BARBARA BUSH SHOWED HER MISCARRIED FETUS TO GEORGE

So George Bush wrote a book (not that I believe this, someone wrote it for him from notes, I'm sure) and he began talking about his stance against abortion, why it meant so much to him.  He said his mother had miscarried, put the fetus in a jar, and showed it to him.  He looked at it and thought, "That would have been my brother." and decided abortion (on the spot?) was evil.

Okay, but did it not occur to him that what his mother had done by showing him an aborted fetus in a jar might be, well, if not evil, then a strange turn of events?  I know he loves his mama and that's a good boy, but as an adult shouldn't George at least think this thing through and realize what his mother had done was shameful, misguided ,ignorant, cruel, disgusting, crazy, and way over the border of weird?  Couldn't he work this out and decide that Mama might be off her nut?  No, I guess not, he wrote about it in an autobiography.  Kook!

For what woman would do this?  First, put it in a jar.  "Hey, Doc, just slip that mangled dead fetus there into a jar of formaldehyde for me, will ya?  I wanna take it home to George W.  Maybe we'll keep it a while, bring it out on Thanksgiving."

Second, what woman, what MOTHER, would ever show a jarred fetus to her child?  Did Barbara not love George?  Was she saying by doing this," George, here's what would have happened to you if I had you aborted or miscarried."?  What, specifically and exactly, were her intentions?

Like many another woman I, too, miscarried a child.  It was terrible, devastating, heart-wrenching.  Once a woman is pregnant, whether she meant to be or not, she often grows to accept the situation (if she has support and the baby is very much wanted and is healthy and wasn't the product of rape or incest) and begins to live in the future where there is a live baby, diapers, nursing, loving/raising a child.  So when you miscarry, it can be full of anguish and despair.  I know because it happened to me.

So I cannot understand why Barbara Bush would have the fetus jarred (as if it was an object) and THEN think it the right thing to show the fetus to her son.  I could never in a million years have done such a thing.  Ever suggested to me (who in the hell would suggest such insanity?), I would have recoiled in horror.  My heart hurt.  My body hurt. I felt great loss.  One of mine was gone before he/she had a chance to llive.  Why would I ever want to bottle that little aborted being and then show it to my children?

I am flabbergasted.  No wonder George W. drank and did cocaine.  No wonder he is such a macho doofus.  Not to blame it all on Mama Bush, but God, she sure didn't help the boy out much, did she?

I don't know what this has to do with writing except to tell you that writers have hearts.  They do.  They have to.  They can't be really cruel and mean and dastardly and produce anything at all with any sort of heart to it.  I may not do well in social situations, but by God I do love humankind as a whole.  I love my miscarried babies enough not to show them around in a jar.  I love my children enough not to burden them with looking at a poor little fetus curled up in a jar.  I love people who have heart and I write about people with heart.  Writing also means putting yourself in someone else's shoes and seeing his point of view, but this time...with this woman...I cannot find a way to do it.  I have thought about it all day since hearing the news.  I can pretend to get what she might have been up to, but in all honesty it's just pretend.  What Barbara Bush did is despicable and stupid and crazy and senseless and if I wrote her into a book I'd portray her as one of the most twisted sisters in the world.