Pro-Lifers Protect Papaya Seeds’ Right to Life
A brief discontinuity in the IvyGate continuum: Around 2PM yesterday our post on papayagina abortion went dead, following Yale Daily News’ removal of an online article about a pro-choice event where, among other things, students simulated abortions on papayas. YDN’s explanation:
Out of concern for Rasha Khoury, whose quoted comments were being dangerously misinterpreted throughout the blogosphere, we removed the story yesterday afternoon from YaleDailyNews.com
Leave it to pro-lifers to get all dangerous with misinterpretation. (Does Francisco Nava have a blog?) Of course, YDN’s removal of the story is slightly futile, since copies of the original are already circulating right-wing blogs. We also have a feeling the Eric Rudolphs of the world aren’t the type to check facts. Khoury (Med ’08) writes in today’s YDN that the papayabortions were “to practice and demystify, not trivialize, the procedure.”
Oddly, the trivializing forces of L’Affair Papaya are mostly on the other side. Dawn Eden, author of Thrill of the Chaste, hosted a contest to rewrite Yale’s anthem “for all those liberal arts students … about to learn how to suction a live baby out of the womb,” a clear homage to conservative Clinton Taylor’s “Taliban Boolah Boolah” fight song.
An excerpt from the winning ditty:
Easy college credit; all I need’s a knife.
That little papaya yolk sac will see no years of life.
“No years of life”? Papaya begins at pollination.
But fear not, Yale pro-choicers. In their sing-songing haste, the pro-lifers provided incontrovertible evidence of intellectual inferiority:
Scrape, scrape on down the wall
‘borting for Eli
Break up that Crimson child
Its life to deny
Um, hello? Crimson is Harvard, not Yale.
