The Washington Post discusses how pregnant women are using  more luxury services than ever.  Now, this blogger doesn’t have anything against pregnant women getting all the attention and affection they can: after all, nine months of morning sickness, swollen ankles, and back aches - all for the sake of another human - ought to earn a girl some affection.  Nevertheless, it seems as if the women who consume such services do so at the expense of their husbands.  Husbands are described as “slinking into” a baby spa; their only function is to earn the salary that enables them to spend hundreds of dollars on their wives.  What ever happened to romance - a candle light dinner at home, a foot massage from the one you love?  Why replace it with an unprecedented level of selfishness, i.e.:

Event planner Jami Pennings stayed on a personal chef service while breast-feeding her daughter, delivered in December. “I knew the baby had to get good nutrition, and whether I did was pretty secondary. I was consuming it, but it was really for her.”

This knowledge also assuaged the guilt she felt over watching her husband scrounge for cold cereal or takeout every night while she ate gourmet home-delivered meals. She had to. For the baby.

Because, ya know, it’s downright impossible to be pregnant and throw a steak on the grill.  Apparently, it’s also impossible to be pregnant while seeing your husband as more than an ATM machine.

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New York City plans to deploy a special group of ambulances to recover organs from people who have died suddenly.  Saving lives is a noble goal.  Let’s be clear, though, that no one has a right to the organs of another person, no matter how great their need.  If an organ can help a dying person live but one more minute, or live with an iota less of pain, then our society has the moral obligation to ensure that no one takes his organs from him. 

Once we lose sight of the fact that humans have an absolute right to their own bodies, we’ve moved into the nightmare land where everyone’s right to their bodies, their minds, their labour, and their lives is conditional.  The logical conclusion would be to harvest the organs from the young and healthy in order to “save lives,” or to create human life for the sole purpose of ending it.  If we are to believe that it is moral and ethical to prematurely end the life of a dying person in order to “save” another, why not harvest the organs from the disabled? the elderly?  Wouldn’t it be entirely selfish of me to continue living with my own organs, when I could allow two lungs, a heart, a liver, a pancreas, a stomach, two kidneys, blood, skin, and bone marrow to be harvested to save a dozen lives? 

But wait!  Have no fear!  There are ethical guidelines that would save us from having our organs harvested out of our dying bodies:

Dubler and Burdick, the federal official, said the procedures to be performed in the ambulances and once the person arrives at the hospital are often done now in hospitals to preserve organs, and any ethical concerns could be addressed with strict guidelines.

“Strict guidelines.”  Liberals don’t believe in the criminal justice system, religion, or family as a means of controlling behaviour… but they sure have a lot of faith in the regulatory state.  Obviously, no one - ever - breaches regulations.  Especially not when it would make them heroes - those who brilliantly obtain organs to save the lives of people who have been waiting for those organs like children wait for Christmas.  Regulations always prevent people from doing wrong, so they would naturally prevent people from playing Santa Claus at the expense of their fellow human beings.  Right.  Just send your tax dollars to the nice folks who - we swear - will not rip your beating heart out of your body, because, ya know, it’s against the regulations.