The dark and dirty secret
A few years ago, my publisher reminded me that a synopsis of my next novel was due. For no particularly good reason, I found myself thinking about the rather difficult question posed to the writer by vampires. And while I was familiar with every spin on the genre from Bram Stoker and Anne Rice to Buffy and V:TM, I'd always been bothered by one massive logical flaw, namely, where are all the dead people?
Consider the following. The FBI's Uniform Crime Report for 2004 states that there were 16,137 murders in the United States. If one omits the 70 percent committed with firearms - for surely no self-respecting vampire would ever use a gun - that leaves 4,787 annual corpses. Assuming a vampire only requires sustenance every third night and that every murder performed sans high-velocity lead injection can be blamed on vampires, the maximum number of vampires in the United States is 40.
Being immortal and all, they must be really sick of each other by now.
But then it occurred to me: There is another readily available source of non-frozen human blood that does not show up on the Uniform Crime Report. In fact, the nation is nearly awash in the blood of children who are brought into the world by the hands of their murderers. Research soon revealed that because it is a cash business with enhanced privacy protections, there are often some very sketchy characters involved with your friendly local children's abattoir. A plot began to suggest itself ...
Two weeks later, I could practically hear the blood drain from my publisher's face as I described the gripping story to him. "Let me just get this straight," he said, sounding rather as if he'd been kicked in the stomach. "You're writing a Christian vampire novel that revolves around the abortion industry? That's certainly original. Do you think you could throw in some insults to the religion of peace while you're at it?"
Being not completely unskilled in the dark arts of human communication, I correctly interpreted this to indicate that he would very much prefer something a little less controversial. And so I returned to the drawing board and came up with something involving a divine intelligence agency, an insane prince of angels and a political sub-text that perhaps one reader in a hundred will correctly grasp. I daresay it may be the first fantasy novel to be inspired by Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae," specifically, the bits about Spenser.
But that's neither here nor there. What's significant is what I discovered during my process of researching precisely who profits from continued abortion in America. Some of the parties are obvious, but one in particular is rather less so. Indeed, it is possible that no party has profited as greatly from the abortion industry as the Republican Party. When one considers the political situation in 1973, with a long-time Democratic Congress, Nixon's resignation just around the corner and a Supreme Court full of liberal Republicans, it is amazing to consider how the righteous anger of millions inspired by the Roe v. Wade decision has helped reshape the American political landscape.
So, it was intriguing to read the uncharacteristically insightful Eleanor Clift making the following observation in Newsweek:
Now that the GOP is within striking distance of overturning Roe, they're having second thoughts ... "Any activist will tell you they'd rather have the issue out there than to have it resolved," says this pro-choice Republican, who has worked on the Hill and for various Republican interest groups. "If Roe were overturned, we'd be electing Democrats as far as the eye can see."
There has been a Republican majority on the Supreme Court for over a decade. We are currently blessed with a Republican House, Senate and White House as well. Republicans are likely approaching the zenith of their political power, and they will probably never be more able to act to end the national shame than they are today. The fact that two pro-abortion figures, Giuliani and Rice, are being openly bruited about as presidential candidates in 2008 tends to indicate that they will never be more inclined to do so either.
But the dark and dirty secret of the Republican Party is that it is only nominally pro-life. Given the history of the last 33 years, voting for vocally pro-life Republicans has proven to be as ineffective a way to stop the slaughter as voting for abortionette Democrats would have been. Keep this in mind before you get too excited about Supreme Court Justice-in-waiting Alito sailing through his Senate confirmation.