the book they profess to live by.
Do you think that the RCC is the source or at least the driving force behind all our anti-choice politics in the US? I do think that, but it may be that I am misled by living in NY among many Catholics. It seems to me that many other Protestant groups make common cause and take cues from the RCC on this issue, mainly because of its huge infrastructure. Some of those groups just plain can’t compete with the kind of reach and organization the RCC has.
So anyway, if it’s the case that all of this comes from the RCC, then it sorta doesn’t matter what the Hebrew Bible (old testament) says, or even what the new testament says.
The RCC is very explicitly NOT led primarily by the bible but by the teaching authority of the RCC. They call it the “magisteria”. Pretty neat trick, right? This theology was built up over many centuries but made explicit at the time of the reformation.
So if a lot of the anti-choice memes flat ignore the bible, or pick and choose, or wevs, it’s because ultimately the talking points originated in some cardinal’s head over in Italy.
Also, ditto skada. In my teen years and early 20′s I was anti-choice. Then life hit me in the face.
Yep, I was too stupid to think beyond my own small experiences before age 25. Maybe that’s still true, just not on this issue any more.
I can only hope to make up for it if some woman out there is reading this and thinking, “I would never have an abortion….”
@rodriguez: I think the Roman Catholic Church is way more of a minor player in the anti-abortion politics of the US than the evangelical movement. Nearly all the big national candidates who are vehemently anti-choice are evangelical Protestants (Bachmann, Palin, Huckabee, Perry) and that’s often true at the state and local levels. The anti-choice organizations who provide most of the financing for those candidates and for the anti-choice movement are also evangelical Protestant, like Focus on the Family. Even Operation Rescue, which had a lot of RCs at the outset, is now much more evangelical. But yes, if you live in NYC, it does seem like the RCC is the main player in the anti-abortion movement. That’s true in Europe too. But I think it’s because New York is relatively evangelical-free compared to the US as a whole.
What I find so ridiculous is that the evangelicals/fundamentalists claim that the Bible is the literal word of God and that they’re commanded to follow it to the letter….but they don’t. Which is why they say they believe the one line for Leviticus that says (male) homosexuality is wrong but completely ignore the line from Exodus that says a fetus isn’t a person. Literal reading, my ass.
Well, I am of course not on board about the “magesteria” claim, but it does mean that official positions can change, and there’s hope in that.
OTOH the Protestant literal readings mean that people live under full cognitive dissonance all the time. How? I dunno.
The Catholic Church has always claimed that their clergy are the only people qualified to interpret Scripture (which is why for many centuries, they killed people who tried to translate it into local languages or offer a different interpretation). So theoretically they have carte blanche to change their minds and choose a different meaning, but they rarely do.
Protestant fundamentalists are often willfully blind to cognitive dissonance, and tend to maintain that by maintaining their cultural interpretations of it with almost as much vigilance as the RCC. One of the more interesting experiences I had was doing Torah/Talmud study with some evangelical types. It was blowing their minds to see rabbis and students discussing the original text and all the various interpretations over the millennia. The idea that religious people frequently argue about what the Scripture means and come to different but non-hostile conclusions was so foreign to them.
The idea that religious people frequently argue about what the Scripture means and come to different but non-hostile conclusions was so foreign to them.
This! Growing up in a very conservative Christian, evangelical home, where we went to church four times a week, there was no room for disagreement. There was one way: God’s way.
@Rodriguez – Yeah, it’s funny how actually getting some life experience can make people re-examine their views.
@NN: I never use any Christian bible to examine the Jewish foundational texts. They are translated from Hebrew to Greek to English, and a lot of the Hebrew meaning was, deliberately or otherwise, changed when Christians created their Greek versions. Here’s the way Everett Fox translates that passage:
When 2 men scuffle and deal a blow to a pregnant woman, so that her children abort-forth, but (other) harm does not occur, he is to be fined, yes, fined, as the woman’s spouse imposes for him, but he is to give it (only) according to assessment.
So even though the word “children” is used, it’s clear that the passage is referring to unborn children and that the penalty is a civil, not a criminal one. The attacker is held responsible for the value of the lost pregnancy, which is treated as a piece of property. The passage differentiates the loss of a pregnancy from actual harm to a person in the next, famous, sentence about an eye for an eye.
@Becky: I haven’t done the research, but I bet the RCC puts plenty of money into anti activities. Maybe it’s a city/country split or red/blue. I know that the middle of the country has more problems with fundies, but every major city I’ve experienced or heard about has more Catholics than fundies. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter in terms of behavior-they’re both vicious and evil.
One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen at a clinic was the time a Catholic and a fundie got into a shoving match about some point of theology. The other antis had to break it up.
Hmm, perhaps I ought to make cupcakes once a month for each egg that is released that doesn’t get to have a birthday.
PMS cupcakes, I like that idea a lot.
@annimal: Following that logic, dudes would have to make MILLIONS of cupcakes a week. Cream-filled cupcakes, as it were. (Sorry, I couldn’t help it).
I dunno about murderous, but the icing on that cupcake looks teratogenic.
ooo oooo On sale now! Thought you were excommunicated Catholic ladies! Well Joseph Ratzinger has a deal for you: come on down to Madrid during the 6-day world youth event, chat with our counselors, and you will be forgiven!!!!
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2011/08/17/if_you_can_get_to_madrid_for_world_youth_day_you_get_freebie_for.html
Not gonna lie, that is an event I would troll hardcore. I’d probably scoop the icing off of the top and be like “I’m scraping this shit off like a freshly emptied uterus” and then just fucking plowing it into my mouth with a smile.
@MA – that’s what I would do as well.. nothing like the power of transubstantiation to turn that frosting into freshly emptied uterus..
I’m speechless. I just looked at their web page, and now I want to start a Cupcakes for Choice campaign. They’ve set up in Times Square NYC twice from what I can tell. If they decide to go to Times Square on Oct. 9, anyone want to have a Pro Choice Cupcake booth/information campaign?
Ms Pinot – if I were living close by, I would join you.. that’s a fab idea.. if it goes ahead best of luck!