Back in Town -- by George Carlin  1996

Why, why, why, why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't wanna fuck in the first place?  Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they?  They're all in favor of the unborn.  They will do anything for the unborn.  But once you're born, you're on your own.  Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months.  After that, they don't want to know about you.  They don't want to hear from you.  No nothing.  No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing.  If you're preborn, you're fine;  if you're preschool, you're fucked.  Conservatives don't give a shit about you until you reach 'military age'.  Then they think you are just fine.  Just what they've been looking for.  Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.  Pro-life... pro-life...  These people aren't pro-life, they're killing doctors!  What kind of pro-life is that?  What, they'll do anything they can to save a fetus but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it?  They're not pro-life.  You know what they are?  They're anti-woman.  Simple as it gets, anti-woman.  They don't like them.  They don't like women.  They believe a woman's primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state.  Pro-life...  You don't see many of these white anti-abortion women volunteering to have any black fetuses transplanted into their uteruses, do you?  No, you don't see them adopting a whole lot of crack babies, do you?  No, that might be something Christ would do.  And you won't see a lot of these pro-life people dousing themselves in kerosene and lighting themselves on fire.  You know, morally committed people in South Vietnam knew how to stage a god-damned demonstration, didn't they?  They knew how to put on a fuckin' protest.  Light yourself on fire!  Come on, you moral crusaders, let's see a little smoke to match that fire in your belly.

If a fetus is a human being, how come the census doesn't count them?  If a fetus is a human being, how come when there's a miscarriage they don't have a funeral?  If a fetus is a human being, how come people say "We have two children and one on the way" instead of saying "We have three children?"  People say life begins at conception.  I say life began about a billion years ago and it's a continuous process.  Continuous, just keeps rolling along.

Here's another question I have.  How come when it's us, it's an abortion, and when it's a chicken, it's an omelette?  Are we so much better than chickens all of a sudden?  When did this happen; that we passed chickens in goodness?  Name six ways we're better than chickens...  See, nobody can do it!  You know why?  'Cause chickens are decent people.  You don't see chickens hanging around in drug gangs, do you?  No. You don't see a chicken strapping some guy into a chair and hooking up his nuts to a car battery, do you?...  When's the last chicken you heard about came home from work and beat the shit out of his hen, huh?  Doesn't happen...  'cause chickens are decent people.

But you know, the longer you listen to this abortion debate, the more you hear this phrase 'sanctity of life'.  You've heard that.  Sanctity of life.  You believe in it?  Personally, I think it's a bunch of shit.  Well, I mean, life is sacred?  Who said so?  God?  Hey, if you read history, you realize that God is one of the leading causes of death.  Has been for thousands of years.  Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians all taking turns killing each other 'cause God told them it was a good idea.  The sword of God, the blood of the land, vengeance is mine.  Millions of dead motherfuckers.  Millions of dead motherfuckers all because they gave the wrong answer to the God question.  'You believe in God?'  'No.'  Boom.  Dead.  'You believe in God?'  'Yes.'  'You believe in my God?  'No.'  Boom.  Dead.  'My God has a bigger dick than your God!'

Thousands of years.  Thousands of years, and all the best wars, too.  The bloodiest, most brutal wars fought, all based on religious hatred.  Which is fine with me.  Hey, any time a bunch of holy people want to kill each other I'm a happy guy.  But don't be giving me all this shit about the sanctity of life.  I mean, even if there were such a thing, I don't think it's something you can blame on God.  No, you know where the sanctity of life came from?  We made it up.  You know why?  'Cause we're alive.  Self-interest.

Living people have a strong interest in promoting the idea that somehow life is sacred.  You don't see Abbott and Costello running around, talking about this shit, do you?  We're not hearing a whole lot from Mussolini on the subject.  What's the latest from JFK?  Not a goddamn thing.  'Cause JFK, Mussolini and Abbott and Costello are fucking dead.  They're fucking dead.  And dead people give less than a shit about the sanctity of life.  Only living people care about it so the whole thing grows out of a completely biased point of view.  It's a self serving, man-made bullshit story.

It's one of these things we tell ourselves so we'll feel noble.  Life is sacred.  Makes you feel noble.  Well let me ask you this: if everything that ever lived is dead, and everything alive is gonna die, where does the sacred part come in?  I'm having trouble with that.  'Cause, I mean, even with all this stuff we preach about the sanctity of life, we don't practice it.  We don't practice it.  Look at what we'd kill: Mosquitoes and flies.  'Cause they're pests.  Lions and tigers.  'Cause it's fun!  Chickens and pigs.  'Cause we're hungry.  Pheasants and quails.  'Cause it's fun.  And we're hungry.  And people.  We kill people...  'Cause they're pests.  And it's fun!

And you might have noticed something else.  The sanctity of life doesn't seem to apply to cancer cells, does it?  You rarely see a bumper sticker that says 'Save the tumors'.  Or 'I brake for advanced melanoma'.  No, viruses, mold, mildew, maggots, fungus, weeds, E. Coli bacteria, the crabs.  Nothing sacred about those things.  So at best the sanctity of life is kind of a selective thing.  We get to choose which forms of life we feel are sacred, and we get to kill the rest.  Pretty neat deal, huh?  You know how we got it?  We made the whole fucking thing up!

The Baby Boomers: whiny, narcissistic, self-indulgent people with a simple philosophy: "Gimme that! It's mine!"  These people were given everything, everything was handed to them, and they took it all, sold it all;  sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, and they stayed loaded for twenty years and had a free ride.  But now they're staring down the barrel of middle-age burnout, and they don't like it.  They don't like it, so they've become self-righteous, and they wanna make things hard for young people.  They tell em abstain from sex, say no to drugs.  As for rock 'n' roll, they sold that for television commercials a long time ago so they can buy pasta machines and StairMasters and soybean futures.  You know something?  They're cold, bloodless people.  It's in their slogans, it's in their rhetoric: "No pain, no gain," "Just do it," "Life is short, play hard," "Shit happens, deal with it," "Get a life."  These people went from "Do your own thing" to "Just say no!"  They went from "Love is all you need" to "Whoever winds up with the most toys, wins", and they went from cocaine to Rogaine.  And you know something?  They're still counting grams, only now it's fat grams.  And the worst of it is we have to watch the commercials on TV for Levi's loose-fitting jeans and fat-ass Docker pants because these degenerate, yuppie, Boomer cocksuckers couldn't keep their hands off the croissants and the Häägen-Dasz and their big fat asses have spread all over and they have to wear fat-ass Docker pants.  Fuck these Boomers, fuck these yuppies... and fuck everyone, now that I think of it.