To the editor:

Now that we in Lawrence are so truly Progressive that we can say the word “vagina” without blushing, let’s move on. Surely we are grown up enough to tell a real vagina horror story without censorship.

Picture this: A fully formed, viable infant is making her way from the “security” of a womb into the waiting hands of a “health professional.” She’s been turned so as to emerge feet first. Her tiny head follows perfect little chest and shoulders and, before her first breath, she is stabbed just below her skull so that a tube can be inserted to vacuum out her brains. The ever-popular vagina has just been witness to the greatest betrayal of trust and responsibility that a human being can participate in. Perhaps its owner will want to dress it up in black or discuss with it the meaning of the words “vulnerable” and “tragedy.”

Society is likely to turn a deaf ear toward including such a dialogue in future editions of vaginal road shows. It might make the audience uncomfortable. People who have never seen their genitalia as anything but toys might have their eyes wrenched open to a new reality. The old wounds of women whose ongoing grief over their aborted children has been silenced might be opened and threaten the politically correct consensus that they are better off barren. Too much for true Progressives, I imagine.

Here are some words I’ll bet local sophisticates won’t be paying to hear: birth canal.

Charlotte Ostermann,

Lawrence