Dear Mike Galanos: Kindly walk a nine-month mile in our stilettos

"We're enabling teenagers to act carelessly with an easy way out. [...] That is not what is best for our daughters."

-- Mike Galanos, host of CNN's Prime News, on the FDA's long-awaited approval for over-the-counter sales, to sixteenseventeen-year-old young women, of the effective and laboriously researched and tested "morning-after pill", Plan B.

If Mike Galanos is to maintain his credibility as a journalist, professional and human ethics demand that he properly research his subject matter.

Accordingly, Mike Galanos should begin with an injection of time-released chemicals designed to make him vomit day and night for at least four months. Then, he must have all his clothes taken in radically so that absolutely nothing fits, necessitating the spending of not-small fortunes on poorly-made (if not flat-out throwaway) specialty clothes in order to avoid showing up at work naked.

At this point, a large bag containing a remote-control Rock-'em-Sock-'em Robot, one that has a 9-month battery life, along with several handfuls of marbles, will be inserted into the abdominal cavity of Mike Galanos, and the surgeon will create a portal for adding more marbles every week; the bag will thus press ever more firmly on his bladder, reminding him of its presence even as he tries to ignore it and go about his day. Eventually, it will routinely push the small amounts of food he is able to swallow back into his esophagus on a wave of stomach acid. Then, the bag will partially obstruct his intestines.

Further, Mike Galanos must have his blood supply increased by half and his appetite chemically adjusted so that it takes strange turns at even stranger times. He must also have his nose turned into a hair-trigger solenoid switch that activates his gag reflex at inopportune moments.

Mike Galanos must then attempt to commute, work, go to school, grocery-shop, house-keep, socialize, and/or otherwise try to live his life while every single human being with whom he comes in contact passes comment on his increasing girth and speculates on the number of aliens he's "got hiding in there, yuk, yuk, yuk." He will crave sex more than ever, but the swollen, wildly undulating stomach thing won't do much in the way of turning his partner on, so he'll have to be content with racy dreams. If he can even sleep, that is.

After forty weeks--at which point, if his "pregnancy" style is anything like mine, he will have gained more than 50% of his non-"pregnant" body weight, all of it in the stomach--Mike Galanos must be placed on a crackly vinyl-sheeted hospital bed with a single rubber pillow and have his precious parts subjected to the probing forearms of at least twenty different nurses and other healthcare sorts (did the cafeteria manager get a turn? I can't remember...). Meanwhile, a large vice will be placed around his pelvis and extreme constriction applied thereto for about thirty seconds, over and over, at steadily decreasing intervals.

As the day wears on and his energy dwindles, Mike Galanos will probably ask for food. When it appears no-one is listening, he'll scale back his demands and ask for some crackers, a sip of water, anything. He must be denied, of course, though if someone is feeling charitable, he or she could always offer him a Dixie-cup containing cubes of imitation orange-flavored Jell-O product, along with an ice cube to suck.

Mike Galanos will undoubtedly then beg for drugs; or, as I did, he will ask to be killed. (I think I might have said Please, since it's all part of growing up and being British--plus my Mum was in the room--but again, agony like that can make one's memory a bit fuzzy.)

Mike Galanos should then be patted on the hand and told, Sorry, sweetie, but the anesthesiologist is busy helping another Mom right now; he'll be here soon.

Mike Galanos must then undergo a high-tech pain-simulating technique whereby the experience of being drawn-and-quartered Wild-West-style--old school!--is recreated via the magic of electrodes connected to his brain's pain receptors. This won't take long. It doesn't have to.

Then, Mike Galanos will feel his precious parts strain and tear asunder as the enormous bag containing the Rock-'em-Sock-'em Robot and marbles is pulled from his lower unit. He will leap from the restraints and try to jump up and down for joy, so happy is he that it's finally, finally over. It will take four nurses to pin him back onto his bed, all the while screaming at him that he'd better listen and he'd better lie back down if he doesn't want to hemorrhage to death right then and there.

Mike Galanos will then be stitched back together, and this actually will take some time. (Even so, it will be more than a month before he'll be able to sit in a chair or drive a car without feeling that ripping-stabbing sensation.)

When Mike Galanos has completed this research exercise, then--and only then--will he have any right whatsoever to opine on pregnancy and the choices of those who really do face the undertaking thereof.

Thanks to Sir C. for the heads-up.

Also at Cogitamus.