The Cherry Orchard

The news keeps coming so fast, it’s hard to keep up. Some thoughts for a Friday afternoon:

1. I wonder if it’s possible to stake out a moderate position on abortion rights. I guess the conventional wisdom will offer a resounding “No”, but in the light of recent news I’m going to continue to try.

I am personally opposed to abortion, but I believe abortion must remain legal within the United States because the practical consequences of state or federal laws against it would be disastrous. Look at these statistics: about 1.3 million Americans get an abortion every year. In case anybody wants to pretend that these 1.3 million Americans are all godless liberals from bad families, note this item:

Women identifying themselves as Protestants obtain 37.4% of all abortions in the U.S.; Catholic women account for 31.3%, Jewish women account for 1.3%, and women with no religious affiliation obtain 23.7% of all abortions. 18% of all abortions are performed on women who identify themselves as “Born-again/Evangelical”.

I’m sad to learn that my own state has the highest percentages of abortions in the country, but this state-by-state breakdown shows us that every state has significant abortion numbers. A pro-life friend with whom I engaged in a long debate about the subject last year told me that 35% of Republican families have a family member who’s had an abortion. Maybe this is supposed to demonstrate that Republican families show lower numbers than non-Republican families, but all I can say is “that’s a lot of Republican families”.

My conclusion from all this is that any attempt to make abortion illegal will simply result in the immediate emergence of black markets, inter-state “abortion railroads” and (most dangerously) illegal amateur operations. Why can’t the pro-life movement focus on practical and results-oriented approaches to reducing the incidence of abortion in the United States? Why is legality the sole rallying cry, when there is no reason to believe that allowing certain states to outlaw abortion will significantly reduce the amount of abortions that occur?

I’d love to see a moderate front make its presence felt in this debate. Hasn’t happened yet.

2. I don’t do a whole lot of agreeing with the National Review, but an article called The Culture of Passivity by Mark Steyn says everything I was trying to say here.

3. There was once a time when I respected John McCain. Maybe there will come a time again when I respect John McCain. But right now, he just needs to shut up, because he’s embarrassing himself and everybody else.

Diplomacy, McCain, not bombs. Diplomacy. It’s been known to work.