Incorporate YOUR Uterus!

It’s insane. The Florida house recently legalized bribery, at least of Florida legislators. As of March 24, 2011, if you are interesting in bribing a legislator to, for example, allow you to charge Florida taxpayers billions of dollars for a service you may or may not build some day, like a nuclear power plant, all you need to do is “con­trib­ute” to that legislator’s “leadership fund.” A “leadership fund” is the Florida legislature’s euphemism for a statewide slush fund.

What else? In House bill 5005, the Florida legislature is finalizing plans to “deregulate” approximately 20 forms of business; the bill passed the Florida house while I was writing this post. In a short while, perhaps as soon as you read these words:

• Auto repair shops are NOT required to give you a written estimate of what repairs need to be done. They are NOT required to call first and get your permission before exceeding any estimate they may have deigned to give you. They are NOT required to show you what parts, if any, they replaced. They ARE allowed to replace your perfectly good carburetor with a piece of scrap taken from a wreck, and call your engine “fixed.”
• In-state moving companies are unregulated. As soon as House Bill 5005 is rubberstamped by Florida’s Republican state senate and signed into law by Gov. Skeletor, it will be perfectly legal for an in-state moving company to provide you with a lowball estimate of its fees and then hold your furniture for ransom until you pay their exorbitant REAL fees. The law before HB 5005 stated that the movers are required to release a customer’s possessions if a law enforcement officer determines that (a) you already paid your bill or (b) the mover did not provide you with a proper, signed estimate. Too bad for you NOW, sucker!
• Charities that solicit money in Florida may legally use “deception, false pretenses, misrepresentation, or false promises” to get money out of you. Let the charitable beware!
• Gyms, health studios, dance studios, and other business that sell contracts to the public are no longer regulated. In 2002, a poor widow was bilked out of $247,295 for “dance lessons” in eighteen days. All soon to be perfectly legal in Florida.
• Travel agents, auctioneers, and telemarkets may tell you whatever lies they choose, and you have no recourse.
• Want to be an interior designer, a sports agent, or a talent agent? A telemarketer, a seller of business “opportunities,” an auctioneer, a professional fundraiser, a hair braider, a body wrapper, a yacht broker? Great! Hang out your shingle the day after Gov. Voldemort signs HB 5005 into law! You can persuade hopeful clients to hand over as much money as you want to steal from them. Remember, the Florida legislature is on your side, not those poor chumps you’re planning on cheating.
• Vending machines? Why on earth would anyone care whether they were stocked with moldy “food” or tainted “water,” or whether nothing whatsoever happens after you put your money into the slot and push the appropriate button? Not the Florida legislature!

House bill 5005 passed the Florida House on Thursday, April 7, 2011, on a party-line vote of 77-38. Since the Florida legislature was long ago gerrymandered into complete Republican domination, HB 5005 is likely to sail through the Florida senate with ease. You can read House bill 5005 for yourself here.

HOWEVER, there is one teensy, weensy little issue on which the Florida legis­la­ture is anxious to regulate: women’s reproductive free­dom. Effective July 1, 2011, the “Florida for Life” Act prohibits “induced” abortions (ap­par­ently spon­ta­ne­ous abortions, also known as mis­carriages, are still legal — at least for the time being), prohibits abortion clinics, and requires all women seeking to terminate pregnancies for, e.g., rape, incest, or gestational monsters (such as Thalidomide babies) to obtain ultrasounds of the embryo at their own expense, AND listen to a lecture from their physician about the “pain” that the blob of tissue smaller than a grape allegedly feels.

Crooked garage mechanics, bunko artists, fraudulent “financial advisors”: fine and dandy. But a woman allowed to control her own body and make her own health decisions? Intolerable!

Here is a joke website that was created a day or two ago (as I write) by the ACLU of Florida: Incorporate My Uterus. I have already “in­cor­porated” my own uterus, as “Mary’s Womb Service, Inc.” I urge all females to follow my example, simply because the self-righte­ous, hypocritical would-be theocrats who want to erase the line between Church and State, making their own religious opinion the law of the land for everyone, and returning female citizens to the status of subhumans, without the right to control what happens to their own bodies. You can vote, drive a car, or set yourself up as a “school,” but your body belongs to fundamentalist Christianity.

An incorporated uterus holds monthly meetings, culminating with the expulsion of unruly “shareholders” by the sergeant-at-arms, i.e. your cervix. If a “squatter” takes up residence in your “board room,” do NOT call it an abortion. Merely have the squatter ejected from your corporation’s property by a duly appointed deputy sergeant-at-arms. (Preferably, your deputy sergeant-at-arms will be a licensed physician. Please, whatever the Florida legislature says: no coathangers!)

I started out writing this post before I knew that Incorporate My Uterus existed in The Real World. In the middle of the night last night, I resolved to seek out a clever, feminist attorney who could advise Floridian women on incorporating their uteruses for real. I envision a not-for-profit organization, something like “Our Uteruses, Incorporated,” that will provide legal support for chairwomen of the board who wish to eject squatters from their “board rooms” without interference from the whited sepulchres who want to impose their religious beliefs on the women of America.

Remember this, women of Florida: It’s perfectly legal for us to set ourselves up as “dance instructors,” “financial advisors,” or auto mechanics. We can bilk anyone we choose of as much money as we can persuade them to hand over, serene in the knowledge that fraud, robbery, and corruption are all perfectly legal, or will be as soon as Gov. Fester signs away your human right to control your own body. Always remember: a six-week-old blob of protoplasm smaller than a grain of sand has more “right to life” than YOU have.

The Republican-dominated Florida legislature is planning on privatizing Medicare, forcing millions of seniors and poor people into for-profit programs like Solantic, Gov. Voldemort’s pet company. And it’s planning on privatizing prisons, too, as well as handing public education over to unregulated, unsupervised “charter schools” — schools that will no doubt confine themselves to teaching that the flat Earth was created at 9:30 a.m. of October 23, 4004 BCE, that “life” begins at ejaculation, and that trickle-down economics is the only form of economics there is. And that women should “graciously submit” to being the chattel property of male owners, without the right to make their own health decisions.

When they do, I suggest you do NOT tell anyone, and most particularly a genuine health care professional, that you want to make your own health care decisions. Contact an auto mechanic, a dance studio, or a hair-braiding salon, and tell them you need a squatter evicted from your property. The Florida legislature doesn’t give a rat’s ass what shenanigans they get up to.