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Recently I was chumming with a few buddies, sipping chilled Cointreau, when my companions took it upon themselves to select a future column topic for me. The next morning, I withdrew a napkin from my pocket with the following words inked upon it: COMEDIC ESSAY ABOUT ABORTION.

The Aristocrats

by Jaroslav Dampfstain

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of apotemnophilia? Okay, bad joke. Let me explain.

Apotemnophilia is a psychological disorder in which a person receives sexual gratification from the amputation of one’s own body part(s). This of course is to be distinguished from Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), in which a person receives non-sexual gratification from the removal of one’s own body part(s).

Honestly, which is harder to swallow: (a) the fact that someone out there might cream himself by having his leg sawed off; or (b) the fact that someone out there gets his leg sawed off and expresses his giddiness some way other than creaming himself?

In the United States it is illegal for a doctor (or anyone else) to perform acts of patient-gratifying amputation. For what it’s worth, no one I know is up in arms about this.

My prayers are with those readers who were dining while digesting the above words. A word of warning: It’s only gets worse from here.

Recently I was chumming with a few buddies, sipping chilled Cointreau, when my companions took it upon themselves to select a future column topic for me. The next morning, I withdrew a napkin from my pocket with the following words inked upon it: COMEDIC ESSAY ABOUT ABORTION.

Someone had slipped me an authorial mickey! My initial thought was that I’d rather write an epic sea novel which reads like a naturalist discourse on cetology, and which boasts as a major character a sperm whale named Dick.

Gradually, however, I was seduced by the idea of trying to be funny about a subject that isn’t the least bit humorous. I’m going to fail miserably, of course…unless something sinister within you snickered at the above comments about paraphilia.

In the 33 years since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, abortion has become such a highly politicized subject that people and pundits all along the political spectrum have come to treat abortion as though it were an idea far removed from reality. Abortion has been transformed into a political litmus test: You’re a liberal, ergo you support abortion rights. You’re a conservative, ergo you oppose abortion rights.

Notice I didn’t write “you support abortion.” One supports the right to have an abortion. Because no one—except possibly an acrotomophiliac (that’s someone who find pleasure from someone else losing a body part)—supports abortion. I mean, let’s be honest: Getting an abortion isn’t the same as getting a new coiffure. An abortion is a serious medical procedure, which leaves a patient with physical scars and emotional umbilica.

Even by the most liberal of definitions, an abortion means the removal from the womb of a tissue entity that will, through the natural course of gestation, become a human being. Unless you’re talking about Rosemary’s Baby, in which case the tissue entity would eventually have become the first homo beelzebubus.

I realize I’m not being all that funny yet. I’m getting there.

You might think I’m about to unleash a salvo of liberal political zingers a la Bill Maher, or perhaps pull a Dr. James Dobson and morally compare apotemnophilia or BIID to abortion. But what could I possibly do to covert you one way or the other? (If you want your mind challenged along these lines, I suggest you read John Irving’s novel The Cider House Rules, the colossal work of literature on the subject of abortion.)

No, the reason I began this article with a ditty on paraphilia was because the average reader, whether liberal or conservative, would likely bypass any article on the subject of abortion and head straight for the Sudoku page. As divided as our society is about ‘the subject of abortion,’ society has become decidedly numb on ‘the thing itself.’

So as I see it, the challenge isn’t getting you to laugh about abortion: It’s getting you to pay attention. But you’ve made it this far, so now I owe you the only abortion joke I know:

A family enters a Hollywood agent’s office. The husband says, “I’ve got this great family docudrama idea.” The agent says, “I don’t know, docudramas are hard to sell these days.” The husband says, “Yeah, but you’ve never seen anything like this.” The agent says, “Pray tell.”

The husband begins his pitch: “Well, I bring my 16-year-old daughter Mitsy into the frame. Lovely doll she is. I slip some Ecstasy in her lemonade. Bodda-boom! Bodda-bing! She misses her time of the month, if you know what I mean. Mitsy tells momma what happened. But my wife’s a coldhearted Jezebel. She doesn’t believe a word, kicks Mitsy out of the house. Now it just so happens that Grandpa over here is a clothes hanger salesman. Mitsy sells Grandpa a sob story and talks him into giving her a back alley abortion.”

“But wait! Grandma is a founding member of the National Right to Life. Mitsy and Grandpa are in the back alley, getting ready to do a little amateur slash and burn with an Acme wire hanger, when Grandma starts picketing, strutting billboard-size posters of fetuses that look like cans of diced SPAM. Grandma talks my little boy Billy—he’s the gullible one with the freckles—into blowing Grandpa’s brains out with a Smith & Wesson. What a mess, geriatric goo everywhere!

“What’s poor Mitsy to do? She finds refuge at my Baptist neighbors, the Cleavers. Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver talk Mitsy into giving her child up for adoption. Nine months go by, Mitsy gives birth to a little girl. Well, me and the Missus kinda miss having a girl around the house. So we head down to the local adoption clinic, fill out a few forms, and what do you know? As luck would have it, Mitsy Jr. comes to join our happy little home.”

“Another 14 years go by. Mitsy Jr.’s sporting a training bra, she’s a real looker, just like her mother, my daughter. What do you know? A few more pills of E left in the bottle. Bodda-boom, bodda-bing! We go through the whole shebang again! Only this time, Mitsy Jr. goes to Planned Parenthood. Remember, Grandpa’s brains were splattered years ago. A little slice and dice and Mitsy Jr. emerges a few pounds lighter and a woman of free choice. We all take a bow in the parking lot, cameras rolling.”

The agent wipes sweat off his forehead, “Christ, mister, you’re right! I never have seen anything like that! What’s the film called?”

The husband takes a step forward and proudly declares, “The Aristocrats!”

Mr. Dampfstain is filling in for columnist Harry S. Iarch, who is on assignment this week in his mother’s womb, waiting to be born again.