Editor:
Sperm are so precious to Nick Rivette, the master male logician, that he holds them in fear of spilling them by accident into the womb of some ungrateful woman. He gives up solitary pleasures and keeps a worried eye on his sheets in the morning. But alas, the retention causes a freak collision of sperm, and a bastard zygote lodges in his abdominal wall. Imagine! Nick Rivette now has an ectopic pregnancy from self-fertilization.
The pain becomes unbearable and he desperately arranges an abortion. He faces two difficulties. Abortions are illegal in Arizona since the 1996 ballot initiative that he helped to vote in. Also, his girlfriend (who would never have sex with him for fear of becoming pregnant with his legally-demanding sperm) is an Operation Rescue activist. She breaks into the clinic and guns down the doctor as he prepares to open Nick's abdomen. She whisks her pregnant darling away to a dusty basement in Bisbee, and maintains armed guard while Operation Rescue fanatics pray over the developing fetus and reassure Nick of God's will.
Late at night, he seizes a rare moment, crawls through the window and hitches a ride toward the New Mexico border. He has to jump out at a light to escape being groped, or worse, by a truck driver. Feverish and hurting, he lurches into a rundown clinic in Tombstone. "Is this a real doctor?" Nick wonders, watching an unshaven old scarecrow swig from a bottle of Jack Daniels, jaundiced eyes flicking nervously as he counts the wad of bills.
At least, he thinks bleakly, as the anesthetic kicks in, at least, as both mother and father, I can "have it both ways." I don't have to obtain the father's consent .
Amiel Duran
Undeclared Freshman