When the Whining Winners Won

All they wanted was to end abortion and put a gun in every baby’s hands. On the day they won the first battle, the great rejoicing drowned out the screams of the rights they were treading on. And, having won, there was a great increase in births. Not necessarily the ones they had wanted, but a win is a win. Right? Soon, the whining winners got sick of hearing how they did not care for the newlyborn. The ones that were overwhelming the front steps of firehouses. The ones that overflowed the orphanages they would not fund because that was the duty of the church, any of them. Just take your pick, it's like there is one on every corner (though some church treasurers, crying into their chalice cups, were slowly coming to regret the monster they had created). Instead, they used the money to fund ad buys about the wonders of adoption and how easy it was, until they got sued for false advertising. Most of their ads tended to overlook the policies the whinging winners had put in place to block certain…non-traditional couples from adopting. Surely that was not the answer to the problem. No matter what poll after poll told them. It’s not how they felt.

Then, in a fit of legislative pique, as storm clouds gathered over the rotunda of our once great capital, in June or July, or maybe October, the wearisome winners passed a new law. Upon their decree, every married couple who wanted to have a baby of their own must also adopt another. Ready to start your family, and have that first kid? Adopt one as well. Accidentally get pregnant ahead of your five-year plan? Adopt a kid as well. Going through IVF and finally, after years and years of pain and thousands and thousands of dollars acheive your dream? Time to adopt. Every married couple faced this situation, except those….non-traditional couples, because goddamnit that was not the answer. It just wasn’t. Damn the facts, said the wretched winners. When had facts ever served them?

The law raced through the House, jogged through the Senate, and was solemnly signed by the President in front of a half dozen couples and just as many screaming babies, which was not an omen. The law was appealed, amended, appealed, and landed before the Supreme Court which, having attended many of the same parties as the legislators who wrote the law, and having found no constitutional reason to ban abortion, found none to ban a law forcing adoption. All children, under the age of eleven were up for grabs (for the writers of this bill reasoned that if no one had adopted them yet, something must be wrong). So family after family, ill-equipped to handle one child were forced to take on two. And how were these children chosen? By lottery of course. Because every heavyset congressman and senator remembered with shame when they were not chosen to play first, or even last. And in a win for wanting to at least not look racist, the lottery was race blind. So, for a few short years, systemic racism was dealt a blow because white police officers worried the black teen they pulled over might have affluent white parents. But, soon enough, capitalism set in and they could return to the old familiar biases. Girls and their illegitimate bellies were drafted by corporations and the church to make sure the best matches could be made for the right price. On the other hand, being forced to care for other children led many to skip having their own, or at least being willing to claim them. The foster system again overflowed and underfunded orphanages made the rounds with their hands out. Some women even went away to hide their pregnancy so they could come back and claim the child was adopted.

But this is how it all played out in the big picture. What of those first adopted legions? When this grand experiment was being worked out on the backs of the unwanted? What would happen if the child you wanted in the first place died, but the child you didn’t thrived? Some were painful reminders, living ghosts. Some were balms, treated like saintly relics. But neither of those things are children. Even the children we expect are nothing like we expected, so how can the unexpected ever live up to that? After a while, the only children left behind were those who ran away from homes that took them in by law and not by love. Sometimes love can be built, stone by stone, brick by brick. But those make handy weapons when construction is stalled.

So it went, according to the laws of physics and politics, that a law in motion stays in motion. One night, the weary winners waxed nostalgic with their opposition over whiskey and weed. Both agreed enough was enough, that it was high time to go back in time to halcyon days of rage and vitriol with no end in sight. The bill to repeal raced through the House, jogged through the Senate, and was solemnly signed by the President, with nary a baby in sight. Thus, with the stroke of a pen this lamentable law, this grand experiment ,was aborted.