Need Plumbing Help?

While driving home from a day out with my family the other day, I saw a Roto-Rooter van on the highway. Now, I have heard stupid jokes made about Roto-Rooter and abortion services that simply make me roll my eyes in disgust. As pro-choice as I am, abortion is still nothing to laugh over, and it often causes women enough pain and personal turmoil without the addition of plumbing and drain service jokes.

Now, I don’t know if it’s just our local Roto-Rooter or all of them, but it looks like the abortion jokes took their toll on the company because they look just about as anti-choice as you can get. This van’s license plate said, “Keepem,” which would have been weird alone—but in conjunction with its “Choose Life” slogan on the license plate, coupled with the plate cover that matched, made it perfectly clear. This plumbing company—which has absolutely ZIP to do with women’s health—was anti-abortion, right there in plain daylight for all to see. Most of their employees, I’ll wager, cannot get pregnant, yet here they were with their completely irrelevant opinion plastered on their completely nothing to do with abortion vehicle.

I can guarantee you that because of this simple license plate, I will never, ever give a dime to Roto-Rooter. I will happily unclog a drain myself, puking all the while, or call anyone else before I pay for someone who distrusts women so flagrantly. Do you know what it means to me when a person—especially a man—doesn’t simply choose to not have an abortion (which would be the simple execution of a personal opinion and choice), but displays such an ad and vocally demands that all other women not have one, either? It means that that person—often a he—thinks that not only is a fetus more important than a woman or her health or her general welfare, but that he also knows better than her. He’s smarter, he knows what’s better for her and her body, and he’s worth more than her as well.

Yeah, Roto-Rooter, that’s not how it goes down in my household. We respect everyone’s personal decision. And given that around 1 out of 3 women will have an abortion in her lifetime—many of whom, by the way, are household-running mothers already who cannot afford, with money or ill health, to have another child—I doubt that your little display is impressing many of the people who would use your services, either. Oh, the company is also mostly non-union, which is also a big concern to many of us who give a damn about each other.