On Bumper Stickers

I'm going to take a break from Comic Con coverage to mention this:

I keep seeing a bumper sticker on the way to my dad's house each week for dinner. It's a sticker I used to see a lot of a few years ago and it's always annoyed me: "SMILE! Your mom chose life!"

I get it, you're pro-life. And you put a little smiley face there so you can convince people through happiness to agree with you. That's really a dick move, but as far as dirty tactics go that's pretty much the nicest and cleanest. Bad debating strategy, but a very courteous way to argue. Someone might disagree, but they'll still think you a nice person.

Which is exactly what you want, don't you? Get them all ill-prepared and then overturn Roe v. Wade when they're trying not to be mean spirited. I see what you did there.

Full disclosure, yes, I'm on the Choice philosophy, mainly because I can see reasons why an abortion might be necessary and no good argument for why it never should be. Never is big. A lot. I'm not going to argue that a blastula is a person or that a 7 month old fetus can't live on its own. What I am going to argue is logic.

This bumper sticker is annoying. It raises no ethical questions, makes no pertinent points and contributes nothing to the discussion at all. In fact, all it really does is take the driver's opinion and rub it smugly in your face. 'Do you agree with me? Be happy! Don't? Be happy anyway, just know that YOUR MOM agrees with me.' Real nice, sticker. Way to bring our mothers into this. Dick.

And I can't even argue it because my mother did choose to birth me. Granted, though, I was a planned pregnancy in a stable(ish) middle class suburban household.

But I think I've found a response that can continue the open discourse while sticking to the same kind of polite yet improper debating techniques begun in the original sticker: guerilla stickerjobs.

Gotta love freedom.