The Post's Week of Silence Continues!

Okay, let's just go ahead and celebrate the rest of this week of silence along with the eminent writerers of the National Poo, a paper so good it doesn't need editors. Hell, just have a gander at the factiness of yesterday's intellectual train wreck with Babs Kay.

Today, ladies, you are all cows. Get over it and move the fuck on. Karen Selick is going to solve the pesky problem of you ungrateful brood cattle and your selfish desire to control your bellies.

There’s an obvious solution to a large portion of the abortion problem, and I can’t understand why 20 years have gone by since the Supreme Court of Canada’s Morgentaler decision without people catching on to it.

You can't understand it. There will be a great deal of you not understanding, sentence upon sentence of it.

There are women who find themselves pregnant when they don’t want to be. There are other women who are trying desperately to get pregnant but can’t. What we need to do is match the two groups up and transplant the unwanted fetuses of the former into the wombs of the latter in a form of pre-birth adoption. That way, pregnant women can cease to be pregnant without killing fetuses, and would-be mothers can adopt infants without having to comb the world for them.

That way, we won't have famous people encouraging us to adopt the unwanted and impoverished children of the third world. No more of those scruffy little foreign babies making the suburban demographics all dusky. That way, the well off but barren can have proper little babies instead of having to settle for toddlers and the like. Those ones could be put to work I suppose.

How realistic is this, medically? Well, we’ve been doing something similar with cows since 1971.

And if it's good enough for cows, it must be good enough for you. Surely this sort of procedure couldn't be too complex or expensive. Besides, think of the money to be made farming zygotes; why, a smart girl with good bone structure could make a pretty penny. A healthy cluster of cells could pave the way to easy street for the ambitious teen. How's this wonderful business work, you ask? Let's find out.

Here's one of the nation's leading bovine embryonic transfer companies, Alta Embryo Group, to share some of the wisdom of their experience.

The donor should have calved at least 60 days previous to starting on a superovulation schedule. This is to allow enough time for the uterus to return to breeding shape. A quick return to breeding shape is dependent on the donor receiving her pre-and post-calving nutritional requirements. A rectal palpation of the uterus and the ovaries by your veterinarian will also give some indication of the donor’s condition. The period from calving until the start of superovulation should never be rushed.

That's right, breeders, 60 days from calving before superovulation, you can't rush one of gawd's little miracles.

Nutrition is an area that should never be overlooked in any breeding program. Donors and recipients should be on a rising plane of nutrition for at least 30 days prior to starting the ET program.

Great news! The incredible compassion of the baby making business will ensure that our engines of conception will be well fed for at least 30 days before insemination. We wouldn't risk the client's bundle of joy in some welfare diet dame.

Donors are superovulated with a hormone called Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) which is available in several forms (Folltropin: Bioniche, F-Tropin: Austin, Ovagen: ICP). The treatment starts 9 to 14 days after the last recorded heat. During the schedule of FSH injections the donor should not experience any stressful situations such a feed/water changes nor halter breaking. FSH causes eggs within the ovary to develop to a point where they can be ovulated. The FSH schedule usually involves twice a day injections for four days.

There you go ladies, a couple of little needles, some good for you vittles and some lucky white girl gets to buy a bassinet.

Really, this is a fascinating procedure and, if you're at all curious, the information available at AEG is quite detailed. The process involves the chemical synchronization of the donor and recipient's breeding cycle and the eventual flushing of the uterus with saline solution. The fluid is then filtered and the embryo is found with a microscope. Simple, just a bunch of designer drugs and fancy procedures. The recipient is most suitable if she has experienced a pregnancy already and this flushing for embryos takes place about a week from conception. What could be more practical? So where were we, Karen...

Farmers sometimes have a few cows with more desirable characteristics than the rest of the herd. It makes sense to produce as many calves as possible from the best available genetic stock. But there’s a limit to how many calves those top-notch cows can carry to term themselves. So the farmer arranges the fertilization of their eggs, then transplants the embryos to less valuable cows, who carry the adopted calves to term and give birth to them.

Ol' Doc Mengele would be so proud! All those rosy cheeked, little white babies. I can't wait to go visit the pens and pick out a brood slut to host our little miracle. Just think, a new race of prom queens and stockbrokers.

The cow embryos are transferred at a very early stage — sooner than many unwanted human pregnancies would even have made themselves apparent to the unsuspecting mother. However, the idea is sound. What we should be doing is perfecting the methodology and technology that would allow fetus transfers to be performed as soon as the pregnant woman realizes her condition and decides she doesn’t want the child herself.

Cripes on a bike, this woman is a fucking idiot. The uterine irrigation, or flushing, takes place about a week after conception. Much later than this and the pressure would tear apart a larger cluster of embryonic cells. This is a planned, programmed and choreographed procedure. This isn't something that one can do once you realize you're preggo. By the time most women notice any signs of pregnancy, missing menses or what have you, it is far too late. The only way this would work would be through the deliberate and intentional alignment of intentions between donor and recipient.

If this sounds like science fiction, that’s not surprising. Victor Koman wrote a novel based on this idea, way back in 1988 — the same year as the Morgentaler decision. Called Solomon’s Knife, it won the Prometheus award for libertarian science fiction in 1990. It’s an excellent book (I’ve read it several times) with a good plot, an interesting exposition of the moral issues and a satisfying ending.

For fuck sakes. This dim wit is actually basing her brilliant solution to the "problem" of abortion on a science fiction novel. I'm a nerd. I read lots of science fiction, there's a reason that we call it fiction. I guess that escaped Karen. Oh robot overlords please spare us the death rays of cleansing, she knows not what she does, she stoopit.

If the necessary medical techniques could be perfected, it would indeed be a welcome option for many women. Nor would this be the first time that science fiction inventions came to life. Cellphones, waterbeds and waldoes were all hypothesized by science fiction writers many years before we actually built them.

Let's not forget atomic bombs, designer plagues and breeding slaves, Handmaid's Tale anyone?

Accurate numbers are difficult to find, but the number of abortions in Canada is probably somewhere around 100,000 per year. The number of would-be parents on adoption waiting lists is even more elusive, but is probably lower. Would there be enough individuals willing to transopt if the procedure became available?

Thank Jebux we aren't going to let a little thing like accuracy slow us down. Because magical ponies will kiss our foreheads in our sleep and make gum drops as big as cars fall from the sky and crush our enemies in the lands of brown, scruffy people?

My guess is yes. Adoption organizations generally predict a wait of six to 12 years for a child in Canada, enough to discourage many people. So waiting lists probably don’t accurately reflect the numbers who would be delighted to have a child but have simply given up.

Your guess isn't worth the spit bubbles it is propelled by, Karen. But since you base your solution to the dilemma on a non-starting bit of science fiction and eugenic fantasy, I'm not surprised. Facts, information, viability be damned.

Consider, too, that the children currently available for adoption in Canada are disproportionately burdened with problems of one kind or another. Many suffer from physical problems such as fetal alcohol syndrome. Many are toddlers, or even older children, not infants, who have been seized from abusive homes by Children’s Aid Societies and made wards of the state by the courts. Would-be parents may be unwilling to take on the extra challenges that such children pose, but would happily take on the care of an uninjured, pre-born baby without undesirable psychological baggage.

Oh. My. Fucking. Gawd.

Dear National Post, what in the hell is wrong with you people? Do you really not edit any of this insanity? In the campaign to save the poor embryonic cell clusters, this lunatic broad is seriously suggesting what, that these undesirable children be abandoned to some fate that doesn't burden the wealthy and white? This is a call for the eugenic marketing of babies. This is Mengele's wet dream come true. I suppose we can put all those second rate babies and toddlers to work in camps or something. We still have mines, right?

Even if there were insufficient adoptive homes, transoption would still be worthwhile to save as many fetuses as possible.

Save the fetuses! Fuck the ugly little kids that already exist and need our care and assistance. Nobody wants to pack little baby imperfect into the car seat. Wouldn't want to be seen with an off-colour baby from one of those dirty countries. Karen then goes on to babble a bit more about the sci-fi solution, devoid of any understanding of the issues at hand in terms of medicine, ethics or culture. Congrats, Karen, you have managed to out stupid Babs Kay. Who knew that could be done? Reality, just an outmoded concept that the rest of us live in.