“But I suppose you want me to marry you, don’t you?”
“Not unless you want to. I’m not going to tie you down. I know it’s against your ideas to marry. You must decide for yourself.”
“But we’ve no alternative — if you’re really going to have this baby.”
“Not necessarily. That’s what you’ve got to decide. Because after all there is another way.“
“What way?”
“Oh, you know. A girl at the studio gave me an address. A friend of hers had it done for only five pounds.”
That pulled him up. For the first time he grasped, with the only kind of knowledge that matters, what they were really talking about. The words “a baby” took on a new significance. They did not mean any longer a mere abstract disaster, they meant a bud of flesh, a bit of himself, down there in her belly, alive and growing. His eyes met hers. They had a strange moment of sympathy such as they had never had before. For a moment he did feel that in some mysterious way they were one flesh. Though they were feet apart, he felt as though they were joined together – as though some invisible living cord stretched from her entrails to his. He knew then that it was a dreadful thing they were contemplating – a blasphemy, if that word had any meaning. Yet if it had been put otherwise he might not have recoiled from it. It was the squalid detail of the five pounds that brought it home.
“No fear!” he said. “Whatever happens we’re not going to do that. It’s disgusting.”
“I know it is. But I can’t have the baby without being married.”
“No! If that’s the alternative I’ll marry you. I’d sooner cut my right hand off than do a thing like that.“
George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
News that I missed, courtesy of The Babylon Bee:
NEW YORK, NY—In honor of Father’s Day, Planned Parenthood put out a press release reminding the organization’s followers that they have been preventing people from becoming fathers for nearly 105 years.
“We’re proud to honor fathers today. Fathers are a large part of what we do here at Planned Parenthood. Well, ending fatherhood, anyway, and making sure that men never become fathers,” said a Planned Parenthood spokesperson. “And if they do accidentally become fathers, we can shut that down too. Ask us how!”
The organization is even running specials for Father’s Day, with two for one abortions being offered all day long.
Go here to read the rest.
Wow. I had no idea Orwell wrote such a powerful passage on abortion.
If Satan ever physically came to earth and started a business, he couldn’t compete with the Planned Parenthood Enterprise and the Democrat party that so loves it.
@Don L – given the opportunity for sin they present, I wouldn’t put it past Old Scratch to start a social media company.
My only knowledge of George Orwell’s work was studying Animal Farm in grade 8. It’s a book whose message and analogies resonated, even as a 13yr old (particular since grade 8 students as a cohort would sometimes behave like the characters in that novel- but I think it sometimes went over our heads). That novel and To Kill a Mockingbird.