I'm not sure who still pulls the wishbone when they eat turkey. The tradition belongs to "throw salt over your shoulder America."

Briefly, when you have turkey, say, on Thanksgiving, you let the turkey's "wishbone" dry out for a couple days, and then one of you takes hold of one end, one of you takes hold of the other, and you pull until the wishbone breaks. Whoever gets the biggest piece gets their wish.

The wishbone is in the turkey's chest, in case you want to look for it the next time you serve turkey.

When I say "chest," I mean somewhere around the turkey's chest. I know the parts of a turkey the way I know the parts of a woman, which means I can find the head, legs, feet and a lot of the more obvious parts. As for the stuff inside, I sort of guess at location, and I use a slang word to refer to those parts whose uses I may or may not really understand.

We got the women right where we want 'em now. You got a grip on one of her ankles, I got a grip on the other, and we're gonna pull until she splits. Whoever gets the biggest piece of her gets their wish. The tradition belongs to "women are too stupid to vote America."

And there she is, in the middle, a strong grip on each ankle, being pulled apart.

Schoolgirl. Model. Teacher's aide. Lawyer. Mom of three and on welfare. Mom of two with a truck driver husband. Scared as hell and 17, and the boyfriend turned out to be lying, and her family doesn't have money for bus fare out of Alabama.

If she has the child, she's been criminally careless with the birth control, or she wants more benefits, or, let's talk turkey here, she's a girl whose morals are as loose as her pants are tight. If she doesn't have the child, she's a murderer.

There's no safe road home for the woman being torn in two.

But someone always gets the biggest piece of her, and that's what the politicians fight over. How many votes are in the biggest piece? Who's gonna get the short end of the girl?

I have a friend who lives in a rural area of the American South. When election time rolls around, he gets a mass-mailed postcard from his state rep. The postcard assures him that the incumbent rep. is anti-abortion and pro-gun. We know which ankle the rep. is holding, and he always ends up with the biggest piece.

And that's what she's worth.

Because a woman's hell is that her body is nearly always worth something, even when nothing else of her can be sold for anything.

A strip club or the halftime show at the Super Bowl and the hooker strip down by the old grade school, where dim light and desire mean the customers don't care about the meth sores on her face. Her boyfriend is too addicted to work anymore, but she is still worth something, and her customers have her by one ankle, and her boyfriend has her by the other, and they're both pulling the wishbone that is her body.

I've been writing opinion for the last 30 years of my life, and it ought to embarrass me that when I write about abortion, all I can write about is the value of a woman's body and the cruel calculations of those who pull her in half for luck and votes.

But I was never one for the big picture. I think the truth lives in small gestures, stuttered-over words and the tender flesh of girls, flesh you can sell by the pound, by the touch or by the vote.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion, and read features by Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Devil's Elbow: Dancing in the Ashes of America." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.

Photo credit: 12019 at Pixabay