Defense of Marriage a No-Brainer!

Today oral arguments are being heard before the U.S. Supreme Court on the question of so-called "same sex marriage" and whether states have a choice to legalize it or uphold "traditional" marriage.
Unfortunately I cannot be there to defend the institution of marriage, ordained by God, but if I were this is how I would plead my case:
May it please the court. There is no such thing as same sex marriage. It is an oxymoron. Marriage is and always has been since the beginning of civilization, the union of a biological couple for the purpose of creating a human family and regenerating and nurturing the human species to adulthood. The only combination of persons capable of such a thing is one man and one woman because only a man and a woman are capable of sexual intercourse, a necessary component of human reproduction involving both male and female reproductive organs.
My opponents argue that biology is merely an incidental component to marriage, that a couple eligible for marriage should be any two adult human beings who "love" each other. My answer to that is love has never been a prerequisite to marriage and although it is desirable that a husband and wife love one another, love is, in many cases, a result of marriage and not necessarily a pre-existing condition. In some cultures, a person's first encounter with their spouse is on their wedding day. Also, there are many kinds of love, including Platonic love. Under that definition, best friends and siblings should be able to marry, but that would dramatically alter and defeat the purpose of marriage as we have always understood it. There is nothing preventing two people who love each other from living together and thus they are not being denied the right to share a life with the person they love.
My opponents argue that current marriage laws discriminate against homosexuals because they are denied access to tax breaks and other legal benefits of marriage. This is utterly false. Homosexual persons have always had access to lawful marriage, that is, marriage to a member of the opposite sex. Many homosexuals in fact have married members of the opposite sex, have produced offspring, and have had what many would view as a successful marriage. Therefore, it is not true that they have not had equal access to the institution of marriage.
Thus, they are arguing for the creation of a new institution that has never existed before, a civil union between two members of the same sex bearing all the rights and privileges of a marriage union. The burden of proof is on them to prove how the two could possibly be regarded as equal or of equal value to society. But if such a case can be made for extending certain legal rights and privileges to same sex domestic partners, such issues are clearly a matter for states to decide and to regulate. But to redefine marriage itself is not within the jurisdiction of any human power or authority because it comes to us through natural law, authored by the Creator. The most any state can do is to create a vehicle for domestic partnerships that can be regulated and taxed accordingly and through which members of a given partnership would have specific rights previously reserved for family members only. But no state has the right to call such a thing a marriage in defiance of common sense.
Thus, I am asking the Supreme Court to overrule any attempt by any state to redefine marriage and to declare once and for all that marriage is what it has always been in the eyes of the law, a union between one man and one woman. God save the Court and God save the United States of America.

Vita's Valentine

This week's cartoon, though a little late for Valentine's Day, is still appropriate for the month of February. The so called pro-choice (actually one choice) community keeps insisting that the unborn child is not a real person in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There isn't an expectant mother on earth, who eagerly awaits the birth of her child, who doesn't treat the child in her womb like a real person. She talks to it. She fondles it. She cradles it in her arms. She comments about its movements as if speaking about a real person. Because it is a real person and she instinctively knows that. The only people who do not view the unborn child as a person are those who wish to have an abortion or those who support abortion. In this simple cartoon, Vita proclaims that if she is not a real person then neither are those outside the womb, because they all share the same traits of personhood; a beating heart, a functioning brain, metabolism, human DNA, etc. It's when the born members of the human race begin adding other qualifications to personhood designed to keep the unborn members out or minimize their rights that we have a problem. Peace.

Frozen Assets

Every once in a while, Fredo the Frozen reminds Umbert's readers of the plight of America's 500,000+ frozen embryos in fertility labs across the nation. Aside from the fact that these are living human beings, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, there are a host of other issues, moral and legal, surrounding the existence of these members of the frozen brood section. In many cases they are being treated not as human beings, but as products; nameless, faceless objects as part of a business transaction between a couple and the fertility clinic. How long before they become available on the open market as brand-able merchandise? (Didn't we already fight a civil war over the buying and selling of human beings?) I can just see the TV commercials hawking human embryos and extolling the quality of their genetic makeup. Soon prospective parents will be able to shop for hair and eye color as well as intellectual vs athletic ability. Then there's the issue of using unwanted embryos for scientific and medical research, still a hotly debated topic in American politics. And why are there so many embryos in cold storage in the first place? Obviously, more embryos are created than are actually needed to ensure enough "material" to guarantee a successful pregnancy. The leftovers go right into the freezer with a future about as uncertain as last night's leftover meatloaf. Thus, we leave poor Fredo in suspended animation wondering when, if ever, he will finally get a womb of his own.

Should God Sue for Patent Infringement?

Recently the Supreme Court ruled that human genes could not be patented, opening the door to greater competition in the search for more cures for cancer and other deadly diseases. This ruling invalidates more than 22,000 patents issued on human genes. People doing life-saving research had to worry about being sued for infringing on these patents while patients whose lives were ticking time bombs anxiously awaited breakthroughs, regardless of whose brand name was stamped on it. What were these scientists thinking? Didn't God invent the human gene? If anyone has the right to call a lawyer, it should be the Almighty. But God, in His infinite mercy, instead gave us a thinking brain capable of unlocking the life-saving secrets of His universe, including the microscopic universe which serves as the foundation for human life. These secrets, so long as they are not used to destroy human life or violate God's Natural Law, belong to everybody. Granted laboratories have the right to financial gain from their discoveries, because profits from these discoveries enable them to continue their research. But to grant any lab a monopoly on genetic research would be like giving NASA a patent on the planet Mars. The court rightly ruled that the objects of discovery belong to everybody. This is great news for cancer patients and others who simply cannot wait indefinitely for the cures that desperately need discovering.

Death Panels 'R' Us

About twenty years ago I wrote a column called The Armchair Commando in which I addressed numerous political topics, among them, issues concerning life and death. In one installment I warned my readers about the not-too-distant possibility of the institutional genocide of the elderly by government bureaucrats challenged by the health care needs of the aging baby boom generation. The recent developments of Obamacare and the possibility of government "death panels" to determine how best to allocate limited health care resources to an aging population have done absolutely nothing to alter my prognostications.
With the federal government virtually taking over the health care industry, how long does anyone think it will take for Washington bureaucrats to start addressing the high cost of health care by rationing it to those it deems worthy of better health, namely young and middle-aged adults with enough productive years ahead to continue contributing to the tax base? Does a New York minute come to mind?   This is the price we pay for turning more of the responsibility for ourselves over to the government. As for the so-called death panels, Secretary Sebilius made it abundantly clear, in that recent case involving the little girl who needed a new lung, that the federal government considers itself THE authority in deciding who is qualified to receive life-saving medical treatment. Thus, whatever group of bureaucratic appointees are selected to evaluate these cases and make a determination who lives and who dies is, in effect, a death panel. Uncle Sam was once a symbol of the benevolence of the U.S. government looking after the interests of the American people. But now that he's gone from "uncle" to "big brother," that relationship is looking more and more dubious.

Umbert Attacked by "Pro-Choice" Bloggers!

Having recently attended the National Right to Life Conference in Dallas, Texas, I settled back into my usual routine at the studio and caught up on some email correspondence. To my surprise, fellow attendee Michael Ciccocioppo, sent me a message alerting me to the fact that my comic strip was being attacked by a pro-abortion blogger who had been "undercover" at the convention for the purpose of tearing it down in her column. The blog site was called RH (Reproductive Health) Reality Check and the columnist was Andrea Grimes, who called my display of Umbert books and other paraphernalia "unsettling." She then directed her barbs at the conference itself, making numerous unfair and untrue observations about the program and its attendees.
I responded on her blogsite and was immediately set upon by several of her "regulars," who seemed to be lying in wait for any pro-lifers who happened to venture into their blogosphere. Members of the National Right to Life Committee observed the situation in Washington and contacted me, asking permission to run the story on their national online newsletter. I agreed and edited it down to a digestible length. You may read the article at the following link: http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2013/07/umbert-strikes-back-cartoonist-gary-cangemi-responds-to-pro-abortion-blogger-ambush-of-nrlc-conference/#.UeM53o2-1Bl

The problem with attempting to enter into a dialogue with people on the internet is that the anonymity of blogging makes it easier to say things one wouldn't ordinarily say to someone in a face to face confrontation. We tend to be more civil to a live person in front of us and more uncivil to a faceless, nameless person on a blog. That's unfortunate as I genuinely wanted to engage these people who call themselves pro-choice and explain why I do what I do with the Umbert comic strip. One even asked me how Umbert could possibly talk to other unborn babies or operate a computer. I told her I would explain it when she could tell me how a cartoon beagle could engage in aerial combat with a WWI flying ace.

By the way, this IS a BLOG. Please feel free to post your own thoughts. Just keep them civil, OK?

A Hubbling Experience

I got into a blogging debate recently over the release of some new Hubble Telescope photographs. I had the audacity to suggest that, for me, it was unimaginable that anyone could view these photos and not believe in God. I consider the Hubble to be one of the greatest achievements of the 20th Century because it gives us a view of our universe beyond anything we could imagine. The startling clarity and detail of these pictures of objects that are billions of light years away is amazing. Some of these photos reveal distant glittering objects that are not stars, but galaxies that look like stars because they are so far away. These objects are so far away, many of them may not even exist anymore but we still see them because their light is still travelling to Earth.
In ancient times, our forebears thought the Earth was the center of the universe and that the stars were light fixtures fastened onto a huge glass dome that rotated above our sky. Now that we know better, we get a greater sense of just how small and perhaps insignificant we seem with respect to the universe as a whole. It reminds me of the Dr. Suess  tale, Horton Hears a Who, in which Horton discovers a tiny little civilization on a tiny speck of dust, but nobody believes him that it exists. This book has been embraced by folks in the pro-life movement because of its anthem...a person's a person no matter how small.
No matter how immense we discover this universe to be, it only serves to emphasize, in my view, how important the individual is, being a part of something so vast and being able to observe and contemplate it from our tiny little speck. And if we ever learn to respect life on this speck, we may actually survive to one day explore and expand our civilization to other specks throughout our galaxy and beyond. Elwood, the womb's resident little genius, is my idea of what a scientist should be...a person who stands in awe of God's creation as he seeks to better understand it.

Due Process Rights for the Unborn

Suppose we do elect a pro-life president, he appoints the next Supreme Court justice and the land's highest court overturns the infamous Roe v. Wade decision. What then?  The abortion debate goes back to the states and is decided on a state by state basis? Will America become a land  where only half its unborn citizens have a right to life?

The American Civil War determined that we could not remain a nation half slave and half free and the same could be argued of the right to life. Simply overturning Roe V. Wade won't end the abortion battle, it will only change the landscape of the battlefield. In my view, the key to ending or significantly reducing abortion in America may lie in the Constitution itself. The 14th amendment clearly states that no State may "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..."

Thus, according to one possible interpretation of the Constitution, NO abortions should be performed in this country without the unborn child having some sort of legal process in which their interests are taken into account. Thus, if the courts were to uphold the due process rights of the unborn, hearings would be required to determine whether the mother's interest in aborting the child outweighs the child's fundamental right to life, potentially reducing the number of abortions performed each year significantly below current statistics.

Such hearings need not require a full court trial, but could be dealt with by a master or appointee of the court, as many other family matters are currently handled.  But the Constitution, if so interpreted, would be clear: no unborn child should have his life terminated without full legal recourse and a duly executed, case by case legal process which weighs the interests of all parties concerned;  a "due process" that was denied when the last 53 million children were put to death in America's abortuaries. 

Ultrasound Logic

     Throughout the country, many states are passing new laws requiring that women seeking an abortion submit to an ultrasound, the rationale being that they should have ALL of the facts before making such a permanent and life altering decision. As a result of seeing their unborn child alive with a beating heart and human form, a significant number of women have second thoughts about destroying it. In my home state of Pennsylvania, similar legislation is under consideration. Of course, pro-abortion advocates are off the wall and proposing all kinds of absurd legislation in retaliation; bills calling for mandatory prostate exams for men with erectile dysfunction to silly legislation that would protect every ovum and sperm cell. 

     As a person who defends the right to life, but who also supports the Constitution, I'm not 100% sure that mandatory ultrasounds are constitutional. Requiring a woman to undergo a medical procedure sounds a lot like forcing every American to purchase health insurance, something I'm hoping the Supreme Court will rule out by June. I suppose it would depend on how such legislation were worded. I certainly believe every woman should have access to an ultrasound if contemplating an abortion but then there's the question of who would be required to pay for it. Since the abortion clinic stands to make a profit on the abortion, I would think they should have to cover expense of the ultrasound. I do support the spirit of this legislation, because I believe that too many women have been wrongfully convinced that the unborn child is an inanimate mass of cells with no rights and no future unless granted one by its mother. They need to see the truth with their own eyes. For that reason, I would support taxpayer funded ultrasounds if need be.

     Of course, this all begs the question as to whether an abortion itself is constitutional. I, for one, believe it is not. I believe abortion on demand violates not only the baby's right to life, it violates his or her due process rights under the fourteenth amendment. More on this subject next time.

It's the Abortions, Stupid!

As this cartoon featuring Umbert's super smart buddy Elwood illustrates, the current economic crisis is deeply rooted in another American crisis-the loss of nearly fifty million Americans in the past 40 years. Think about it. If the fifty million people we allowed to be legally aborted were alive today what impact would they have had on our economy? Multiply all of the products and services that a person typically uses in their lifetime by fifty million and we are talking about trillions of dollars in added GDP. Then there's the gaping hole in the federal treasury that likely would not exist if the added tax dollars of fifty million workers was flowing into Washington, not to mention the balance that would have been restored to the ratio of workers to retirees, thus keeping Social Security and Medicare solvent. And how's this for irony? The national teachers unions support abortion, guaranteeing the death of over one million future pupils per year! If class sizes are an average of 27 students, that's over half a million teachers over a twelve year period who won't be hired to preside over all those empty desks.Class dismissed!

Children, An Endangered Species

If the recent media circus over the Casey Anthony trial demonstrated anything, it is how low on the totem pole children are in this country. Who is going to pay for that child's murder? No one! This woman gets off scot-free and is probably headed for a small fortune in book deals and movie rights. But this isn't unusual, it is typical. Children are murdered every day in this country and no one seeks justice on their behalf because their murder is considered somebody else's constitutional right. Has abortion made us so desensitized to the death of children that we are going to start thinking of the Caylee Anthony's of the world as simply late-term abortions? Dr. Kermit Gosnell is under indictment for the murder of several infants whom he killed AFTER they were extracted from their mother's wombs in attempted abortions. Yet so called pro-choice groups consider what this man did at his West Philadelphia clinic health care for women.
I feel sorry for children today. Not only are they no longer safe in their mother's wombs, they are no longer safe when they exit the womb. Child abuse today is rampant and children are being forced to grow up too fast in a pop media culture which imposes a sexually charged template on adolescence. And the perpetrators of violence and sexual abuse against children are treated like victims themselves by a society too weak to impose   judgment and enforce its laws. It's a toss up whether Umbert is better off staying in the womb for another ten years or taking his chances on the outside.

Ten Years in the Womb Today!

It was ten years ago today, the very first Umbert cartoon appeared in print in the pages of the National Catholic Register. Then editor Tom Hoopes had called me a few weeks earlier in response to my intitial presentation package sent to 150 Catholic newspapers around the country. He was the first to respond and said he had to have the Umbert strip for his new "Culture of Life" page in the Register.Talk about perfect timing. The Register and about a dozen other papers signed on as charter subscribers to the new self-syndicated strip. Others turned Umbert down politely, including one editor who said it was a "one-joke idea" which could not be sustained over the long run. A couple of thousand strips later, I think I have blown that argument out of the water. While it would seem that a strip about a baby in the womb would be very limited, Umbert has proved to be a very fruitful source of story ideas and new characters. Elwood, Vita, Fredo, Cousin Eb, Angel, and B.L. ZeeBub are just some of the dozens of characters which have been added to the strip since its inception...or should I say CONception? Umbert has spoofed everything from politics and Hollywood to the environmental movement, Broadway,  and Ben & Jerry's. 

Still and all, Umbert hasn't enjoyed mainstream popularity due to its strong pro-life message, but I have refused to water it down to make it more palatable to the general public and will continue to do so. In ten years, this little guy has really grown on me, so I will endeavor to keep him alive and kicking for another ten years, God willing. If Umbert is not a regular feature in your diocesan newspaper, or church bulletin, please contact your editor or pastor and suggest they adopt Umbert for their publication. Information is available at Umbert's "womb-site" www.umberttheunborn.com or have them contact me at umbertmail@aol.com.

Thanks for ten years of loyal readership and support!

Where Do We Draw the Line?

The recent scandal over an abortion clinic in Philadelphia, a veritable "chamber of horrors," as it was dubbed by the press, raises a lot of interesting questions, not the least of which is, why is everyone so shocked? Dr. Kermit Gosnell has been charged with the deaths of several infants who were aborted alive and then killed outside of the womb by severing their spinal cords with a pair of scissors. The public was not only horrified, it demanded  legal action against those who allowed this clinic to operate unimpeded and uninspected. And yet, had he done the exact same procedure while the children were still IN the womb his actions would have gone unnoticed, just another routine day in the life of a provider of "women's health care" services. What is it about a few inches of birth canal that confers such profound humanity on the individual deserving of full legal protection when one's head passes through it and invites such utter contempt for the meaningless blob of protoplasm growing on the other side? Does the baby undergo some mystical transformation during the birthing process? I just don't get it. In my opinion, every abortion clinic is a chamber of horrors and we should all be horrified that we have allowed them to continue their unfettered reign of terror for almost four decades. No, not horrified,...ashamed!

Do the Math!

In this classic cartoon, Umbert points out that we are all nine months older than we give ourselves credit for, that is, if we truly believe that life begins at conception. Thus, when we celebrate our birthday we are actually celebrating the anniversary of our date of birth, not our actual age. But we even get that wrong. When a person celebrates his twenty-first birthday, for instance, he is really celebrating his twenty-second, ignoring the fact that the day he was born was actually his first birthday. Of course, he IS celebrating the 21st anniversary of his day of birth, but this has no bearing on his age because he is actually twenty-one years and nine months old. And so, truth be told, we ALL lie about our age, by at least nine months. Does any of this matter? Not really, we're going to continue to do the fuzzy math and forget that we existed in our mother's bellies for a good long stretch. It seems to be human nature to get it wrong when it comes to measuring time, like the turn of the millennium fiasco. People went nuts celebrating the twenty-first century as midnight approached on December 31, 1999, completely oblivious to the fact that the new millennium was still a whole year away and didn't begin until January 1, 2001. Are we all on the same page now? Great! Happy Birthday, Happy Conception Day and Happy Anniversary, whichever may apply.

God Save the Kingdom!

Americans love the British. After all, England was the country that gave birth to colonial America and its oppressive taxation gave birth to the United States. (Little did our founding fathers realize how oppressively we would eventually tax ourselves.) And when the British royals have a wedding, Americans tune in and hang on every word, every picture, every pip-pip (or pippa), and every cheerio. Let's face it, the Brits have class and we have class-envy.
So it's only natural that many Americans envy the British health care system and want to adopt it. They tout the U.K.'s government-run national health care as a model of efficiency, compassionate care, and affordability. Yeah, I guess you can't beat free, but remember the old adage, "you get what you pay for." The prescription for most ills in England seems to be "take a seat," as the Brits must suffer interminable waiting periods for hospitalization or to see a doctor. Nearly a million British citizens are typically waiting to get into a hospital. Is this really what we want to do to the greatest health care system in the world?
But, as Umbert's friend Nigel points out, we Americans are spoiled. Naturally, we like our diseases cured before they become terminal. We're funny that way. And we don't like rationing in this country. It reminds us too much of all the rationing we had to do when we were helping the Europeans out of a little mess called World War II. But that's exactly what's in store for us if Obamacare is allowed to be implemented.
I love our British cousins but if we really want to improve health care here in the states, we need to learn from their mistakes and avoid the disaster that has become the National Health Service.

Banned Parenthood

The biggest thing I struggled with in creating the Umbert the Unborn comic strip was the question of its message. Many  people advised me to make the strip more mainstream and avoid the pro-life issues altogether-that having an unborn comic character alone would be a positive pro-life gesture. The problem with that is the byline reads "by Gary Cangemi." Anyone who knows me knows that it is impossible for me to be subtle or subliminal about important issues such as abortion. I simply would not be able to contain myself and my inner Umbert would have to be unleashed. I don't think the word abortion has appeared in any mainstream newspaper comic strip except perhaps Doonesbury, the "A" word simply isn't used. But for me, that's not a taboo, it's a dare. Thus, when I began the Umbert strip, I said to myself, "Why not?  Snoopy has the Red Baron, why can't Umbert have Planned Parenthood as his chief nemesis?"
I quickly learned that Umbert could get away with it. By confronting abortion and its proponents directly and honestly, Umbert leapfrogs over the cringe factor and leads readers straight to his point, arrived at through his naive yet flawless logic. In Umbert's way of thinking, an organization that calls itself Planned Parenthod should not be in the business of aborting children. ("I don't know what they're planning, but it sure isn't parenthood!")
Newspaper editors of course would shudder at the idea of a crusading pro-life baby sandwiched between such poignant comic strips as Beetle Bailey and Blondie. After all, who wants to deal with abortion while ingesting their Rice Krispies?
I toyed with the idea of a mainstream version of Umbert, called "A Womb With a View," but eventually dismissed it. It just isn't in my nature to do something halfway. I would rather do it my way and fail than succeed at a watered down version. The womb needs a champion to defend the unborn against the Planned Parenthoods of the world. The very idea of an organization which kills children in what should be the safest place on earth...a mother's womb, should be a source of shame for every taxpayer in America whose hard-earned wages are being used to keep this evil enterprise operating. As long as I can lift a pen, Umbert will be that champion.
By the way, a few years ago, my pro-life friends in Missouri purchased the rights to Umbert to run the strip as an advertisement in their local mainstream newspaper and sent me a copy. Imagine my delight at seeing Umbert the Unborn positioned directly below one of the most popular strips in America...Garfield. Coincidentally, I live on Garfield Avenue.

Another Fine Mess-age!

My studio is full of memorabilia of the things I loved as a child growing up in the suburbs. Among them is a shelf I have dedicated to the memory of Laurel and Hardy who, in their time, were the funniest two guys on the planet. I couldn't get enough L&H films on TV and reveled in the inevitable disasters to which their simple-minded antics invariably led. It's sad when young people enter my studio and have no clue who these two geniuses were. Their films are never shown except once a year on TCM. 

Anyway, so what does this have to do with Umbert? A few years back I decided to include a pair of fraternal twins in the strip and thus I came up with Doby and Toby. What a perfect way, I thought, to pay tribute to my childhood favorites Laurel and Hardy than to model the twins after them. Thus Doby is the chubby, bossy "Ollie" and Toby is the hapless, dull-witted "Stan" (who thinks Doby was adopted).

Doby and Toby are played strictly for laughs; no heavy duty messages or issues with these two. I would imagine that the odds of multiples in the womb being aborted are relatively small though I have heard of instances where it has been done. A couple in Australia reportedly aborted their twins sons because they already had three boys and wanted a girl. Such thinking is beyond my comprehension. 

The idea of twins interacting in the womb, however is nothing new. The first recorded instance of it occurs in Genesis, when Jacob and Esau reportedly jostled in their mother's womb. With Doby and Toby, I try to illustrate (as did Laurel and Hardy) that two souls can have a tumultuous relationship and yet still be friends or, in this case, brothers for LIFE.

Happy Easter/Happy Passover!

No Respect at All!

Like most cartoonists, I get many of my ideas from the popular culture and, when I can turn a popular idea to serve the pro-life cause, I never hesitate. So it was a natural for me to borrow Rodney Dangerfield's classic line, "I get no respect, and superimpose it on the lack of respect for unborn human life in today's culture. Once I did that, the Umbert comic strip practically wrote itself for two weeks. Rodney's impeccable timing and unabashed frankness were easy to parody in the character of Ronny Dangerfetus. As I drew each panel I even found myself clutching at my tie and stretching my neck from side to side.
The strips went over so well, I even incorporated them into my public speaking engagements, doing a riff of Dangerfetus cartoons whenever I sense the audience getting a little restless. It works every time.
But seriously folks, RD reminds us that respect is something to which every human being is entitled from the moment our Creator confers that humanity upon us. In a perfect world, maybe every child would be planned for, wanted, and loved, but, as Ronny Dangerfetus would say, "how's about two outa three?"

Are You Reddy For This Pro-Life Parody?

Ever since I was a kid reading MAD Magazine, I have loved song parodies. During my stint as political cartoonist for Scranton's weekly papers, I discovered I had a knack for writing song parodies to skewer the local politicians and thus was born "Scranton Carols" which I did every December. One day I even heard one of the local talk-jocks singing them on the air.

After launching the Umbert the Unborn comic strip, I figured it was only a matter of time before I would find a way to incorporate song parody into the strip. I did a series of Umbert strips in 2007 in which Umbert stages a Broadway Musical called "Unborn Babes on Broadway,"sending up some of Broadway's biggest hits with a pro-life twist. Later, I parodied a couple of popular songs, including Helen Reddy's feminist anthem, "I Am Woman." In it, little Vita, child of a single mother who is contemplating an abortion, sings to her mom, reminding her that she too is a woman with rights that need to be respected.

Unfortunately, I cannot produce these songs in any audio format unless I secure permission from the copyright owners, but there is no law against you singing them yourself. You know the tune, just substitute my pro-life lyrics and have a blast!

Hug Babies, Not Trees

As this Umbert strip illustrates, the logic of the environmentalist movement is often used by Umbert to defend the unborn. In one series of strips, Umbert tried to have the womb declared a federally protected wetland. In other strips, Umbert tried to enlist the sympathy of the environmental left by disguising himself as a baby harp seal, a tree, a bear, and a spotted owl, since the Supreme Court declared open season on unborn baby humans. It's only fair. The Left uses pro-life arguments to defend animal and plant life all the time. It's merely a question of priorities I suppose. We place human life at the top of the list and they place it at the bottom, somewhere between the boll weevil and the West Nile virus. Personally, as much as I love nature and animals, I find it difficult to swallow the appeals of PETA and their cohorts when many of these same people think the slaughter of human infants in their mother's wombs is a woman's inviolable right. Abortionists are brutally murdering viable late term babies and they want me to worry about a duck not having a big enough swamp to splash around in? Give me a break!

Can you imagine the reaction from the left if someone were to suggest controlling deer populations by catching the pregnant females and aborting their fawns? I guarantee you a conniption fit deluxe! Rest assured Umbert will continue to hoist these tree huggers with their own petards.