I got this e-mail today that had one of those smarmy "please don't abort me, Mommy" poems attached to it. You can see the original here, if you want to.
Since I'm bored and trying to focus on something other than my wife's cancer surgery this coming Tuesday, I decided to rewrite the execrable thing to bring it into a reality-based world.
It is respectfully submitted below the Devil's squiggly thing. Feel free to share. Spam some pro life inboxes.
Whatever.
"I KNOW WHO THE MONSTERS ARE NOW, MOMMY!"
by Bill Schmalfeldt, inspired by a "pro-life" anonymous e-mail
Dear Mommy,
I am in Prison now, sitting on Death Row.
In my dreams, you say you love me and cry with me; for my heart has been broken.
I so wanted to be your good little boy. In these final hours, I find I can recall a time before I was born.
I was so excited when I began realizing my existence. Although, to be honest, most of the time I wasn’t aware of much of anything because there was something in the blood pumping through me that made me feel strange, disconnected.
I learned to recognize the sensation as I grew. It was a lack of health care, Mommy. You were not able to give me the nutrition I needed or the vitamins and minerals I needed.
You couldn’t get help from the government to kick your drug habit, Mommy. The “pro life” people yelled at you and put you in jail and told you to think of the baby and that would be all the help you would need.
I was in a dark, yet comfortable place. I saw I had fingers and toes.
I wasn't very far along in my developing, not near ready to leave my surroundings. I spent most of my time thinking or sleeping, that is, when I could sleep through all the loud noises I now recognize as the sounds of imprisonment.
Even from my earliest days, I knew you were trying real hard to do your best for me, but you needed help. You needed help you never got because it was too expensive and the rich people needed the money more than you did, they said. So they just kept you in jail where it was easier for the “pro life” people to deal with you.
And when they let you out of jail, you started right back with the drugs and I noticed I wasn’t getting regular nutritious meals any more, but the “pro life” people didn’t care.
Sometimes I heard you crying and I cried with you. Sometimes you would yell or scream, then cry.
I was sad, and hoped you would be better soon.
I wondered why you cried so much.
One day you cried almost all of the day. I hurt for you. I couldn't imagine why you were so unhappy.
That same day, the most unusual thing happened.
It was the day you went to a special kind of clinic and said you wanted to have some sort of procedure done. And they told you they couldn’t do it right away because they had to show you a picture of me first. They had to show you that which you already knew was inside you, but obviously didn’t feel guilty enough about yet.
And even though I was about the size of my 18-year old thumbnail, they took their machines and shoved them inside of you against your will and I felt the vibrations and it did not feel good. It hurt.
Then I heard you cry, and I wondered what you were crying about. You said that in the picture you could see my little arms and my little legs and now you wanted to keep me.
And that made me feel good.
So did the drugs you kept taking because the same people who told you how important “life” is didn’t care whether or not I would be born with an addiction to the drugs you were taking.
Why would people say they are “pro life”, Mommy, and then treat you like you are garbage?
It was some time after all this that a very mean monster came into that warm, comfortable place I was in.
The walls around me began to squeeze me, I began screaming, but you never once tried to help me. Maybe you never heard me.
The monster got closer and closer as I was screaming and screaming,
"Mommy, Mommy, help me please; Mommy, help me."
Complete terror is all I felt. That, and the cold. I was so cold.
I screamed and screamed until I thought I couldn't anymore.
Then the monster pulled
It hurt so bad; the pain I can never explain.
It didn't stop. Oh, how I begged it to stop.
I screamed in horror as it held me up under the bright lights that hurt my eyes and cut the cord that bound us together
I didn’t know it then, Mommy. But I realize it now as I hear the guards coming down the hallway to take me to the room where the “pro life” government is going to kill me
That's the moment I was doomed. It was from that moment, I know I began dying.
It was obvious you had no way of taking care of me.
Though I was in such complete pain, from the hunger, from the rats chewing on my fingers. All I wanted was to see your face and hear you say how much you love me. I wanted to make all your tears go away.
I had so many plans to make you happy. That's why I started to steal. First, it was small, unimportant things. Shiny stuff I thought you'd like. Then, it was money. Then, I gave up trying to make you love me.
I understand now, but then I thought you loved the drugs more than you loved me.
Though I was in utter pain and horror, I felt the pain of my heart breaking, above all.
I wanted more than anything to be your son.
I decided if drugs could ease your pain, they could do the same for me.
I never imagined the terrible things I would do to people. It never dawned on me when I was in that warm, comfortable place, that I could be capable of being so addicted to something that I would kill people to get the money to buy it.
I wanted to tell you that I love you before I was gone, but I never got the chance. Last year they found you dead in a hotel room with a needle in your arm and a rat in your mouth. The monster got you.
I had a dream last night.
You went to the clinic back when I was a little thumbnail and the doctors and nurses didn’t judge you. They didn’t play with your emotions and make you deal with things you clearly were not prepared to deal with.
You knew what I was and why I was there, and you knew there was no way in hell that you would be able to take care of me like a good mommy takes care of her baby.
But these "pro life" people, Mommy. The same "pro life" people who killed you because they said they didn't want to spend the money or resources to help you off of your drug habit. The same "pro life" people who wouldn’t pay for a decent education for me as I grew up. These same "pro life" people who threw me in here to kill me. In my dream, they were nowhere to be found.
The doctors listened to you and let you have the procedure you wanted, the procedure that might have allowed you to get on a good program and get off the drugs and get a good job instead of having to do filthy things with filthy men to earn enough to score some rock and maybe a can of Spaghetti-Os.
In my dream, I felt myself rising.
I was being carried by a huge angel into a big beautiful place.
In the dream I still crying, but the physical pain was gone.
The angel took me to God and set me on His lap.
God said He loved me, and He was my Father. Then I was happy.
I asked Him what happened.
He said that my mommy loved me enough not to bring me into a world where I would suffer, where I would starve, where I would watch her have to do things to strange men just to get enough money to buy a bag of crack and some Beef-a-Roni. I thought about correcting Him and telling Him about the Spaghetti-Os, but it seemed that this just wasn't the sort of issue one quibbles about with God.
He said that the “pro life” people who wanted to talk you out of having the procedure didn’t care about you, or me, or anyone but the rich people who wanted to be richer. They cared about me only as a way to make sure that my mommy stayed in some sort of domestic arrangement that didn’t make sense to God and sure as hell doesn’t make sense to me.
I'm writing this now and leaving it in my cell as a way to say that I love you and to tell you how much I wanted to be your good little boy.
I know you tried very hard to live and to take care of me.
I wanted to live. I had the will, but I couldn't; the monster was too powerful.
The monster sucked me down into the black hole of poverty and ate up all my hope and that's why I felt nothing when I killed three people in a convenience store for $35.
I got clean in jail, Mommy. Just like you did.
You’re safe from the monster now, Mommy. And as the guards here on Death Row have treated me with more respect than any of the "pro life" hypocrites who are out there right now waiting to watch me die.
I know that soon I will be safe from the monster, too!
I love you, Mommy. I just wish you would have gone through with the procedure.
One last question. If the “pro life” people say they love God so much, why do they make us suffer so much of their hatred and poverty before we can go be with Him?
I know the answer, Mommy. I know the answer.
They are the monsters.
See you soon,
Your Baby Boy