The Ghosts of All Aborted Fetuses

Riva Djinn has been hanging out with the acid rock band again. She’s not a groupie in the traditional sense. She’s more like their occasional muse, though the rhythm section likes to refer to her as its throbbing wet nurse. When it’s looking for a sharp lick, the band follows Riva’s whims; and this week she just feels like slapping any joker who mistakenly refers to the medical procedure of Intact Dilation and Extraction as “Partial Birth Abortion.” Not only does Riva think that the Supreme Court’s most recent decision about “Partial Birth Abortion” can be easily dismissed by its lack of concern for medical science, women’s health, and Constitutional rights, but also the majority opinion is fraught with mistaken terminology. How can we have a real debate about women’s rights to choose when we’re caught up in the issue of fetal viability? So what does The State plan to do with all those “Viables” anyway? Plenty of living, breathing children are ignored by The State every day, plenty of children are left behind. Where is federal protection for an unwanted child once it is living in the cruel world? Why does The State give such a hot damn about fetuses and then ignore children? So this week, Riva felt obliged to experience her morning sickness vomiting episode on the steps of the United States Supreme Court. Write a lyric about that, acid rock band!

Though the musicians of the acid rock band have tried on many occasions, none have discovered what is eating Riva Djinn; they have tried to discover the secret in Riva’s heart. They’ll never find it, and that’s because they’re looking in the wrong place. Riva doesn’t keep secrets in her heart. She keeps them in her womb, which is much more central to a woman’s physiology than the heart ever was. While someone like Don Juan will seal his doom when he dines with the ghost of the father of a woman he tricked and raped, Riva Djinn feasts with ghosts of aborted fetuses who are more than grateful they never saw the daylight that slips off this greasy planet. And it’s not her doom Riva seals during this feast. No. She seals a promise that in the Land of the Never-Have-Lived, no being ever knows the dehumanizing feeling of rejection.