As near as I can understand Alabama’s abortion law, it arises from two things:
1. It’s in the Bible.
2. The school system in Alabama stinks.
Still, it’s an interesting idea, praise Jayzus!
If it has a heartbeat, you can’t kill it.
That’s a pretty good idea of law, and there is precedent. If I stab my neighbor Frank, I will be jailed/executed because Frank has a heartbeat. If I stab a tree, I will not be jailed/executed, because the tree does not have a heartbeat.
I understand this, and good thing for Frank, who mows his lawn at 7:30 a.m. on Sunday when I’m trying to sleep.
My wife, whose heart for animals is the size of a fully inflated basketball, suggests that killing unwanted dogs and cats is wrong because they are living things, have heartbeats and are only where they are because of “stupid people.”
Still, they’re “just animals,” unlike the unborn children of Alabama.
Even if that is true, if I were PETA or any organization of vegans, I’d jump all over this new law. Want to eat a pork chop? You can’t because pigs have heartbeats.
Imagine what a Buddhist paradise America could be if we apply this strange new “heartbeat” notion to, well, to everything.
No more executions because, no matter what crime he/she commits, he/she has a heartbeat, and life is sacred, praise Jayzus!
No one should be allowed to starve in this country, or even to endanger their life by going without food because, by God and by Buddha, the least responsible of the poor, having spent their welfare money and cigarettes, meth and tattoos, still have, by God, official Alabama heartbeats and must be fed.
I don’t think you should be able to put the children of illegal immigrants in cages because they have beating hearts, which might by damaged by the pounding effect of being separated from their parents at age 6.
The fleeing (or just standing there) black kid clutching a smartphone that looks way too much like a grenade launcher cannot be shot in the back by a police officer. That kid has a heartbeat.
If it has a heartbeat (even if it’s wearing a uniform), you can’t send it to wars that mean nothing, achieve nothing and never end.
No heartbeat can sleep on the street, or go without a drug treatment bed, or go without health insurance, or heat in the winter, or clean water.
Even if it speaks Spanish and lives in Puerto Rico, it is a heartbeat, and it must be loved, protected and saved from death, always saved from death. Gay? It has a heartbeat. Transgender? Same thing.
Give up your guns, too. The only thing they’re good for is stopping a heartbeat, and a heartbeat is a sacred thing.
We’re all heartbeats, each heart the same color, the skin being the detail added last when they build a human being, like paint on a car. If you ask me what kind of truck I drive, I don’t say, “It’s white.” I say, “It’s a Ford Explorer Sport Trac,” because the paint job is just a little detail that covers the heartbeat of the engine. You can scratch a car’s paint, and it will run, but if you stop the heartbeat of the engine, your truck is a planter.
What an America it’s going to be when we learn to respect each and every beating heart, when the heartbeat becomes the only eligibility needed for every benefit, every protection.
Jesus and Buddha walking down the street, holding hands and laughing, surrounded by the sound of peacefully beating, protected hearts.
Marc Dion, a nationally syndicated columnist, is a reporter and columnist for The Herald News, the daily newspaper of his hometown, Fall River, Massachusetts. For more on Dion, go to go to www.creators.com.
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