Senator Boxer Must Have Failed Analogies

Senator Boxer Must Have Failed Analogies

From the December 8, 2009 San Jose Mercury-News:

WASHINGTON — As abortion took center stage in the Senate's historic debate over health care reform, Sen. Barbara Boxer was right in the middle of the fight, comparing an effort to limit women's access to abortion to restricting men's access to Viagra.

Her combative stance on the issue was a familiar one for the third-term Democrat, whose support of abortion rights has been central to her political career.
"Why are women being singled out here? It's so unfair," Boxer said on the Senate floor Tuesday. "We don't tell men that if they want to ... buy insurance coverage through their pharmaceutical plan for Viagra that they can't do it."

If the government decided that Viagra wasn't necessary (which strictly speaking, it isn't), and decided that it shouldn't be covered, you would not get any argument from me. But the bigger issue here is Boxer's misunderstanding of how analogies work. Boxer clearly doesn't understand that the moral discomfort that most Americans have with abortion isn't about sex; it's about killing what is going to be, in a very short time, a human being. And this is analogous to Viagra in what way?

Viagra helps men (and presumably their wives) achieve sexual satisfaction. This is not truly necessary from a health standpoint, but has no other morally worrisome aspects to it. Is Boxer arguing that abortion is some sort of sexual satisfaction procedure?

Atypical. Weird. Stupid. Huh?

Atypical. Weird. Stupid. Huh?

I know that situations like this are not typical of abortions in the U.S.--but it just makes me shake my head in horror, revulsion, and confusion. From the October 14, 2009 Daily Mail:

A woman has admitted to being 'an abortion addict' after having 15 terminations over 17 years.

Irene Vilar said she had the abortions not from poverty or fear but as an extraordinary act of rebellion against her 'controlling' husband who did not want children.

The 40-year-old's confession has unleashed a torrent of attacks from anti-abortion activists on the internet, including death threats and demands for her to be jailed.

The cycle of pregnancies and abortions, which began when she was 16 and ended when she was 33, was also punctuated by several suicide attempts.

Now a successful literary agent with two young daughters, Loretta, five, and Lolita, three, Mrs Vilar has written about her experiences in a memoir, called Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict.

The book, which was published yesterday, has shocked many Americans, who remain bitterly divided over the issue, and has angered campaigners on both sides of the abortion divide.

Charmaine Yoest, president of pro-life pressure group Americans United for Life, said: 'It really underscores everything we always say in the pro-life movement - that abortion is part of a very sad story for women.'

However, pro-choice campaigners said Mrs Vilar's book raises uncomfortable questions about abortion as a form of birth control.

Ya think? I've pointed out before this November 29, 2005 Los Angeles Times article that I think finally pushed me over the edge from weakly pro-choice to reluctantly pro-life--not because either of the cases were typical of abortions in the U.S.--but because I fear that they aren't spectacularly unusual (unlike Ms. Vilar):

His first patient of the day, Sarah, 23, says it never occurred to her to use birth control, though she has been sexually active for six years. When she became pregnant this fall, Sarah, who works in real estate, was in the midst of planning her wedding. "I don't think my dress would have fit with a baby in there," she says.

The last patient of the day, a 32-year-old college student named Stephanie, has had four abortions in the last 12 years. She keeps forgetting to take her birth control pills. Abortion "is a bummer," she says, "but no big stress."

Setting Minimum Standards For Health Insurance

Setting Minimum Standards For Health Insurance

One of the proposals that Congress is considering will not only require employers to insure employees (or pay a fine), but also to set minimum standards for health insurance--because there are, without question, some very minimal health insurance plans out there. And who can argue with that? But Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) in a column at PajamasMedia points out that there's something hiding in that reasonable sounding "minimum standards" idea:

Under the proposed legislation, virtually every individual will be required to have health care that meets the “minimum benefit standards” established by the administration. Without an explicit exclusion, abortion will be determined to be included in these benefit standards.

President Obama himself stated that “reproductive care is essential care, basic care.” And history has demonstrated that unless abortion is explicitly excluded, administrative agencies and the courts will mandate it.

We have seen this time and time again. The federal Medicaid statute was silent on abortion, but the administration and the courts deemed abortion-on-demand to be mandated coverage. Then in 1979, Congressman Henry Hyde asked the Indian Health Service where they found the authority to pay for abortions. They responded, “We would have no basis for refusing to pay for abortions.”

In both of these cases, explicit exclusions had to be added to ensure that taxpayers would not have to continue to pay for abortions. The issue here is clear — if abortion is not explicitly excluded, it is implicitly included. The stakes are high and the implications incredibly far-reaching.

Now, even if you don't have a moral problem with abortion, think about the cost. In 2005, there were 1.21 million abortions in the U.S. In 2001, the average cost of an abortion at 10 weeks was $468. Figure with inflation, this is at least $500 now--or at least $605 million a year--and for something that is, in most cases, a preventable expense, by using birth control. This is going to drive up health insurance premiums for existing employers.

What else will end up having to be covered to meet minimum standards? Sex reassignment surgery? Once you give the government authority to tell private insurers what must be covered, it is rather difficult to say, "Wait a minute, you've gone too far." That's one of the reasons why, as much as I think insurers should have provided mental health treatment, I could not support the mental health parity requirement imposed by Congress several years ago. It's difficult once you get started on something like this to stop with reasonable impositions.

Abortion And The Convention Against Torture

Abortion And The Convention Against Torture

Dave Kopel over at Volokh Conspiracy has a fascinating item about the U.N. Convention Against Torture and abortion--but not the connection that you might be thinking. It turns out that Nicaragua (under the Sandinistas, no less), prohibited abortion "even in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother was at stake." (And you thought that only right-wing Americans would even consider something that extreme.) And now the crowd at the U.N. charged with the Convention Against Torture is asserting that such a law violates the convention--because forcing a woman to give birth qualifies as torture.

My, how broadly that term "torture" seems to be construed these days! Listening to Christina Aguilera music; women interrogators touching Muslim prisoners. Okay, I'll buy that waterboarding is torture. But prohibiting abortion is torture--but aborting a fetus isn't torture (to the fetus)?

Forgive me if I don't get enthused about trusting the U.N. about much of anything.

Another of Those Bible-Thumpin' Politicians, I Guess

Another of Those Bible-Thumpin' Politicians, I Guess

So, who do you think made this statement?

[H]uman cloning is "dangerous, profoundly wrong" and has no place in society.

Some ignorant Bible thumper? Former President George W. Bush? No. President Obama. From March 9, 2009 Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama says human cloning is "dangerous, profoundly wrong" and has no place in society.
Obama made the comments as he was signing an executive order that will allow federal spending on embryonic stem cell research.
Some critics say the research can lead to human cloning. Obama said the government will develop strict guidelines for the research because misuse or abuse is unacceptable.

As it happens, the embryonic stem cell research (much of it funded by other governments and private research organizations) has so far yielded nothing. Unlike adult stem cell research--which has! So why the insistence on embryonic stem cell research? Because there are a lot of people that really, really want to avoid confronting difficult ethical questions about frozen embryos in fertility centers.

One Way To Improve Health Care In America

One Way To Improve Health Care In America

Force one of the larger operators of hospitals in America to close. From the March 6, 2009 St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

A proposed bill promising major changes in the U.S. abortion landscape has Roman Catholic bishops threatening to close Catholic hospitals if the Democratic Congress and White House make it law.

The Freedom of Choice Act failed to get out of subcommittee in 2004, but its sponsor is poised to refile it now that former Senate co-sponsor Barack Obama occupies the Oval Office.

...

FOCA, as the bill is known, would make federal law out of the abortion protections established in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade ruling.

The legislation has some Roman Catholic bishops threatening to shutter the country's 624 Catholic hospitals — including 11 in the Archdiocese of St. Louis — rather than comply.

Speaking in Baltimore in November at the bishops' fall meeting, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, a Chicago auxiliary bishop, took up the issue of what to do with Catholic hospitals if FOCA became law. "It would not be sufficient to withdraw our sponsorship or to sell them to someone who would perform abortions," he said. "That would be a morally unacceptable cooperation in evil."

...

In its last incarnation, FOCA defined abortion as a "fundamental right" that no government can "deny" or "interfere with." That language, FOCA's opponents warn, would help overturn abortion restrictions such as parental notification, laws banning certain procedures and constraints on federal funding.

If you don't understand the moral objection to this--imagine if Republicans, back several elections, had passed a law requiring every psychologist, psychiatrist, and family therapist in America to pray the Lord's Prayer with their clients at the start of every session.

This looks like an attempt to force the Catholic Church out of an activity in which it was a pioneer (in the medieval period)--or to become complicit in something that they consider murder.

How liberal of the Democrats.

Powerful Ad

Powerful Ad

It was originally accepted to be run during the Superbowl, but then NBC changed their mind about running it.



Is this remarkable person typical of those being aborted? Probably not. Would his mother have aborted him if she had that option? We don't know. But it's a reminder that bad circumstances don't have to produce a criminal.

Moloch, Baby Sacrifices, & The Democrats

Moloch, Baby Sacrifices, & The Democrats

Over at Power and Control is a surprising posting about the Democrats. It starts out with a long quote from Asia Times columnist "Spengler" (who is always a delight to read, even when I don't agree with him) about how McCain's choice of Palin is going to seal the fate of the Democrats in November. I suspect that Spengler is right about this, although I don't have quite that much confidence. But Power and Control points out a couple of aspects of where the Democratic Party is headed that I find fascinating, especially what Power and Control (who is a libertarian) calls the "fetishizing" of abortion:

It is interesting that the Democrats keep nominating successively weaker candidates. First Gore. Then Kerry. And now Obama. I think it is becoming obvious for all to see that the Democrat Party has no soul. As such it has no direction except the will to power. In fact the behavior of his base since Palin was nominated is an expression of that weakness. It would appear from their behavior that strong women frighten them. And they should be frightened.

...

I think it is telling in many ways that the left's caricature of evangelical relations with women is really a projection of their own weakness. In fact Moloch is the god of the weak. You have to be strong to raise children. Not just for a day or a week but for 18 or 20 years. In fact for a whole lifetime. Which is exactly why what the left is going through now with the abortion issue and Sarah Palin and her daughter is so telling. They are attacking the mother and daughter because they are strong. And such strength only illuminates that which they would prefer to remain in darkness. Their weakness.

Does this mean I want abortion made illegal? Don't be silly. Such a law would serve no useful purpose. Botched abortions kill. They can also prevent future births when the woman and man involved find their strength. But that does not mean that we should avoid looking at it square on and seeing it for what it is. The fact that the Democrats and especially Obama have to a great degree fetishized abortion is very telling. Very telling indeed.

Sarah Palin, VP Nominee?

Sarah Palin, VP Nominee?

There's a lot of talk this morning about McCain picking Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) as his vice president. The Wikipedia article about her has a lot to like. (This assumes, of course, that it is accurate.) She's a hunter, life member of NRA--and was born in Idaho, and graduated from the University of Idaho. She took on the corrupt Republican Party leadership of Alaska (and there seems to be no shortage of that) and knocked them out of the governor's office. This is such a startling and wonderful thing that it tends to make me very supportive.

She's pro-life, and opposed to same-sex marriage. I can't quite tell from the article if she recognized that she was legally obligated by an Alaska Supreme Court decision to grant benefits to same-sex state employees, or if she thought that it was a good idea.

I am somewhat concerned about her relative lack of experience in government. She has a bit more than Obamessiah, but less than I would prefer--and none in foreign policy areas. Of course, anyone who criticizes her relative lack of experience is in no position to support Obamessiah!

The cynic in me thinks that McCain picked her (if he picked her) because she had five things going for her:

1. A woman. Lots of upset Clinton supporters who aren't thrilled about Obamessiah for other reasons will now have a woman to support.

2. Clean government. The Democrats are at least as dirty as the Republicans on this, and Obamessiah, with his involvement with Rezko, is especially so. There's a lot of people who may find the contrast attractive.

3. A lot of social conservatives have not been happy with McCain. Picking a pro-choice VP like Lieberman would have been bad. Picking a strongly pro-life VP will create some grudging support for McCain.

4. An NRA life member. Yet another reason for gun owners who might be wavering to vote for McCain.

5. No one should vote for a candidate because of their looks--but they do. Obamessiah looks like he stepped off the pages of GQ, and that is certainly something that helps him. And Sarah Palin was first runner-up for Miss Alaska 1984--and let us just say that she is still very attractive.

I'm Feeling Mischievous This Evening

I'm Feeling Mischievous This Evening

One of the recurring arguments of the pro-choice crowd is that women shouldn't be forced to carry a "parasite" against their will. You know what, I'm prepared to agree with them--if they will agree to consider the alternative. This article in the May 9, 2008 The Guardian indicates that we seem to have reached a barrier on survival rates for premature births; in spite of significant advances in the field of neonatal medical care, 24 weeks gestational age seems to be about the limit. Below 24 weeks, the survival rate remains extraordinarily low. Above 24 weeks, the survival rates have actually gotten relatively acceptable:

The study involved 16 hospitals with more than 55,000 births a year. Researchers found a marked improvement in survival of the 24 and 25-week babies. In 1994-1999, 490 such babies were admitted to intensive care and 174 survived to be sent home (36%). In the later years, 2000-2005, 497 babies were admitted to intensive care and 236 (47%) went home.

So for women who insist that they don't want to carry the baby, and the baby is 24 weeks or later, perhaps we can work out a deal. Instead of an abortion, they go ahead and have a C-section and put the baby up for adoption. Okay, the chances that the baby will survive aren't spectacularly good--but a heck of a lot better than an abortion. I mean, assuming that is the real reason for the late-term abortions of otherwise healthy babies.

We don't have a similar compromise to offer those who want to abort a baby before 24 weeks. There's almost no chance of survival (and none at all below 23 weeks), and the enormous costs involved in a lost cause probably don't justify the effort. But it does raise another question: could pro-life groups pay pregnant women who want an abortion to wait until the baby has a chance to live? I suspect that it wouldn't take an enormous amount of money (perhaps just a few hundred dollars) to persuade some of these women to wait a couple months, and then go for a C-section.

Like I said, I'm being mischievous. Or perhaps I'm trying to get people on both sides to think about this issue in a new way.

Abortion & Social Change

Abortion & Social Change

John Lott has a column up at Fox News that uses the enormous difference between Obama and McCain on abortion as a starting point for discussion--with links to a number of studies of the effects of abortion. I'm not sure that I completely agree with Lott's assertion:

Liberalizing abortion rules from 1969 to 1973 ignited vast long-term social changes in America. This discussion might finally provide a chance to evaluate how Roe v. Wade has changed the U.S.
One often misunderstood fact: Legal abortions didn't start with Roe or even with the five states that liberalized abortion laws in 1969 and 1970. Prior to Roe, women could have had abortions when their lives or health were endangered.
Doctors in some surprising states, such as Kansas, had very liberal interpretations of what constituted danger to health; nevertheless, Roe did substantially increase abortions, more than doubling the rate per live birth in the five years from 1972 to 1977.
But many other changes occurred at the same time:
• A sharp increase in pre-marital sex.
• A sharp rise in out-of-wedlock births.
• A drop in the number of children placed for adoption.
• A decline in marriages that occur after the woman is pregnant.

I agree with Dr. Lott that making abortion more available certainly changed behaviors, taking away the consequences not just for women who became pregnant, but also for men. Without the substantial consequences that an unplanned (and often illegitimate) pregnancy entailed, both men and women had less incentive to use contraception, or to get married. And I also find Lott's argument that the net effect was a dramatic increase in single mothers (generally a disaster for both the mother and the child) quite persuasive.

One area where I think I would differ from Lott is the sequence of events. His article seems to be arguing that making abortion readily available caused this change. I'm not convinced--or at least, I'm not convinced that it was the primary cause. There was an enormous social change in the United States in the 1960s and early 1970s--and the awareness that large numbers of teenaged girls were getting pregnant, I think, drove a lot of the liberalization of abortion laws.

It is rather difficult for a lot of younger people to really appreciate how dramatically the society changed. When The Sensuous Woman was published in 1969, the author felt it necessary to justify and explain that it was okay for women to have oral sex with men. (That she felt it necessary to publish her book under a pseudonym is also pretty indicative.) When Dr. David Reuben's Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex was published that same year, the book acknowledged that one of the principal reasons that men went to prostitutes was for oral sex, because most women would not do that. And now we have reached the point where I linked a while back to this article in Marie Claire about a cosmetic procedure that makes that seem downright old-fashioned.

If you are under 40, you are probably startled to hear this. Our culture changed dramatically during the the 1960s and 1970s--and not just in how open it was about sexuality, but in what people were actually doing. Liberalized abortion certainly caused significant cultural changes--but it was also a byproduct of changes already in progress.

Another Mistake in the Campaign

Another Mistake in the Campaign

I mentioned a few days ago that I feared that the simple yes/no answers on the Idaho Chooses Life and Cornerstone Institute surveys may have hurt with people in my district--since the rather detailed explanations that I included were not. Here's the letter that I wrote to Idaho Chooses Life at the time. In retrospect, I suppose that I should have recognized that anything but 100% agreement wasn't going to go over well.

April 17, 2008

Mr. David D. Ripley

Idaho Chooses Life

P.O. Box 8172

Boise, ID 83707

Dear Mr. Ripley:

As I mention on the first page, I have moved over the last few years from reluctantly pro-choice (and, I should add, only for the first trimester) to mildly pro-life. Let me explain why I have moved the direction that I have, and why we are a little ways apart.

There are strong similarities between the pro-choice arguments and the pro-slavery arguments in the period before the Civil War. As I researched my fourth book, Black Demographic Data, 1790-1860 (Greenwood Press, 1997), the similarities became more apparent, and my discomfort with my old position became stronger.

In both cases, proponents argued that they had a right based in the Constitution—although slavery’s defenders at least had an historical basis for their claim. The right to abortion is based on a misreading of the Constitution in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which is in turn a misreading of the Fourteenth Amendment.

A number of states, including California (of all places) have laws that expressly recognize the fetus as a human being—and an intentional killing of a fetus, except if committed by a doctor at the mother’s request—is homicide. This is derived from the common law recognition that once a fetus had started to kick, it was human. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England is explicit about this: once the “quickening” had occurred, killing the fetus was homicide. This is part of the section on “the right to life.” When I taught Constitutional history some years ago at Boise State, I had my students read that section. I wanted them to understand that contrary to the claims that pro-choicers like to make, this dispute isn’t modern at all.

So if it’s human life—what makes it acceptable for a licensed physician to kill it with the mother’s permission? Does she own the fetus? The parallel to slavery was very disturbing—although again, slave owners at least acknowledged that slaves were human beings, and the laws at least theoretically prohibited masters from murdering their slaves.

Another disturbing similarity popped up when reading Nat Brandt’s The Town That Started the Civil War, which details what happened when U.S. marshals and private slavecatchers took into custody a runaway slave from near Oberlin College in Ohio. The entire student body, and most of the professors, took up rifles, surrounded the hotel, and announced that the slave wasn’t going back South. With minimal bloodshed, the slave was spirited away.

The ringleaders were soon known as the Oberlin Rescuers (rescue being a legal term for removing a prisoner from the custody of lawful authorities), and were charged under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The parallels between FACES and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 are also astonishing. The Fugitive Slave Act’s provisions concerning runaway slaves were Draconian--$1000 fines (equivalent to perhaps $20,000 today). More importantly, because this was a federal law, prisoners were not tried under state laws, in state courts, by juries of sympathetic Republicans, but tried in federal courts in largely urban areas where Democrat-dominated juries were less sympathetic. As the Oberlin Rescuers explained, when the laws of God conflicted with the laws of men, the laws of God took precedence.

I have come to the conclusion that the internal inconsistencies of the pro-choice position, the disturbing parallels to slavery, and the gruesomeness of partial-birth abortion,[1] makes me quite interested in doing what Lincoln intended to do to slavery, when he was elected. Crush it out, as best he could, within the limitations of the law and human frailty.

But how to do that? What is the most effective mechanism?

Current Idaho law already goes as far as it can to prohibit abortion within the limits the federal courts have allowed. Roe v. Wade (1973) was wrongly decided—and even Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), while abandoning the strict scrutiny standard used in Roe, was still wrongly decided. Until the U.S. Supreme Court mends its activist ways, there’s not much Idaho can do with respect to first trimester abortions.

Even if the Court does eventually return authority to the states to determine what the abortion laws should be, I am skeptical that a broad ban on abortion would be either enforceable or particularly effective, as long as support for abortion remains as strong as it is. Before Roe v. Wade, Oregon, for example, prohibited elective abortions except to save the life of the mother—and yet Oregon had 199 abortions per 1,000 live births in 1970.[2] Pretty clearly, doctors and pregnant women were ignoring the law. The progress that we have made in reducing abortion rates in recent years[3] is because pro-life forces have been effective at persuading women that abortion is wrong and they should either not get pregnant, or not abort a child if they do get pregnant.

There is still a large fraction of Americans, and of Idahoans, who refuse to see elective abortion as evil. Many refuse to even see it as pragmatically bad. The more Idahoans that we can persuade that abortion is either wrong or at least an incredibly destructive type of birth control, the fewer abortions there will be, and the easier it will be to pass much more restrictive measures when the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. I would say that as long as 20% of Idaho’s population considers abortion to be acceptable, passing a more severe restriction would be politically divisive—without being particularly effective at reducing the abortion rate.

The parallel to slavery—which was prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment—is quite strong. Slavery went away in the formal sense, but debt peonage, the sharecropping system, and the renting out of prisoners to private employers for the most trivial of crimes, meant that conditions were still abominable into the 1960s. Why? Because the hearts of white Southerners hadn’t changed.

What’s the most effective way to do this persuading? Remember: we aren’t trying to persuade the adamant pro-choice activists. Many of them have their own personal tragedies that drive them, traumas of long ago that make it impossible for them to bend. We are trying to persuade people in the middle—those who are uncomfortable with abortion, don’t like it used as birth control, but aren’t prepared to support too broad of a ban.

Things we can do:

1. Continue the effort to persuade others that abortion is morally wrong. My experience is that many people change their view once they have a child of their own.
2. Attempt to persuade others that abortion is an inferior choice—that birth control, adoption, being a single parent, or getting married, are all morally better choices than abortion. Some years ago, I remember being startled by a series of national television ads that emphasized what a tremendously wonderful decision it was to bring a child into the world. Nothing judgmental; nothing about abortion; purely a feel good kind of image. Piece by piece, bit by bit, such material can create a positive image that slowly poisons acceptance of the idea that an unborn child is “tissue.”
3. Emphasize that abortion is pragmatically bad. We can point out that relative to birth control or abstinence, abortion is expensive, and involves some health risks. Even if everyone is doing their job right, an abortion increases scar tissue, impairs future fertility, and often results in infections. There are people who pride themselves on refusing to see anything as morally wrong (usually they fancy themselves intellectuals); we can at least appeal to the instincts of those who can see that abortion is a lousy form of birth control.
4. Emphasize to parents the importance of supervising their sons and daughters—so that they don’t get forced into bad choices caused by passion leading to pregnancy.
5. Emphasize to kids how tragic it is that they might have to make a terrible choice like abortion vs. carrying a child to term—and the importance of abstinence (best choice), contraception, adoption, or early marriage.

I support laws that provide women more information about the consequences of abortion as a requirement for abortion. The more information that is available about some of the long-term health risks, the fewer abortions there will be, and the greater willingness of pregnant women to see abortion not as a choice, but as something really gruesome.

I have pointed to a few situations where it is very, very difficult for me to oppose abortion: anacephaly (short, meaningless lives, with no chance for repair, and no prospect of survival); Tay-Sachs disease (short, incredibly painful lives). I’m sure if we spent some time at it, we could find a few other examples of horrifying, terminal, non-treatable conditions where abortion is an act of mercy. This doesn’t mean that every defect justifies abortion, especially as the science of in utero surgery continues to advance. (Britain has had a spate of abortions because of clubfoot, for example, even though this is a readily correctable problem.[4]) But these tragedies are reminders that any restrictions on abortion must be based on both respect for human life and a recognition that certain congenital mistakes may justify abortion as an act of mercy.

Very Truly Yours,

Clayton E. Cramer

---

[1] See Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-380.pdf, for an extraordinarily detailed description of the procedure, clearly intended to impress upon anyone reading it the barbarism of the procedure:

The doctor grips a fetal part with the forceps and pulls it back through the cervix and vagina, continuing to pull even after meeting resistance from the cervix. The friction causes the fetus to tear apart. For example, a leg might be ripped off the fetus as it is pulled through the cervix and out of the woman. The process of evacuating the fetus piece by piece continues until it has been completely removed. A doctor may make 10 to 15 passes with the forceps to evacuate the fetus in its entirety, though sometimes removal is completed with fewer passes.

[2] John R. Lott and John E.Whitley, "Abortion and Crime: Unwanted Children and Out-of-Wedlock Births" (April 30, 2001). Yale Law & Economics Research Paper No. 254. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=270126 or DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.270126, Table 1.

[3] SJ Ventura, WD Mosher, SC Curtin, JC Abma, S. Henshaw, “Trends In Pregnancy Rates For The United States, 1976–97: An Update.” National Vital Statistics Reports; vol 49 no. 4. Hyattsville, Maryland: National Center for Health Statistics. 2001, Table 3, available at http://origin.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr49/nvsr49_04.pdf.

[4] Sarah-Kate Templeton, “Babies aborted for minor disabilities,” Sunday Times, October 21, 2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article2689787.ece, last accessed April 17, 2008.

Art and the Grotesque

My wife has a vague remembrance of reading something by Voltaire to the effect that when we lose sight of beauty, all that is left to art is the grotesque. Two examples, one warped, one truly grotesque if it is true. The squeamish might want to skip this one. From the April 21, 2008 Yale Daily News:

The University will not allow Aliza Shvarts ’08 to display her controversial senior art project at its scheduled opening Tuesday unless she confesses in writing that the exhibition is a work of fiction, Yale officials said Sunday.

The University, meanwhile, acknowledged that it has disciplined two faculty members for their role in allowing Shvarts to proceed with a project that she claimed included nine months of repeated artificial inseminations followed by self-induced miscarriages.

As news of Shvarts’ project swept across the Web last week and attracted the ire of students and private citizens alike, Shvarts and the University engaged in a match of he-said/she-said: Shvarts stood by her project as she described it earlier last week in a news release, while the University — claiming Shvarts had privately denied actually committing the acts in question — dismissed it as a hoax that amounted to nothing more than “performance art.”

And with the scheduled opening of her exhibition rapidly approaching, the University only intensified its criticism this weekend.

“I am appalled,” Yale College Dean Peter Salovey said in a statement Friday. “This piece of performance art as reported in the press bears no relation to what I consider appropriate for an undergraduate senior project.”

...

While showing diagrams of the exhibit to reporters from the News on Thursday, Shvarts said she planned to construct a four-foot-wide cube made from PVC pipe that would hang suspended from the ceiling of the gallery, wrapped in hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting. Between the layers of this sheeting would be thick coatings of Vaseline, which she plans to use as an “extender” for the display of her bodily fluids.

Shvarts’ plans also include the projection of videos of her possible miscarriages onto the plastic sheeting. These videos show Shvarts, wearing headphones and in a bathroom tub, removing blood from her body and collecting it in disposable cups.

Another piece of "art"--more stupid than grotesque--comes from the August 18, 2006 Daily Telegraph--and definitely you don't want to click over to this, unless you want to see the "artist" naked with the dead pig:

After pickled sheep, unmade beds and painting with elephant dung, some questioned where modern art could go next.

Kira O'Reilly will provide her own answer today by spending four hours naked, hugging a dead pig - at the taxpayer's expense.

The controversial Irish performance artist will invite one person at a time to watch her sit in a specially-constructed set and perform a 'crushing slow dance' with the carcass in her arms.
She claims the bizarre exhibition is an attempt to 'identify' with the pig, which she cuts with a knife during the show.

Visitors to the Newlyn Art Gallery in Newlyn, Cornwall - funded by taxpayers and the lottery - will be allowed to watch her for ten minutes. The gallery has defended its decision to stage the one-off show, but animal rights campaigners have labelled the performance 'sick'.

Anita Singh, spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said: 'This seems to be a desperate cry for help that merits visits from mental health counsellors, not voyeurs.
'As Miss O'Reilly seems to depend on the shock value of using a murdered pig as a prop, perhaps lacking the talent to make it as a proper artist, may we suggest she take up a day job instead to pay the bills. This is not entertainment - this is sick.'

Under the title 'Inthewrongplaceness', the piece is billed as a 'slow crushing dance with a pig for one at a time'.

For once, I can agree with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals about something: British taxpayers shouldn't be forced to fund this pretentious trash.

What Am I Missing Here?

What Am I Missing Here?
There has to be some reason that 11 members of the Idaho House voted against this bill. Maybe because they don't believe in a woman's right to choose? From the March 25, 2008 Idaho Statesman:

BOISE, Idaho — The House has passed a measure making it a crime to violently coerce a woman into getting an abortion.

Lawmakers voted 55-11 on Tuesday to approve the bill, a scaled-back version of an earlier proposal. The bill now goes to the Senate.

The measure would apply to anyone who threatens, conspires or inflicts physical injury or death on a pregnant woman.

The crime would either be a misdemeanor or a felony depending on whether the offense involves actual violence.

Republican Representative Bob Nonini of Coeur d'Alene says the bill would help protect pregnant women who are pushed to do something they don't want to do.

Oh, here's the explanation:

Opponents say the law is unnecessary since the threat of physical violence is already a crime.

And so having a second statute under which someone can be charged is a problem because....what? I would think that there are a number of situations where a person could be charged with different crimes for what is essentially the same offense.

Unsurprising, But Still Depressing

Unsurprising, But Still Depressing

This March 11, 2008 BBC report:

One in four teenage girls in the United States has a sexually-transmitted disease, a study has indicated.

The study, by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), found an even higher prevalence of STDs among black girls.

Researchers analysed data from a nationally representative sample of 838 US girls aged 14 to 19.

A virus that causes cervical cancer - HPV - was the most common, followed by chlamydia, trichomoniasis and herpes.

The CDC says the study is the first in its kind to examine the prevalence of common sexually transmitted diseases among adolescent girls.

It found that nearly half of the African-American girls surveyed had at least one STD, while the rate was 20% among white and Mexican-American teenagers.

Human papillomavirus, or HPV, affected 18% of the girls surveyed, chlamydia 4%, trichomoniasis 2.5%, and herpes simplex virus 2%.

Liberals are crowing that abstinence education (which this April 16, 2007 U.K. Guardian article indicates the Clinton Administration actually started) doesn't work. I find when I search scholar.google.com that there are some studies that show that it does make a difference, although sometimes with mixed results, such as this one:

Results: Intervention students reported increases in knowledge and abstinence beliefs, but decreases in intentions to have sex and to use condoms. Intervention did not influence sexual initiation or condom use; however, intervention students who had sex during the evaluation period reported fewer sexual episodes and fewer partners than did controls. Conclusions: Abstinence-until-marriage interventions can influence knowledge, beliefs, and intentions, and among sexually experienced students, may reduce the prevalence of casual sex. Reduction in condom use intentions merits further study to determine long-term implications.

More typical are the results of studies like this, evaluating ten different state programs--only five of which actually tried to measure changes in sexual behavior:

Sexual Behavior—Five programs measured long-term impacts on sexual behavior.

No evaluation demonstrated any impact on reducing teens’ sexual behavior at follow-up, three to 17 months after the program ended (Arizona, California, Minnesota, Missouri, or Pennsylvania’s LaSalle Program).

I will tell you that as much as I would like to think that abstinence-only education can work, it is sailing into a hurricane. The mass media strongly, strongly promote early sex. The very high rates of infection among black teenaged girls tells you that there is something terribly broken in the black community (as Bill Cosby keeps saying). Even if the media weren't promoting it, teenagers don't need any encouragement towards sex--that's pretty much the default setting for human beings. I've read studies of Puritan New England that demonstrate that 16% of brides were pregnant by the time they married.

Where I lived in Sonoma County, to my surprise, the school districts promoted something that the county schools superintendent called "abstinence-best" education. The theory was that it was good to tell kids to wait--and also to tell them what to do if they weren't going to wait.

You don't have to be religious to see that there are some significant advantages to delaying sex.

1. Think of how organized and clean the average 14 year old keeps his or her room, and then ask yourself, "Would you trust this kid to take birth control pills or use a condom correctly?"

2. A friend made the observation once that teenaged boys are willing to trade intimacy for sex; teenaged girls are willing to trade sex for love. There's a lot of truth to that. Teenaged years can be terribly confusing, with enormous highs and lows. Even waiting a couple of years to mature can make a huge difference, especially because contraception's availability has created a difficult situation for many girls, who are badgered into sex earlier than they really want to be.

3. From a health standpoint, waiting is a good thing. I was shocked to see even Planned Parenthood admit this:

Women who abstain until their 20s — and who have fewer partners in their lifetimes — may have certain health advantages over women who do not.

The harsh reality is that in a culture that glorifies sexuality, relatively few kids are going to wait until marriage. Relatively few even wait until they are 18. They need to be aware of contraceptive techniques. They also need to be aware that there are risks, and that no method of contraception works as well as abstinence. Condoms break; condoms fail to stop the spread of HPV; non-barrier methods create risks of potentially lethal STDs; and many of the alternatives to sexual intercourse include significant risks of disease and pregnancy.

This is definitely an unpleasant situation. You don't want to encourage kids to be sexually active--but contraception is better than abortion. Contraception is also better than a shotgun marriage, or illegitimacy.

Planned Parenthood's Return To Its Roots

This is one of those stories that just amazes me. It started out as a UCLA student newspaper (one apparently on the pro-life side--yes, at UCLA!) had a "donor" call Planned Parenthood operations around the country, and offer money to them with the proviso that it would be used just to abort black babies--and for an explicitly hate-filled reason. The February 28, 2008 Idaho Statesman, shockingly enough, actually ran a story about it, and included the amazing transcript of the conversation with the Planned Parenthood representative here in Idaho:

Autumn Kersey of Planned Parenthood in Boise: Good afternoon, this is Autumn.

Donor: Hello, Autumn, I'm interested in making a donation today.

Kersey: Fantastic!

Donor: What about abortions for the underprivileged minority groups?

Kersey: Oh, absolutely. We have, um, in fact, uh wonderful, fantastic news. We just received a very generous donation to our women in need fund.

Donor: Wonderful. I want to specify that abortion to help a minority group - would that be possible?

Kersey: Absolutely.

Donor: Like the black community for example?

Kersey: Certainly.

Donor: OK, so the abortionI can give money specifically for a black baby, that would be the purpose.

Kersey: Absolutely. If you wanted to designate that you wanted your gift to be used to help (an) African-American woman in need, then we would certainly make sure that that gift was earmarked specifically for that purpose.

Donor: Great. Because I really face trouble with affirmative action, and I don't want my kids being disadvantaged, you know, against black kids. I just had a baby; I want to put it in his name, you know.

Kersey: Mmhmm, absolutely.

Donor: So that's definitely possible.

Kersey: Oh, always, always.

Donor: So I just wanna - can I put this in the name of my son?

Kersey: Absolutely.

Donor: Yeah, he's trying to get into colleges, and he's going to be applying, you know, he's justwe're just really bighe's really faced troubles with affirmative action.

Kersey: Mmhmm.

Donor: And we don't, you know, we just think, you know, the less black kids out there the better.

Kersey: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable. ... Um David, let me, if I may, just get some sort of specific general information so we can set this up the right way. You said you wanted to put it in your son's name, and you would like this designated specifically to assist (an) African-American woman who's looking to terminate a pregnancy.

Donor: Exactly, and yeah, I wanna protect my son, so he can get into college.

Kersey: All right. Excuse my hesitation, um, um, this is the first time I've had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I'm excited, and I wanna make sure I don't leave anything out.

It wasn't just Idaho where they found someone at Planned Parenthood willing to accept a donation for an explicitly racist reason.

Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood's founder, saw her objective as (in part) reducing the supply of inferior races--not just blacks and Hispanics, but also southern Europeans. Nor was she alone. I am always astonished, when I read through newspapers of the 1910-25 period, how many progressive sorts were explicitly pushing birth control as a method for keeping blacks from outbreeding whites.

But I find it very hard to believe that Planned Parenthood offices are staffed by the modern version of this. I am more inclined to think that what we are seeing is:

1. An enthusiasm for abortion that transcends everything else--including standards of decency that I thought were pretty universal in America.

2. A generation that has grown up with so little exposure to ferocious racism, and so little knowledge of history, that they don't find statements like the one above repugnant.

The Abortion Alone Wasn't the Cause

As the article points out, this woman had a history of depression--but it does make you wonder how differently things might have worked out if:

1. She and "Ben" had married. The commitment of marriage at least has a fighting chance of filtering out guys who aren't prepared to handle children.

2. She had gone ahead and had these babies.

From the February 24, 2008 Telegraph:

An artist killed herself after aborting her twins when she was eight weeks pregnant, leaving a note saying: "I should never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum."

Emma Beck was found hanging at her home in Helston, Cornwall, on Feb 1 2007. She was declared dead early the following day - her 31st birthday.

Her suicide note read: "I told everyone I didn't want to do it, even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. I want to be with my babies: they need me, no-one else does."

The inquest at Truro City Hall heard that Miss Beck had split up with her boyfriend, referred to as "Ben" after he "reacted badly" to the pregnancy.

She saw her GP before the termination, but missed an appointment at a hospital in Penzance. She then cancelled, but later turned up to an appointment at a clinic at Royal Cornwall Hospital in Treliske. The counsellor was on holiday so a doctor referred Miss Beck to a pregnancy counselling telephone service eight days before carrying out the abortion when she was eight weeks pregnant, the inquest heard.

...

The inquest heard that Sylvia Beck, the victim's mother, wrote to the hospital after her daughter's death, saying: "I want to know why she was not given the opportunity to see a counsellor.

"She was only going ahead with the abortion because her boyfriend did not want the twins.

"I believe this is what led Emma to take her own life - she could not live with what she had done."

The doctor said: "I discussed Emma's situation with her, and wrote on the form, 'Unsupported, lives alone, ex-partner aware'.

"It is normal practice to give a woman the number for telephone counselling when a counsellor is not available.

"I am satisfied that everything was done to make sure that Emma consented to the operation.

She added: "We have since appointed more counsellors so there is more holiday cover."

Katie Gibbs, Miss Beck's GP, told the hearing: "She was extremely distressed by the abortion procedure, and I didn't think she ever came to terms with it.

"She had a long history of anxiety and depression. Despite my best efforts, she was not willing to see a counsellor after the termination."

Her boss at the clinic, said: "The time that can be given to a woman by a counsellor is limited in a busy hospital.

"I am satisfied everything was done to make sure Emma was consenting to surgery. I don't feel there was any gap in the counselling service.

"There were lots of individuals who would be alert to any doubts. The comments made by Emma's mother are not about a doctor I recognise."

McGovern, 1972

The only good thing about being old is that you get to say, "I've seen this idiocy before!" It is increasingly apparent that the Democrats are planning to reprise the 1972 election--with a Republican that many Republicans didn't like, because he wasn't very conservative (the 55 mph national speed limit, wage and price controls) running against a very liberal Democrat who talked a lot about idealism.

A little background for those of you aren't old enough to remember the age of disco, leisure suits, waiting in line to buy gasoline, and a time when no one worried about STDs. In 1968, Eugene McCarthy tried to get the Democratic Party nomination away from V.P. Hubert Humphrey--a machine liberal politician, but one identified far too closely with President Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War. Democratic Party activists, however much they might have sympathized with McCarthy's "flower power" campaign (remember those little plastic flower appliques that antiwar activists put on their VW Beetles?), recognized that giving the nomination to a bunch of pot-smoking, antiwar, long-haired hippies, was going to be the twentieth century's equivalent of the Children's Crusade.

For those who don't know--the Children's Crusade was a thirteenth century effort by children to retake the Holy Land where their adult ancestors had failed. The children, being of holy and pure spirits, would succeed where the sinful adults had failed. Many of them never even got close to the Holy Land, and unsurprisingly, after arranging for sea transport, a large number were sold into Muslim slavery. Purity and good intentions aren't enough.

Anyway, Humphrey ended up getting the Democratic nomination in 1968, and came darn close to winning the election (perhaps helped by George Wallace's independent run for President). By the time the 1972 Democratic primary race was under way, the hippies had cut their hair, found suits, proudly took over the Democratic Party, and picked a far left Democrat, George McGovern, to lead the party over a cliff. And boy did he ever! He won Massachusetts (and I think, DC). He didn't even carry his own state, South Dakota.

What the was magic trick to this? Contrary to what some tenured radicals want to believe, Watergate isn't what won Nixon the election. If anything, the small amount of bad press from it probably hurt Nixon slightly. What did it was that McGovern had been very far to the left, and had emphasized that during the primaries. He was, after all, trying to appeal to a faction of the Democratic Party that Nixon's campaign characterized as "acid, amnesty, and abortion." From my recollections of the time, that was an exaggeration, but it was not without some basis in fact. ( And I think my memories are more trustworthy than your graying professor's memories, because I seem to be one of about 48 members of my generation that did not smoke pot or drop acid during that time.)

During the general election, McGovern's campaign tried to run away from his radical positions--and one especially powerful Nixon ad showed McGovern's picture on a weathervane, spinning back and forth between his primary statements, and his general election statements. The radical positions upset lots of voters--and the flip-flopping, I suspect, upset radical voters who were still suffering from the delusive idealism of McCarthy's Children's Crusade.

Barack Hussein Obama is, by any sensible standard, pretty far to the left--and some of the positions that he has taken should just about guarantee a McCain victory in November. I've mentioned his position in support of restrictive gun control--a position that is going to force at least ten million voters to vote for McCain. (Many of them would do so anyway, but Obama's position on this will guarantee it.)

I see that Obama has also taken another quite divisive position--and one that puts him in the minority, by a large margin:

Q: What us your view on the decision on partial-birth abortion and your reaction to most of the public agreeing with the court's holding?

A: I think that most Americans recognize that this is a profoundly difficult issue for the women and families who make these decisions. They don't make them casually. And I trust women to make these decisions in conjunction with their doctors and their families and their clergy. And I think that's where most Americans are. Now, when you describe a specific procedure that accounts for less than 1% of the abortions that take place, then naturally, people get concerned, and I think legitimately so. But the broader issue here is: Do women have the right to make these profoundly difficult decisions? And I trust them to do it.

Source: 2007 South Carolina Democratic primary debate, on MSNBC Apr 26, 2007

Pro-life voters, of course, are going to be unlikely to vote for Obama, but partial-birth abortion is such a repulsive procedure that even most pro-choice voters are prepared to make an exception, and ban it. An August, 2007 Pew Research survey found that 75% of Americans wanted it to be illegal--only 17% thought it should be legal. McCain's support for stem cell research, which is the major black mark against him for pro-life voters, is pretty minor compared to support for partial-birth abortion.

Here's a twofer: an area where he gets to upset not just smokers, but those who understand that the Constitution's division of powers between states and the federal government limits what the federal government can do:

Q: Over 400,000 Americans have premature death due to smoking or secondhand smoke. Would you be in favor of a national law to ban smoking in all public places?
A: I think that local communities are making enormous strides, and I think they're doing the right thing on this. If it turns out that we're not seeing enough progress at the local level, then I would favor a national law. I don't think we've seen the local laws play themselves out entirely, because I think you're seeing an enormous amount of progress in Chicago, in New York, in other major cities around the country. And because I think we have been treating this as a public health problem and educating the public on the dangers of secondhand smoke, that that pressure will continue. As I said, if we can't provide these kinds of protections at the local level, which would be my preference, I would be supportive of a national law.
Q: Have you been successful in stopping smoking?
A: I have. You know, the best cure is my wife.
Source: 2007 Democratic primary debate at Dartmouth College Sep 6, 2007

Fortunately, there's only one of Michelle Obama to go around. (I'll resist the urge to make a crude joke about this.)

Now, if I were going to just take a Machiavellian view, I would say, "Excellent! Obama will guarantee a McCain victory!" But as I have explained in the past, there are real dangers in taking this approach. We need the best candidate from each party, because you never know what craziness can happen--and there is a war on, you know.

Amusing T-Shirt

The picture on the right. Don't worry, it's work-safe, unless you work at one of the abortion rights groups.

Governor Romney Really Believes This?

I've received emails telling me that pro-choice Romney really is following Mormon Church policy--that the Mormon Church opposes abortion, but doesn't believe that it should be illegal. I don't know if this is true or not. I do see this news coverage of how Romney dealt with the question recently, and it just makes me scratch my head:

Regarding his flip-flop on abortion rights from the time he was running for office in Massachusetts, Romney said he thinks “almost everyone in this nation” opposes abortion.

“I was always personally opposed to abortion, as I think almost everyone in this nation is,” he said, adding that the question for him was “the role of government.”

Romney said he hopes the U.S. ultimately bans abortion but says the country is not to that point and he is not advocating that.

If he means that "almost everyone in this nation" would prefer that abortion not be necessary, that may be correct. I suspect that the only people who are enthusiastic about abortion are abortion doctors who do it for the money. (I suspect that there are abortion doctors who do it from strongly held beliefs as well--and not primarily for the money.)

Pretty clearly, there is a large minority of Americans who believe that there's nothing wrong with abortion--certainly not enough to prohibit it, or even regulate it in a way that discourages it. This poll done a few months back asked how Americans felt about abortion in a number of different situations: the result of rape or incest; fatal birth defect; puts the mother's life at risk. Americans remain strongly supportive of abortion in most cases. This makes the pro-choice position that overturning Roe v. Wade would make abortion broadly illegal pretty silly (although there might be a few states that would regulate abortions much more strictly than today). The highest level of support for making abortion illegal was "If the pregnancy is unwanted" and in that scenario, 39% wanted it still to be legal.

I wonder if Romney just didn't explain this well, if he hasn't been talking to people outside his church about abortion, or if he is making a statement that is so absurdly preposterous in the hopes of straddling the fence.