Beyonce's Inadvertent Pro-Life Baby Bump

• "When Beyonce steps out at the Grammys Sunday night (Feb. 12), at presumably around the 5-month mark, she’ll be carrying not one but two babies…” 
•  “Beyonce (and Her Twins)Set to Perform at 2017 Grammys.” 
•  “Beyonce And Her Twins Are Performing At The 2017 Grammys.” 
•  “GRAMMY Awards: Beyoncé (and Twins) Will Perform “Slowed” Set at Sunday’sShow.” 
• "Beyoncé, fresh off the announcement that she is pregnant with twins, took the stage to perform a spiritual, sweeping, multimedia-filled tribute to motherhood."
• "It was beautiful, majestic, and every bit as Beyoncé as one would expect. And of course, through it all, the twins were already killing it from the womb."
•  “Beyonce and the twins did the Grammys.” (twitter)
•  “So Beyonce's twins already performed on ‪#GRAMMYs making them the youngest artists to ever perform.” (twitter) 
• "The twins slayed their first performance, as expected." (twitter)

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Who knew Beyonce would turn her fans pro-life? It’s almost as if they suddenly recognized unborn babies for what they are – babies. If Beyonce were to miscarry, she and her fans would not mourn the loss of clumps of tissue. They would mourn the loss of her children. If Beyonce were attacked and she miscarried, I suspect the news reports would be full of language that talked about her babies, not her fetuses, being killed, and rightly so. Twenty-nine states would prosecute the attacker for murder. 

And yet Beyonce could have walked off the stage and, in seven states in the United States, gotten an abortion even if the babies were viable. (And yes - third trimester abortions are a real deal. See here and here and here and here and here.) Beyonce herself fights for the right to do this. This would be celebrated too, I suppose, because it's her choice. But then the term 'fetus' would be used, because it's a much more impersonal and dehumanizing way of referring to the unborn than 'baby'. 

The difference between 'baby bump' and 'fetal bump' apparently has nothing to do with ontology and everything to do with perspective. It's as if Planned Parenthood has convinced the world that Schrodinger's Baby will be what people want it to be when they finally decide whether or not to keep the baby. The Federalist asks, "Would Beyoncé’s Babies Still Be Babies If She Chose Abortion?" Well, yes.

As if to highlight this tension, there’s a bar in Chicago throwing her a baby shower – a baby shower – with the proceeds going to Planned Parenthood, which stops more baby showers than any other entity in America. 

Cognative Dissonance Level Rating: Epic. 

What Super Bowl Halftime Shows Reveal About Us

The halftime show at the Super Bowl reminded me yet again that we live in a very confused culture.   
On the one hand, we hear a myriad of voices rightly warning us about the ways in which women are objectified in our society.  Maybe it's because there is already a recognition bias built into all of us. Both men and women tend to see women as a conglomeration of particular parts rather than a complete person. We even manage to do this when pictures are upside down. It seems sensible to warn us away from a cultural trend wherein we are increasingly bombarded with images and messages that bolster an already flawed way in which we all perceive women.