Republic of Shalampax An Inane Island in an Insane World
Marie's Pregnancies
Marie (see
history) became pregnant a few times during the almost two years she was here, but she never bore a
child while living in Shalampax. We never figured out what happened to
her expected babies, but because she was always the most vociferous
pro-choice advocate whenever the subject of abortion came up we became
suspicious that she might have been taking matters into her own hands,
so to speak.
That brings up a funny story. Before Marie came we never
thought about
abortion one way or the other. That's because we had no idea whatsoever
that there was a link between sex and making babies. We thought sex
existed exclusively for our enjoyment. Rather than having anything to
do with sex, we believed that whenever Paahlm, our god (see religion), chose to send
another child to Shamlampax, It gently, over the course of nine months,
expanded the stomach of the chosen mother. We believed that immediately
before the child was meant to come into the world, It placed the baby
inside the chosen mother's stomach. Why Paahlm didn't just deliver the
baby externally rather than making the mother go through the horrible
pain of childbirth was beyond us. We figured it had something to do
with Paahlm's crazy notions about human bonding or Its desire to keep
the mystery of birth a mystery.
We deeply love Paahlm, but that doesn't mean we always
respect his
wishes. We live on a small island with no more room to build. We have
to strictly limit our population. Thus, if there wasn't room for anyone
else at the time, when we saw that a woman's belly was expanding in
preparation for Paahlm to insert a baby, the fattest Shalampaxian would
sit on her stomach until blood and guts spewed out of her unmentionable
part. (We don't have any taboos against talking about that body part.
It's unmentionable because Marie neglected to tell us the word that
would allow us to mention it.) We hoped that by deflating the
prospective mother's stomach we would thwart Paahlm's wishes to deliver
a baby. It seemed to work.
Because we thought there was no embryo to abort, just an
empty space
that
was swelling in anticipation of a fully formed baby that Paahlm would
place
there, we had no need to consider the morals of abortion. Once Marie
told
us about eggs, sperm, fertilization and cell division, most of us
agreed
with her pro-choice views. Later, when we started trading with the rest
of the world, we imported contraceptives like crazy. We still do.
