Stop the Clubbing of Baby
Seals,
a Modest
Proposal
The United Nations has learned burly men still
club baby seals to death on ice floes in the
Arctic.
Killing baby seals angers animal rights advocates who have
lobbied hard to stop these
killings. Some now want Planned Parenthood to supply
female seals with the Morning After Pill so they can
enjoy the company of bull seals without
conceiving.
Even if Planned Parenthood were to agree to do
this, there is another problem. Bull seals are humongous brutes
that force themselves on females, giving
them no
choice but to lie there until the bulls are spent. But after such an
experience, many a female seal might welcome the Morning After
Pill.
It's very difficult, however, to get female seals to
ingest the Morning After Pill. Many seals
suffer from bulbar myasthenia gravis, a condition that
makes swallowing difficult, thus explaining the
tendency of seals to throw their heads back and gulp fish in one
swoop.
It would be difficult for Planned Parenthood
staff to fetch a fish from the ocean, implant the
pill, and throw the fish back before it dies as a result
of being too long out of the water. Of course, a significant
government grant might enable Planned Parenthood to work on this
problem.
The Morning After Pill is thought to
be a
safer approach than performing seal abortions. Few veterinarians
are skilled in performing abortions on an ice
floe, a
dangerous procedure for any supplier of reproductive health
services, given the slippery surface. In fact, not long ago, one
veterinarian who had performed 400 seal
abortions slipped while doing his 401st. He fell into the
sea and
never surfaced.
The seal clubbers, on the other hand, say they have a better answer to the problem,
claiming the United Nations should classify the clubbing of baby seals as an approved form
of late-term abortion and then
recommend the practice be adopted wherever seals proliferate
and add to overpopulated ice floes. Anyone who has watched the National
Geographic Channel has seen such floes.
Further updates on this matter will be
issued as studies continue in mankind's
efforts to find a positive solution to the seal
overpopulation threatening the world today.
Donal
Mahoney