Martha Burk's notorious essay, "The Sperm Stops Here!" is so outrageous that some have wondered if it was written as political satire.

Burk's article originally appeared in the News section of Ms. Magazine, hardly a place where one would expect to find light-hearted humor.

Burk recently appeared on CNN's Crossfire on November 12, 2002. She was asked to clarify what she meant by her Ms. Magazine article. Burk's immediate response: "Hey, if they're going to restrict abortion, buddy, we've got to do it this way."

Tucker Carlson and Debbie Schlussel then hammered Burk's proposal as "weird," "wacko-bizzaro," and "pretty authoritarian even by the standards of feminism."

Seeing that she wasn't making any headway, Burk changed her story and claimed that her Ms. Magazine article was actually a spoof.

So judge for yourself: is Martha Burk's proposal to impose mandatory sterilization of men just a joke?

In the final analysis, it doesn't really matter, because some of the worst violations of human rights in history have been advanced under the cover of satire.

Here's Martha Burk's email address:capp-at-capponline.org

-Carey Roberts