The GOP has just agreed that for the next four years, all of the human grown-ups who identify with the party will promote a constitutional amendment that defines life as something that starts at the moment of conception — this means that from the very second an ovum becomes a zygote, that reproductive cell is a full on, legit person, like you, or me, or Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This isn't new; Republicans love to imagine that sperm is a magical potion, man-juice capable of bestowing a human with all qualities of life. Unfortunately, this viewpoint carries with it some important complications — most notably, if human life begins at the moment of conception and a woman is having sex, she could become pregnant, miscarry, and have her period a day or two late without ever knowing that she literally menstruated a human. Enter Personhood Funerals.


According to the business's site, Personhood Funerals is a way for Christian families to make sure they're not desecrating human remains every time the woman flushes a tampon down the toilet, since a zygote is the same thing as a kid. The intro reads,

For a married Christian woman who is trying to conceive, the chances are high that many times when the menstrual cycle arrives it is actually a miscarriage of a very, very young child. If your period is late, even by a few days, it is likely that you have just lost your child. Your precious baby, just a few weeks old, and still microscopic, is dead. This is a time for you to mourn. It is also a time to prepare your child to enter Heaven. Personhood Funeral Services, LLC provides funeral planning, memorial service planning and caters to the needs of grieving Christian families.


Makes sense. After all, one of the major head-scratching complications of believing in personhood is the fact that there's absolutely no medical test to determine whether a fertilized but un-implanted egg is floating around in a woman's Mystery Area at any given time; therefore, any period could feasibly contain a deceased human. Fully human, as per the Republican platform!

PHF offers a variety of menstrual pad-sized coffins, some silk-lined, others more stripped down, ranging in price from $1,200 to $1,800 per single-burial package. Economical couples can spring for a year package of 12 coffins, cemetery plots, and funeral services, just to make sure they cover their bases. The site, again,

As a pious Christian woman, it not sinful to give conduct a Personhood Funeral ceremony to an egg that did not become a child. It WOULD be sinful, however, to flush your child away into a septic tank or sewage system. If you don't want to pay for funerals for eggs that have not been converted into children, you can have your menstrual blood tested by a forensic laboratory each cycle to determine whether you had a miscarriage. However, because of the lab staff time and advanced equipment required to do the testing, this process often costs around $30,000 per test. It is far more cost-effective to simply pay for the ceremony for each cycle.

Can't argue with that.

Personhood Funerals has existed since last fall, right around the time that it was starting to look like voters in the state of Mississippi might ratify an amendment to their state constitution that defines life as starting at the moment of conception. But people have been paying extra attention to the site since Todd Akin reminded the part of America that breathes with its mouth closed that Republicans have incredibly kooky views on women's anatomical autonomy.

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The site is pretty obviously a joke, but that doesn't mean that some web visitors have taken it to MACH ANEURYSM levels of seriousness. As with many websites, the most fun part is reading the comments of people who profoundly do not get it.

Seriously? You can now bury the blood from your menstrual cycle? Gross! Wtf??....


Others were more brimstoney.

PHF I hope you burn in hell with your ignorance. And that your sent into the pits of hell. Because you are the reflection of ugly with your lack of education. This is the completely unchristian. That you would fool women into give you money to bury their menstrual blood. And unfortunately you have blindly fool them already. So don't waste time telling me I'm going to hell you ignorant waste of a human being. I'm sure I'll see you there for sins you didn't even know you've already committed. So go and hyper-focus on one aspect of a religion I'm sure you know nothing about. So please continue be a thieving, lying, christian because you're not surprising anyone. ....


Sure joking around about selling coffins for menstrual blood is silly, and crude. But so is the belief that the imagined desires of a bundle of undifferentiated cells should take precedence over the real needs and lives of the women in whose bodies they reside.

Personhood is also insulting not only to biology, but to reality. If Johnny Appleseed had been followed around the country by a small army of Gilda Gardeners, each of whom stayed back with the newly planted apple trees and watered, sheltered, and nurtured them until they grew into maturity, only to have Johnny come waltzing back into the picture one day several months later and say "Yep, grew the shit out of that tree. Just me. I did it." That's basically the official Republican viewpoint on women's role in reproduction. To borrow some made-up outrage from the GOP, they're attempting to tell mothers "you didn't build that" — and it's amazing that they don't get smacked with Cheerio-filled Tupperware more often.


[PHF]