Happy Labor Day!

Your gift: a rerun of a classic Frivolous Motion rant about (what else?) pregnancy. Enjoy your day off if you’re off, and your non-day-off if you’re not.

Pregnancy is a Disease (24 April 2007)

Pregnancy is a disease. A sexually transmitted one. More specifically, it is an affliction whereupon a parasitic and potentially deadly creature is permitted to grow inside a woman’s body. She is, more often than not, a willing host to this parasite known as a fetus, but the damage it causes her is real and irreversible.

Her weight increases substantially as the fetus siphons vitamins and minerals from the food she consumes in order to increase its own mass at an alarming rate. Because she is unable to get the full nutritional content of her diet, she becomes fatigued, weak. People give up their subway seats for her because they fear, at any moment, she may fall to the ground. She becomes nauseous. Vomits daily. Sweats. Aches. Has odd, and often disgusting cravings. She becomes irritable. Overly sentimental. Her breasts swell and become tender and start to produce a milky substance. She loses control of her body. Her periods cease and she can no longer ovulate. She goes into a shopping frenzy, and her credit is destroyed. All her savings are used up in these thoughtless sprees. She becomes aware of another being inside of her as the parasitic fetus continues to grow. Trips to the hospital confirm its development, but nothing is done to stop it from continuing to feed. She allows it to consume her body from within, using a tube it has attached to her insides. After many months, the fetus begins to move around so weightily that she can feel it, and she shares this fact with others, who humor her politely.

Later, the fetus sets into action a horrible hours-long sequence of coordinated attacks on her body which will lead to its violent expulsion through her vaginal cavity, forcing it to expand many times its normal size in the process. There is blood, she screams, and a whole host of bodily fluids are expelled. The pain she endures is horrendous, and many women (to this day - even with medical advances) do not make it through alive.

After this horrific exit, she continues - astoundingly! - to allow this creature to live off of her. She offers up her breasts, and her every waking hour, in this sickening, saddening example of the Stockholm Syndrome. For years and years she plays willing host to this parasitic being, often to the dismay of her husband or “partner,” who, as one-half of the reason his wife became infected, must acquiesce to the new, demanding lifestyle she has chosen in this moment of extreme psycho-biological distress. The financial burden placed on the couple is debilitating. They bear it until their death.

I’m just saying.