Wednesday, March 01, 2006

The banality of evil

Some blogger (not a physician but, what the hey, anyone can copy pages out of a medical textbook) has posted abortion instructions for "the women of South Dakota." As K-Lo points out on The Corner, commenting readers treat the whole thing like a recipe, throwing in their own two cents worth on how a human being is most effectively to be killed and helpfully offering to pdf the post and even get pictures. I'm thinking of Hannah Arendt.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rick, you should read this article at the Washington Post today:

"Unintended Pregnancy Linked to State Funding Cuts: Study Cites Impact On Teenage Girls and Poor Women." By Ceci Connolly.

It shows that if you don't want abortions, you had better provide birth control:

Despite some gains, the United States still lags far behind most industrialized nations in reducing abortion and teenage pregnancy. In 2002, 21 in 1,000 American women age 15 to 44 had an abortion. Although that is the lowest abortion rate since 1974, the decline has stalled, prompting fears that individuals and policymakers have lost focus on the underlying problem of unintended pregnancies, said Guttmacher President Sharon L. Camp.

"Unintended pregnancy in the United States is twice as high as in most of Western Europe," she said in an interview. "As a direct result, abortion rates are twice or three times as high as European countries. There is no reason why abortion rates need to be as high as they are."

The problem is particularly acute for the nation's estimated 17 million adolescent girls and low-income women, because a lack of education and money are often barriers to practicing abstinence or effective birth control.

Rick Esenberg said...

A fair point, but I am not convinced that lack of access to contraceptives has anything to do with this. I am not sure that there is any lack of access. I am not, however, an opponent of birth control.

Anonymous said...

I have just one word to say about this...unfrickinbelievable.