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If a man rubbed his engorged genitals over the entire body of a newborn baby, he'd be branded a monster. So why the double standard for women who force themselves on a defenseless infant? Victims of vaginal birth are silent no longer!

As abuse awareness seeps into the farthest reaches of the American psyche, traditional birthing practices not previously recognized as sexually abusive are undergoing scrutiny. Many observers don't like what they see.

"Think about it," says Fifi Sickafoose of the Society for the Promotion of Elective Caesarian Section (SPECS). "Vaginal birth puts helpless naked infants into full body contact with female genitals. Need I say more?"

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Members of SPECS, an international women's organization Ms. Sickafoose launched in 1998, pledge to give birth through strictly non-vaginal surgical means. In the past two years, Caesarian section-- so called because of the tradition that Julius Caesar was delivered through an incision in his mother's abdomen-- has increased by 30%. Most of these Caesarians are performed on women, chiefly members of SPECS, who opt for the procedure in advance.

The 136,000 dues-paying members of SPECS receive a monthly newsletter, The Family Plug, and free admission to frequent regional symposia. The 2003 SPECS convention, held in February at the Lookout Mountain Marriott in Chattanooga, Tennessee, drew 2,456 attendees.

But SPECS is not the only organization dedicated to stamping out vaginal birth. The Society Against Vaginal Extraction (SAVE) has been promoting Caesarian section for more than a decade. SAVE's executive director, Millicent Peffy, is a longtime activist well known in victims' rights circles and throughout the sex-abuse community.

While SAVE remains focused on vaginal birth, its members endorse a broader agenda that embraces efforts to stop sex education; ban depictions of nudity in all media; ban all nudity, public and private; impose mandatory 40-year prison terms for possession or distribution of pornography; broaden the legal definition of pornography to include the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue, Walt Disney's Fantasia, and Edward Gorey's The Curious Sofa; and raise the age of sexual consent to 32.

"Other issues may demand my attention from time to time," says Millicent Peffy, "but make no mistake. My number one mission is to call a halt to vaginal childbearing. It's incumbent on all of us to keep little children away from their mothers' gully-holes."

Veronica Lopez-Berbette, a CPM (Certified Professional Midwife) employed by the Loma Linda Birthing Hut, a California clinic, disagrees. "That must be the most asinine statement I've ever heard," says Lopez-Berbette. "Vaginal birth is natural, wholesome, and clean. Anyone who tells you otherwise probably needs a good douching. I feel sorry for women like Millicent Peffy, who all too plainly hate their vaginas."

"The fact that I refuse to rub my children's faces in my naked wazoo," rejoins Ms. Peffy, "doesn't mean I don't love it."

"Midwives mean well," says Fifi Sickafoose, "but they're living in the past, a time when people smoked cigarettes, drank cocktails, ate prime rib, drove Pintos, and didn't give a hoot about the sexual abuse of infant children. That was then, this is now."

"Vaginal birth proponents are in big-time denial," says psychotherapist Tina Lee Dreegie of the Davis-Bass Center for Dissociation in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "Passing through a dark, fetid cervix and a slimy birth canal must be the single most warped experience I can imagine for a newborn child. There's no way that trauma isn't going to translate into pathology later on."

One of Dreegie's patients, Biff Piptis of Ann Arbor, reveals that three years ago, at age 38, he recovered memories of his vaginal birth. "It's been a long, hard road," says Piptis, "but thanks to Dr. Dreegie, I've achieved self-acceptance. I can walk around and buy cat food and ride my bike and at the same time know that yes, I did go slithering nude through my mother's vagina. Yes, I did come popping head-first out of my mother's pussy like a piece of toast. And yes, I nearly choked to death on a crinkly two-inch pubic hair."

Piptis, who lived on Disability allotments for much of the past 14 years, has been able to hold down a part-time job in a Christian bookstore since last August. "I'm at peace," he insists.

But other veterans of vaginal birth retain powerful reserves of anger. "It made me a lesbian!" says Graceanne Schmelzer, Media Director of Exodus International, who says she recently remembered fainting at birth. "As I slipped out of the birth canal, my left foot kicked against this weird porcini mushroom made of flesh. It was my mother's big engorged clitoris. I lost consciousness instantly. Then, when I woke up, I wanted more."

"It made me hate sex!" admits Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "Thanks to my vaginal birth, the only way I can make John Thomas stand up and salute is to bomb Third World countries to smoldering charcoal." Others attribute such aberrant behavior as kleptomania, substance abuse, and entering the Roman Catholic priesthood to their vaginal deliveries.

While most anti-vaginists rally around SPECS and SAVE, the problem of vaginal birth is also being addressed in non-Caesarian ways, some of them radical. Efforts to equip the human female for egg-laying, which so far remain in the earliest experimental stages, have begun in the US, Canada, and several other countries. "In Australia, mammals lay eggs," points out anti-vaginal activist Steve Whetstone. "Why not everywhere else?"

Dr. Drexel Grumlick of Quimbionics in Tree Bite, Alabama proposes an artificial caul, a kind of body suit made of vitaprene, a fibrous, non-toxic liquid resin that will be painted onto the fetus and allowed to set for at least 24 hours before birth is artificially induced. Although this method might entail traditional delivery, the child would have minimal contact with vaginal tissue. "Best of all, our children will emerge from the womb fully clothed," says Grumlick. "There will soon be no excuse for birth in the buff." Grumlick's program, known as Biological Intervention Regarding Traumatic Happenings in Parturitively Abusive Natal Transition States (BIRTHPANTS), has been applied to rhesus monkeys with mixed results. Human testing will begin in 2004.

"Once our program meets the wide acceptance we know it is destined to enjoy," says Dr. Grumlick, "the expression 'birthday suit' will lose its smutty connotations."

Meanwhile, legislation that would outlaw vaginal birth is pending in Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Utah. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Berkeley, California, have passed local ordinances forbidding the practice. In Berkeley, the ordinance is retroactive. In January 2003, Berkeley resident Uma Ukase, filed sexual assault charges against her mother, Megan Gett, 48, for subjecting her to vaginal birth in 1979. If convicted, Ms. Gett could face life imprisonment without parole.

"Someone had to do it," says Millicent Peffy. "Uma Ukase has to be the bravest girl in California. With all my heart, I wish her success. Let's hope she's pioneering a national trend."