by Mike Pyatt
Triskaidekaphobia isn’t a recent phenomena. To the general population, it’s an irrational, unwarranted fear of the digit thirteen. A Greek word, that’s hard to pronounce-but harder to treat. An estimated 10% of Americans are actively superstitious about the number. There’s a myriad of theories of its origin. Some contend the Last Supper was attended by thirteen, speculating that the traitor Judas was the thirteenth person at the table. Thirteen reportedly was considered good luck in ancient China and Egypt. Speculators claim that Jesus was crucified on the Friday the 13th-thus a cursed number.
The cost to our economy has been estimated at nearly a billion dollar annual loss, when the 13th falls on a Friday. Some are so superstitious they won’t even get out of bed-let alone work. Such extreme behavior is not the norm. The phobia appears to be resistant to therapy. Most elevator panels have no “thirteenth floor.” Many single level motels omit “number 13.” Some overhead storage panels on commercial airlines skip it. Those afflicted with this malady may skip their thirteenth birthday. One path to staying younger. They reject any airline flight with a thirteen in it. According to triskaidekaphobia adherents, how many children do the Duggers have?
Before the era of “high rises” most buildings were under ten stories, until around 1845. The clash of construction science and superstition. The 13th floor “disappears.” It’s renamed the “mezzanine,” to make the superstitious comfortable. We know it’s the thirteenth floor. Labeling it something less ominous doesn’t’ change the fact. Our culture’s quite adept at renaming terms that threaten our fears, superstitions, bias or hidden agendas.
Before 1973, homosexual was the term used to describe that abnormal, deviant behavior. Later the term “gay” or “alternate lifestyle” was ascribed to “normalize” the behavior. Catholics, evangelicals and co-belligerents rallied to oppose the normalization of homosexuality. As the American Psychological Association’s caved to pro-homosexual activists, ignoring seventy years of serious and scholarly psychiatric, clinical research, labeling it as “maladaptive behavior.” Liberal Democrats and Hollywood elites embraced the ruse. We’re now a society of façade acronyms like the LBGTQ’s. Eradicating old edifices.
Is it coincidental that the calamitous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision happened the same year as the APA dodge? Was it the convergence of evil forces? Or did the righteous and co-belligerents just doze off, missing the “sign posts?” What was once an “unborn baby” was commonly labeled a “fetus.” A Latin term that means “offspring,” In the early 80’s, aborting a “fetus” sounded less draconian than killing a viable, living, unborn. “A mass of tissue,” or “product of conception,” heralded Planned Parenthood, at their expanding Women’s Health Clinics. Rather than “slaughter houses” that duped millions of women and young girls, who were told “it” wasn’t a “living baby.” Nothing more than an appendage.
Like the “vanishing” of the “thirteenth floor” the next step was to replace the term abortion with less abrasive nomenclature like “women’s choice,” or “right to privacy.“ Sounds so democratic. It was now “between her and her physician.” Men were marginalized. It’s instructive to look at Planned Parenthood v. Danforth, 1976, where the Supreme Court reversed the Missouri law, rendering husbands as mere “sperm donors.” Rarely did husbands or fathers know. “It’s my body” gained legal standing and ingrained culturally.
Ultrasound technology changed the narrative. No longer could the abortion advocates credibly deny the humanity of the unborn. It bolstered the polemic of the pro-life supporters that abortion is a moral and social war. Stuart Campbell, developer of the three and four dimensional obstetric ultrasound, that has made unprecedented views of the maternal body, admitted it provides expectant families with an opportunity to bond before the birth. Campaigning in England for a narrower timeframe in which women may choose to abort, Campbell declared that the fetal features and behavior he had witnessed through ultrasound have caused him to observe, “I believe we have no right to be killing the fetus that is capable of that.” This explains why abortionist resist any attempt, legal or otherwise, to curb abortion-on-demand, doing all they can to conceal the true identity of the life inside the womb.
A 2015, survey by the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates claim that 78% of women considering abortion choose life when they view an ultrasound. The battle in state legislatures will continue. Apposition to the requirement for a woman to have the opportunity to “view an ultrasound” is based on their unrelenting penchant for abortions, NARAL declared, “that 60% of women aborting have already delivered a child, that most women have abortions because of the ‘material conditions’ of their lives.” “Aborting for convenience,” is masked by “material conditions.” Planned Parenthood has cleverly rewritten the lexicon on abortion language.
We know the slogan, “Follow the money.” How about Planned Parenthood and affiliates? If you don’t have insurance, the “magnanimous providers” of “women’s health” will grant a “discount.” Fees for “abortion care” require a four-week “snap shot” of one’s income to help qualify women under Title X discount. “Cash, credit card, check or Medicaid, and/or private insurance are the only way to pay for abortion care.” Contrast that to women’s Care Centers. Services are always free to all clients. Planned Parenthood’s on the dole for $600 million of our tax dollars. Like most addicts, they can’t fund their habit and pay the rent too.
Nearly three million women are duped annually by their “no thirteenth floor” style duplicity. Planned Parenthood’s “elevator” only descends. Leading to death, and remorse. We’ve arrived at the logical dead-end mentality of mankind’s depravity-disposable lives. Deadly semantics. Calling evil good. Abortion by any other name is still abortion.
Who’ll rescue the fifteen year old from Planned Parenthood’s barbaric clinic, that rips a baby from her womb? Citing Malcomb Muggeridge, “The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.” Unborn foes never rest. Neither can we. What do you think?
Mike Pyatt’s a Natrona County resident. His email’s roderickstj@yahoo.com
