Have you ever gotten into an abortion argument with an idiot on Facebook? Well, would you like to relive that argument in the form of a blog devoted to easily debunkable anti-abortion rights talking points? Then I bid you follow me, internet friend (or frenemy, or random stranger), to Checkmate, Pro-Choicers, a blog that's either a pitch-perfect parody of the head-in-the-sand mentality that characterizes the religious anti-choice crowd or an actual member of that crowd who seriously doesn't understand how logic or arguments work. Oy.


Checkmate, Pro-Choicers — tagline (seriously) "Taking down baby murderers with logic!") — offers both the nerdiest action hero one-liner ever and a collection of pro-life one liners to which the site's author (real or satirical) believes are trump cards, the sort of devastating point that would precede the pro-life rapper dropping the mic and walking offstage in a bizarre, abortion-themed rap battle. But is it serious?

Let's take a look at exhibit A, the blog's About Me section:

My name is Rebecca and I started this blog to point out the stupid things that anti-lifers (or pro-deathers) have to say about abortion! Abortion is murder, plain and simple. The goal of this blog is to make anti-lifers see how stupid they are being and stop supporting murder! If you have a hypocrisy or flaw in logic that you see pro-abortion people using, submit it! (Please keep all submissions, comments, and reblogs kind and Christ-like. Even though many girls who have abortions may be sluts, this blog is not about calling them sluts. It is about stopping the new Holocaust!)


Mention of the Holocaust in the same sentence as use of the word "sluts" and so close to the word "Christ-like" makes me believe that this "Rebecca" may be trollin' with the homies. The phrase "pro-death" is pretty ridiculous, too.

But on the other hand, this sort of thing is totally in line with what a nut like Operation Rescue's Randall Terry might say. Remember that video he made after he "beat" Barack Obama in Oklahoma's Democratic primary? The one where he acted like Andy Samberg acting like a pro-wrestler and he challenged Jezebel to (I think) a duel or fisticuffs or something? I mean, these people have actually murdered actual doctors in the name of promoting "life." Saying that someone is a slut but it's not okay to call them a slut in the same breath is played in the key of batshit — the same key in which many anti-abortion extremists base most of their tunes.

Another argument that may bolster the "it's real" theory: the arguments it presents sound exactly like the sort of thing you might hear in a real discussion with a really rabid anti-abortion rights type. "Your queen, Margaret Sanger, was ANTI-ABORTION. Checkmate, Pro-choicers!" and "I'd rather be anti-choice than anti-LIFE. Checkmate, Pro-choicers!" and the old favorite "Having the right to your body does not give you the right to murder someone else. Checkmate, Pro-choicers!" are all things that I've actually heard or seen, misspelled, in Comic Sans, in my inbox.


But some of the Checkmates are so blatantly awful that they have to be a joke, right? How about the suggestion that being pregnant was better than having an abortion because when you're pregnant, you get to skip your period for 9 months in a row. Or the one that argues that if you're poor, you should just have more babies, forever, so that you can get more money from welfare and "everyone wins." How in the name of holy coathangers is that a Checkmate?

So, is Checkmate, Pro-Choicers real, or a clever mock up? Or does it matter? The fact that it's so difficult to tell means that the anti-abortion rights crowd has become so extreme that they defy parody.


[Checkmate, Pro-Choicers]