Time magazine's got an interesting piece today to examine. Their headline is, "Should Incest Be Legal?"

It's not quite what you'd think. The article's actually an exploration of the aftermath of Lawrence V. Texas (the striking down of Texas' sodomy laws on privacy grounds). At the time, there were those who said this laid open the grounds for lawsuits on a host of other subjects. From the article:

It turns out the critics were right. Plaintiffs have made the decision the centerpiece of attempts to defeat state bans on the sale of sex toys in Alabama, polygamy in Utah and adoptions by gay couples in Florida. So far the challenges have been unsuccessful. But plaintiffs are still trying. Even using Lawrence to challenge laws against incest.

The article examines a case of something that would be illegal in one state, but not in others - a case of a man who had (consensual) sex with his (adult, age 22) stepdaughter. Yes, it's weird. But on such weird grounds do such cases often float. The larger part of the article has to do with what a "compelling state interest" - the grounds on which Lawrence V. Texas was decided - might be. I'm not too interested in the Incest example, though there's a plethora of jokes - in Hollywierd and other places - about people who get together, make a couple bad decisions, and then find out later that they are blood-related cousins or somesuch.

Alabama's got a ban on sex toys. Specifically, a ban on devices sold for the purpose of "the stimulation of human genital organs." While it was overturned in 2002 (on LvT grounds), it was restored in 2004 by the 11th Circuit. Should this be the case? Alabama's legislature says this would open the doors for other, worse things. Most sex toys look more like something you'd laugh at. Besides, Alabama (to be fair, along with a host of other states) already lets cousins marry freely.

The other interesting thought about this is what, if anything, it does to the idea of polygamy/polyandry and group marriages. My major beef with polygamy is that, uniformly, it has just about always been a method by which men exploited women. Multiple marriage in ancient dynasties was limited to the rich and powerful assembling themselves a harem. The "prophet" Mohammed went around catching wives wherever he could, including telling his son to hand over his wife because he thought she was hot (Zainab bint Jahsh), marrying and having sex with a prepubescent girl (Aisha), and raping a girl the night after ordering her tribe's men(including her husband) slaughtered, calling it a marriage only the next day (Safiya). To this day, one of the threats a Muslim man can give to his wife for being "willful" in Muslim nations is the threat to go get another wife. (see Nonie Darwish's commentary here for a starter.)

Mormon marriage - especially the kind of child abuse practiced by the fundamentalist mormons - I consider to have been just as bad in the past. There are, however, some people who claim it's a good thing. My take on this is that first, the marriage laws have to be equal - if a man can have more than 1 wife, then the wife should be allowed more than 1 husband. Of course, this can get tricky (marriage records would get insane the more in a marriage there were). If a group of people can make it work, I can't really tell them no - but the prerequisites HAVE to be that it's consensual, and all are of age to make the decision of their own free will.

Should all of these be struck down on the basis of Lawrence V. Texas? I'm not sure. I think the Alabama lawmakers who came up with the sex toy ban probably have too much time on their hands, and the ban offends my libertarian bent. I think that incest laws straddle the line pretty closely, again predicated on the consent/age factor. Most of the court cases likely to come up with relation to this, alas, are going to be the kind of creepy cases people want to throw the book at anyways, so don't expect it to be settled.

As for the polygamy thing? The US has a ban on polygamy, but it's state by state. If one state allowed it, the rest aren't legally allowed to show it equal treatment, as per the wording of the "Defense of Marriage Act." If one state did, expect uproar. Unlikely to happen short of a really bizarre court ruling, but possible on those accounts.

In the movie Half-Baked, Dave Chapelle's character goes to a drug rehab meeting and is booed off the stage when it is discovered that his only addiction is to marijuana. He had been incovenienced by the drugs, but others there had their lives ruined by much more addictive stuff.

I came a tentative conclusion that is bound to be unpopular as I haven't yet heard anyone reputable state it aloud.

Like most political nerds (and some with actual lives) I was paying really close attention to the whole Mark Foley mess. For those of you that are unaware, Foley is a conservative Republican congressman that apparently gets his jollies by flirting with 16 year old male congressional pages.

It seemed like a pretty cut-and-dry case. Foley was caught red-handed, didn't deny having done it, quit congress, confessed to having been sexually abused earlier in his life, admitted that he is gay, and has checked himself in to rehab. All within a couple of days!

Some, however, didn't want to stop there. Democrats wanted to use this pan to fry bigger fish and went after Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and others that are accused of having known about it. Many Republicans agree. At the moment, it appears that the Republican leadership heard mutterings about Foley's peculiarities and were aware of some of the earlier, less weird, correspondences between Foley and young pages. Hastert and Majority Leader Boehner were not helped by the inconsistency of their statements.

Here's the realization I came to today:all of the hysterics surrounding the entire issue are built upon the premise that a 16 year old kid, protected by a computer monitor, is utterly helpless in the face of power.

Note the language being used. A word that I am seeing brandied about is "predator." A predator is an animal that eats its prey. Or it's a person that plunders, pillages, or obliterates. Whatever a predator is done with will never be the same again. Mark Foley would be a predator if he physically raped or psychologically tormented the young men, but not simply because he grossed them out.

And then there's the word "pedophile," which carried a certain weight to it. A pedophile is one that "loves children". Children. To date, the youngest victim is 16. That's not an adult, but it's not a child, either. We do society a great disservice to futher infantize young adults. The longer we treat young people like children the longer they will act like children. Adolescence already spans into the mid-twenties for a lot of people. They need to be expected to take control of the situations they find themselves in to a much greater degree than we expect them to now.

And lastly, just about everything I've heard that he's done has been behind the safety of a computer monitor and involved kids that were quite a distance away. If all he's done is produceable in IMs and emails, then he really hasn't done that much. Whatever meetings he might have arranged were quite consensual. That's not to say that it's all okay, but to attach the same level of condemnation to this that one would attach to a serial rapist or child molester does a disservice to the genuinely raped and molested.

I should state that it's possible that we are (or at least I am) fully unaware of the worst of Foley's transgressions. If he's guilty of something more then my argument is undercut. But most of what I've heard thus far involves being a crappy congressman and a sick man, but not a predatory monster.

Tucked away in an article about oral sex is the following:

Now, this is a glib explanation. A real economist would want a tighter hypothesis and serious data to back it up. That economist might well be Thomas Stratmann, who, with law professor Jonathan Klick, has pushed the idea of the rational teenage sex drive. Their hypothesis is that if teenagers really did think about the consequences of their actions, they would have less risky sex if the cost of risky sex went up. They discovered a very specific source of that higher risk: "In some states, there are abortion-notification or -consent laws, which mean that teenagers can't get an abortion without at least one parent being informed or giving consent." If teenagers are rational, such laws would discourage risky sex among teens, relative to adults.

Klick and Stratmann claim to have found evidence of exactly this. Wherever and whenever abortion-notification laws have been passed, gonorrhoea rates in the teenage and adult populations start to diverge. When it becomes more troublesome to get an abortion, teenagers seem to cut back on unprotected sex.

So... decreased availability of abortions leads to more cautious behavior?

I swear that I've heard that argument before, but if I recall it is a position only advanced by backward-looking, science-hating troglodytes.

Seriously, of all the arguments in favor of abortion-availability, I've always considered the notion that you can't alter behavior by restricting possible remedies from the repercussions to be among the sillier of them.

That's not to say that abortion should necessarily be illegal because it will keep young people from having sex because it won't. The same argument could be made for condoms and The Pill and I support the availability of both. But in the abstract, I am amazed not only at the number of people that believe that the number of kids that will have sex need abortions is finite and unaffected by its availability and how they look at me like I'm brainwashed by my political allies when I suggest that's not the case.

I also got a kick out of the closer:

The rest of us may be wondering what to make of it all. On the one hand, good news: Teenagers are finding safer ways to get their kicks. On the other, it suggests that teenagers believe one of the most serious consequences of an unwanted pregnancy is that their parents will find out. If teenagers are avoiding unsafe sex, it may not be for the best reasons.

It goes to show the fascinating hybrid of rationality (weighing unlikely but potential consequences that are heavier more heavily) and curious priorities (having to tell the parents is a bigger deal than having the abortion) of young people.

On the other hand, I can't say I care much what the reason is that young people avoid unsafe sex, as there is no real right reason for them to have the other kind.

I saw the comment on Brothers Judd somewhere, but couldn't track it down, but it came down to this:

You can't make divorce too difficult because it will trap battered spouses, but if you make marriage too difficult it will encourage commonlaw marriage and cohabitation.

These things are true.

Much moreso than gay marriage or even polygamy, I consider divorce to be the biggest threat to marriage. After all, what hurts a marriage more than frequent de-marriaging. The problem is that there are many cases where it is extremely important that a battered or abused spouse be able to get out of a marriage with their limbs and sanity in tact. On the other hand, the doorway that is open for special cases tends to get rushed with convenient passers-through.

But an idea occured to me: instead of attacking marriage or divorce, attack re-marriage. What if a divorce were easy enough to get, but that it came with a penalty: You can't remarry for five years. Or maybe ten. It seems to me that this would attack the idea that marriage is something that you can get in and out of without trapping someone (being unable to remarry would presumably not prevent a battered spouse from getting out) and without weakening the institution of marriage itself by having large numbers forego the process. Of course, divorced people would have to forego the process at least for some time, but they are generally "off the rails" anyway, from a social standpoint. By getting married and divorced, they have already gone outside the proscribed path that is expected of us.

Their penalty for de-valuing marriage is limited access to it in the future. That seems pretty fair to me.

I have at least two concerns with this:

First, there are many cases where the couple got married too young, didn't know what they were getting in to, and are being somewhat unfairly held into account for youthful indiscretions. While that holds some merit, we're reaching the point where "youthful indiscretions" continue into someone's mid-to-late twenties. Thirty, when the mother has only a limited time to produce children and will likely not see grandchildren until she well over sixty, is considered a good time to get married. Because we spend a good part of our twenties being stupid. That actions have consequences that you can't just send away is an important lesson that is missed amount younger people (particularly teenagers, but even up to people my age or a little younger). As a culture, we need to push people to grow up faster, not clear the way for them to grow up slower.

Second, If an divorced person meets and falls in love with someone that has never been married, it's the unmarried person that is paying the price for the actions of the loved one before they even met. This sort of thing already happens with debt and the like, but from a cultural standpoint it could be problematic because it throws otherwise track-bound people off the rails. Girl meets divorced man, girl can't marry divorced man, girl moves in with divorced man instead, girl breaks up with divorced man, girl sets herself up on a cycle of pseudomarriages that do not need a divorce. Of course, some of this is contingent on publically discouraging premarital cohabitation which seems to be of increasingly less concern. However, add a baby born out of wedlock to the above timeline, and the marriage becomes more important.

---

One idea that has made the rounds more recently is that of a "Covenant Marriage," in which a prospective couple agree to undergo more counselling and set up barriers against a future divorce. The common complaint I have heard about this one is that the couples that are most likely to get a Covenant Marriage are least likely to need it.

That may be true, but I think the purpose that it would serve would be to get a couple to seriously think and talk about what marriage means to them. If neither want the roadblocks to be there, I might personally ask what the point of getting married in the first place is, but it does give couples a certain lattitude if both are practical-thinking, post-modern types that have resigned themselves to "the way things are nowadays." If both want a covenant marriage, that provides a way for couples that are probably unlikely to get divorced anyway to make a statement, of sorts, to themselves and others that their marriage is distinct from Elvis-officiated ones in Vegas.

But where I think that covenant marriages would be most helpful are when one half of a partnership wants one and the other half does not. That's when the conversation about marriage becomes all the more important. It takes two to marry, but it only takes one to cause a divorce. That's why it's very important that you know as much as possible about the person that you're marrying. One of the reasons I married Camille was that I found that she and I both had very idealistic views on what a marriage should be along with very realistic ideas on how a marriage should be.

Had Covenant Marriage been a possibility for us, and had one of us wanted one and the other not, that would have been a red flag. Not necessarily indicative of future disaster or anything, but something to talk our way through. The issue of whether or not she would take my last name became a flashpoint of discussion between us because it emphasized some of the differences she and I do have when it comes to marriage and we had to work our way through them. The Covenant Marriage could easily serve a similar role. If two people have differing ideas on the nature of marriage, it needs to be worked through before the marriage actually happens.

Tuesday, the people of the state of Texas passed Proposition 2, which constitutionally defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. As I am officially an Idahoan, I did not vote. If I could have, I absolutely, positively would have voted against. I share conservative concern over the breakdown of the family, the shift of marriage from an emotional rather than societal institution, and the sort of amoral sexuality that the public perception of homosexuals represents. Ultimately, I believe homosexuality to be sufficiently genetic and insufficiently immoral to be accepted, if not embraced, by society as a whole. Without the belief that homosexuality is something to be discouraged, I cannot support support treating homosexual relationships as differently than heterosexual ones.

I wish that more Texans felt the same way than apparently do. But they don't. And the reaction by various liberals have done absolutely nothing to change that and, in some ways, represents a real lack of desire to. Granted, people on every side of the aisle are quick to discount public opinion whenever they agree with it, but when you're dealing with majorities in even the most liberal states and supermajorities in the conservative ones, it might be more helpful to listen and try to change their minds rather than call them bigots and celebrate court-enforced end-runs around popular opinion - and then wonder what's wrong with Kansas because they vote against candidates that (allegedly) represent their financial interests.

The wave of statewide referenda regarding gay marriage is neither part of increasing religious conservatism on the part of the general public nor a sort of encroaching theocracy. It was a direct response to the apparent threat of gay marriage being mandated by the courts. Maybe it's an illogical fear because Massachusetts is a unique case, but the festivities in kicked off in San Francisco and elsewhere will haunt the cause for some time to come. It represented an enthusiastic embrace of the idea that gay marriage is a constitutionally-protected right that scared a lot of people into the arms of their ideological opponents. At the very least, it forced states to know a potential loophole that could be later used to legalize gay marriage. If you don't want gay marriage to be legalized, this is not insignificant.

This is not showboating. This is stirring up the pot. This is a perfectly logical reaction to prevent the law from being changed in a way by which there is no democratic recourse. You prevent a judge from saying "The Constitution doesn't say..." by making the Constitution say exactly that.

Even though I strongly disagree with the substance of their position, I don't disagree with their methodology nearly as much as I disagree with those that are more outraged than concerned that a clear majority of the public does not agree with them.

As per RAW's post below, the question of "abortion rights" is always a heated one, and depending on how you swing your terms and definitions, I firmly believe that you can rig up a poll to say whatever you want it to say. Comments down in the post reaffirmed this, as RAW's point on how many people self-identify as "pro-life" or "pro-choice" being based on how the debate was framed and focused has plenty of merit.

Unfortunately, like any of these debates, the core constituency of each side is pretty fervent and understand their platform quite well, while the rest of the people (at least, I believe) never really understand it because it's never formally stated. Instead, both sides do their best to paint the other side as undesirables and focus on the worst of each, trying to win a debate that's based more on beating up strawmen than having good points.

Ultimately, the debate - even on issues that ought to be commonsense no-brainers - gets twisted and turned, as the "pro-choice" lobby do their best to hold the Roe V. Wade decision as "any abortion any time a woman wants one." There's also an awkward twist in the media, since the "Pro-choice" lobby self-identifies as such and identifies their opposition as "Anti-Abortion", whilst the "Pro-Life" lobby identifies the "Pro-Choice" groups as "Pro-Abortion" instead. More often than not, the media uses the terms "Pro-Choice" and "Anti-Abortion", which seems to indicate sympathy for them.

Under it all, even as I might be convinced of the core tenet of Roe - that the US cannot just blanket outlaw all abortions - a free-for-all attitude towards it isn't good either, and I'm fully supportive of a number of things that some states have tried, only to have the "Pro-Choice" lobby go absolutely bonkers crying about "first steps to overturning Roe." Here's a few of them.


Issue #1: Parental Notification.

Parental notification, to me, seems like a no-brainer. Abortion, when you get down to the specifics, is a surgical medical procedure. With the exception of life-threatening situations in an emergency room or similar, all such medical procedures require waivers and consent forms, which anyone under 18 cannot sign legally because the courts in just about every state say that they are not yet competent to do so. Parents/Guardians are legally required to sign off on these things.

Now, the Pro-Choice lobby will argue that abortion is "different" because there's a possibility the parent will go nuts and abuse the child, or might simply refuse permission. In the first case, that is relatively easily solved by placing a procedure for the child to go to a courthouse and request an alternate guardian who can look at the case, compile some basic evidence, and have a judge decide whether permission is warranted or whether the parents should still be notified.

In the second case, well, parents refusing permission would be the right of the parent as guardian of the child - unless the goal isn't actually "choice" for adults, but the goal of seeing even those who are not competent to consent to medical procedures get abortions anyways.

Issue #2: Waiting Periods.

Abortions in America are a rather unique medical procedure. They are unique for a few reasons, one being the controversy, but the other being that they are one of the few entirely elective procedures that one can simply go to a clinic, get done, and walk right out. For most other medical procedures I can think of, elective or not, there's a waiting time. For laser eye surgery, there are consultations and measurements. For liposuction or other plastic surgery, the same. Nobody just gets up in the morning and goes in to have a vasectomy on a whim. For all of these, and even for life-altering surgery like organ replacement, they go in, have consultations with doctors, and schedule an appointment to have it done - all the while knowing that up until the point where the doctor makes that first cut (if it's local anesthesia) or they put that mask on (if general anesthesia) they have the right to say "no, stop, I don't actually want this" and the doctor will cancel the whole thing.

Again, it could be argued that "anyone" can get emergency medical care and procedures, but in those cases we're talking about things that will be done to ensure they are alive tomorrow, not things done because of appearances, and in a situation where the person is likely unconscious or incoherent due to blood loss, shock, or trauma.

Abortion also has definite medical risks. There are physical and psychological risks associated with the procedure, that ought to be weighed carefully. It shouldn't be an easy decision.

And yet, again, the "Pro-Choice" crowd insist that a simple waiting period - say, 24 to 48 hours, shorter than the waiting period to purchase a handgun - is something designed to interfere with the right to choice? This is not something I understand. My feeling is that a waiting period is good both as an emotional cool-down (in the case, perhaps, of someone who goes in for an abortion after breaking up with the father) as well as a time to really think about the decision and look over the available information. It's not about preventing choice, but making sure that choice is a relatively well-informed choice.

Issue #3: Restrictions on timing

This is the one that's always the most tricky. As medical science goes forward, premature babies can be rescued and nurtured and live at an earlier and earlier age. Normal birth is approximately 40 weeks. Any baby born around 37 or less is premature. Thanks to modern science, we can coax premature babies along earlier and earlier - according to Mayo Clinic, a "good chance of survival" is still there at 23 weeks. And this directly impacts abortion legislation, because both the federal government and state legislatures are going to be very timid about sanctioning the abortion of a fetus that could be termed "viable" and therefore an "unborn child" as it were.

Of course, as the debate goes on, medical science will improve, and eventually we may be to the point where ANY fetus is considered viable, or people "birthed" after artificial fertilization of an egg and incubation in an entirely artificial womb. Which begs an interesting question, because any artificial limit on the matter is apt towards fudging. If you say 23 weeks, then determined individuals may claim to be only at 20 weeks when they're at 25 or so, for instance. And as science improves, legislatures will find it tempting to push the barrier earlier and earlier.

This is the one issue I really have no good answer for. It's not an easy question. Hardcore "Pro Choice" individuals might push it even up to letting the woman go into labor, though that's unlikely. "Pro-Life" individuals have it easier, their answer is "never."

Ramesh Ponnuru wonders about a recent uptick in pro-choice polling:

But all of a sudden, and without attracting much notice, the pro-choicers have pulled away again. A July poll had pro-choicers outnumbering pro-lifers by 51 to 42 percent. By late August, the gap had grown to 54-38. A SurveyUSA poll taken around the same time found a similar result. It seems as though two-thirds of the pro-life gain on this front over the last decade has been erased.

So what explains how the pro-lifers have risen and then fallen? I have a theory, which I retain the right to modify or discard if a better one comes along.

There are a lot of possible explanations for the upward trend over the last decade, and probably several of them played a role. But I think the most powerful explanation, especially given that the pivotal years are 1995-97, is the pro-life campaign against partial-birth abortion. When the major pro-life proposal was a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, people who opposed an amendment tended to think of themselves as pro-choice. The legislative campaign against partial-birth abortion, which began in the summer of 1995, changed what some people thought about first when they thought about abortion. If being pro-choice meant being for partial-birth abortion, and being pro-life meant being against it, those people were on the pro-life side. [...]

I can only assume that it was the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor at the beginning of July, and Bush’s initial nomination of John Roberts to replace her, that has driven people back into the pro-choice camp. The Supreme Court vacancy made Roe the first thing people think about when they think about abortion. And the public supports Roe for a variety of reasons (including the mistaken beliefs that it legalizes abortion only in the first three months and that to overturn it would be to ban all abortions). Moreover, the debate over Roe has been pretty one-sided. The leading pro-choice spokesmen in politics have been saying that Roe is vitally important but threatened. The leading pro-life figures, President Bush and congressional Republicans, have mostly tried to change the subject rather than to make the case that the country can live without Roe.

Far be it for me to ever pass on an opportunity to drive home a point that I've made here and there, using statistical data is most naturally interpreted to conform to my pre-existing beliefs.

Ponnuru's column is notable for its astonishing ability to walk right along the edge of answering his own question, but stubbornly refusing to do so for dogmatic reasons and the typical ideolog's conceit that one's views can be correct, well-articulated, and rejected by the American public at the same time.

People, by and large, like to feel morally righteous. Whether it's a conservative Christian railing against abortion or a liberal environmentalist crying Gaea's tears, it exists all over the place. People are also quite defensive whenever their lifestyle is called in to questions. People also like an easy way out.

Though an atrocious decision constitutionally and even morally, Roe v Wade has been the gift to Republicans that just keeps on giving. With Roe in effect, people can feel self-righteous and at the same time not have to worry about being judged. The most common personal answer to the abortion question I've run across is "I don't morally approve, I wouldn't have one, but it shouldn't be illegal," by which many mean "As long as I don't need one, I don't think it's a good thing, but if I do I want that option available to me." This way you can have it both ways: retain your right to an abortion (or an abortion on your behalf, if you're a guy) while vaguely maintaining a semblance of morality on the subject. Should you ever need an abortion (or an abortion on your behalf), you can justify it as being unique to the circumstances (cause you're the only girl to get pregnant or the only guy to get a girl while in college or unmarried or without the means to take care of a child and therefore your circumstances are unique, unique, unique...).

The recent uptick in pro-life support was, interestingly, in females. While I don't have the data on the new polls that Ponnuru refers to, I'd be willing to bet that the pro-choice lurch was also female. Guys aren't quite as swept up on maintaining a balance or even coherency on the issue because, facts being facts, they will never have to have one. It's easier for a guy to be pro-life because he can walk out. It's easier for a guy to be pro-choice because it can get him out of a jam without having to deal with the emotional consequences.

So Roe was the easy way out for everybody. It's safe to be pro-life when little or nothing can come of it. It's easy for the Republicans to "take a stand" on abortion because they can talk as loudly as they want without having to do terribly much to back it up except pass unconstitutional and largely symbolic laws. In fact, one of the most devestating effects of Roe was to coarsen the debate by taking it out of our hands. Who needs to compromise or be realistic when the decree has been given from on high? But from a machiavellian political perspective, it keeps religious conservatives in the tent without alienating a larger chunk of the women's vote.

Democratic strategist Francis Wilkinson wrote a while back:

STOP me if you've heard this one. A pro-life Republican president nominates a Supreme Court justice. The fate of Roe v. Wade, that momentous, muddled law of the land since 1973, hangs in the balance. Despite the best efforts of Democratic senators to force a confession, the elusive nominee remains mum on Roe and rides overwhelming Republican support to confirmation. (A pro-choice group immediately issues a press release that the sky is, in fact, falling.)

But a funny thing happens once the nominee is safely ensconced on the court: instead of sinking Roe, he supports it.

This, of course, is the story line of both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, who allegedly suffered knife wounds in the back from high-court appointees who upheld Roe. There are various theories to explain these instances of Sudden Pro-Choice Syndrome but no clear explanation. It's the darnedest thing, but when it comes to the most sacred cause in the Republican canon, the right to life, Republican presidents somehow find a way to mess up. You'd almost think they were doing it on purpose.

I actually laughed out loud when I read this because it encapsulated some of my more cynical thoughts on the Grand Ole Party. Truth be told, I don't know if Harriet Miers will end up supporting Roe or not. As such, I don't know if that was Bush's intent. Honestly, though, if they read the numbers even remotely the same way I do, we have to consider it a possibility.

Like Ramesh, I do believe that the uptick in pro-choice numbers is temporary. The problem, however, is that I see it returning with a vengeance whenever it actually matters.

[via American Scene]

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick sees nefarious motives in pro-life proposals (such as third-trimester bans and parental notification/consent) that would cut down on abortion. She believes, get this, that conservatives are proposing these things because they want to, get this, cut down on the number of abortions.

Well duh.

Pro-lifers do not want any abortions. This much is clear. However, that does not make limited proposals inherently dishonest. In fact, the public at large wants to limit these abortions, so why would the conservatives try to hide it?

To pick a liberal cause, let's take the death penalty. Capital punishment opponents do not want there to be capital punishment . If this sentence sounds redundent to you, proposals to curb certain kinds of abortions having the nefarious effect of cutting down on certain kinds of abortions seems equally so to me. However, to use Dahlia's logic, opponents of capital punishment trying to ban the executions of the mentally handicapped are a covert attempt to cut down on the number of executions. Well no kidding. Take the total number of people executed, subtract the mentally handicapped, and (assuming that there is at least one mentally handicapped individual being executed), the result will be less than the number of people originally scheduled to be executed.

The same is quite true for abortion. Take all of the abortions out there, subtract third-term abortions and those abortions averted due to parental notification/consent, and you will have less abortions than you would if you did not subtract third-terms and adolescent abortions (assuming, of course, that the subtracted value is greater than zero).

But, the question is, are these groups being dishonest by not stating that the goal is reduced overall abortions? Only if (a) that's what they were actually saying, and (b) they didn't have a particular interest in trying to target the specific abortions/executions that they are targetting. While I have no doubt that some opponents of abortion and capital punishment may be saying that this has nothing to do with limiting the number of abortions and executions, that's not typically the argument they put forward. But just as importantly, not all executions and not all abortions are created equal.

Let's start with executions. All executions may be bad, but most would admit that some are worse than others. There's a reason that they were out in full-force over Karla Faye Tucker and not Tim McVeigh. Similarly, a mentally handicapped individual is particularly undeserving of capital punishment because they are less likely to have been able to think through the consequences before they committed the crime. Their minds are less able to compute cause-and-effect. Therefore, even though they aren't winning the war, the smaller victories in battle remain gratifying. They may not be able to stop a serial killer from getting the needle, but they can stop someone that may not have entirely known what they were doing. That's an achievement.

The same is true with abortion. While there are those that believe that all abortion is murder, most draw distinctions. There is, for instance, the exception trifecta of rape, incest, and mortality. Similarly, third-trimester abortions are considered particularly heinus. A staggering majority of the public agrees with them on this matter. That doesn't make them correct, necessarily, but to suggest that 80% of the public is hoodwinked into seeing a distinction where absolutely none exists is not the argument of someone trying to influence public opinion. Let's put it this way, whatever unspoken doubts pro-life people may have about an implanted egg, they most assuredly to not have about an 30-plus week baby that is probably viable outside the womb.

Parental consent/notification is a tricker subject. Parental consent is an effort to limit abortions the same way that requiring parental consent for piercings (an example put forth by Ms. Lithwick) is an effort to cut down on piercings. In fact, I have never heard any other rationale. The number of kids that would like piercings minus the number that have parents that would not consent is going to be less than the number that wants them so long as the number of objecting parents is greater than zero. So yes, giving parents veto power over something like that is an effort to say that a kid is not equipped to make decisions about piercings is also not equipped to make decisions about terminating pregnancy and an effort to give those parents that do not want it to happen the power to make it not happen. You may not agree with those ends, but they're pretty straightforward.

Lithwick's best argument is for parental notification. Notification is not entirely an attempt to "open communication" between parents and children, but that was never the ends that was always the means. There are two ways in which this can present pregnancy: First, it gives the parents a chance to try to convince the daughter not to have an abortion. There is a basic argument that a parent ought to have the right to have input on such a large decision. You may disagree with that argument, but it's there and it's genuine. But secondly and I think more importantly, it means that they cannot simply make the problem "go away" by having an abortion. They can make the fetus go away, of course, but the notion of having an abortion to keep their sexual activity secret (as opposed to adoption, where it could not remain one) becomes a non-issue. This is, in the eyes of conservative Christians, a way to prevent an impressionable youngster from trying to make two wrongs (premarital sex and abortion) make a right (not disrupting the family).

Now there is a very strong counterargument that a young woman is equipped to make these decisions without the input of a parent. There is also an argument that they have the right to have an abortion simply to keep their sexual activity hush-hush, if they choose. There is also an argument that such cases are rare and poor cases to derive law from. But these arguments strike at the very core of the debate that Lithwick is saying is irrelevent to pro-lifers (the autonomy of youngsters).

For both sides, autonomy of the young is a battlefield, but abortion is the map. On the subject of parental notification, pro-choicers believe that the right to an abortion supercedes the right of a parent's control (or notification) of health care (a control they have in most other matters). Pro-lifers, on the other hand, believe that since abortion is too big and too important for an exception to be made in favor of those that might make an immoral decision for the wrong reasons. I'm hard-pressed to say that either side is being disingenuous -- except when they try to pretend that their side always discusses the issue with more honor and honesty than the other.

Via Adrianne and Mac, I found an interesting article about an Alabama Catholic school that tried to stop a young lady from walking at graduation because she was pregnant. There is little that I can say that those two and Kathy the Cake Eater haven't about the incident, except to say that I'm a bit more perturbed about the sexism than their making the perfect the enemy of the good. That Catholics see the moral glass as half-empty and that they are not willing to compromise one "evil" (premarital sex) to avoid a greater "evil" (abortion) is reasonably well documented.

But the fact that they let the child's father walk makes it pretty certain that they are at best insincere and at worst... something worst. I think it's a combination of both. It doesn't seem that there was any doubt that he was the father, or at least that he was doing certain sinful things that could make him a father. In either case, it takes two to tango. I tend to get frustrated when the response to unwanted fatherhood is "he should have thought of that before he had sex" and the response to unwanted motherhood is "she should still have a choice" and the continued notion that pregnancy is something that a man does to a woman rather than something they do together, but this is no less infuriating. In fact, given that she's kept the baby (and thus done the rightest thing she could in the Catholic moral code under the circumstances), and we don't know for sure that the guy that was allowed to walk would, it infuriates me a bit more.

Which brings me to the point that Adrianne, Mac, and Kathy all made, though Adrianne went the farthest in to, at some point you've gotta try and see the moral glass as being half-full. Sometimes, I believe, what you do about your sins once they're committed says as much about your character as how many you commit. Though I do understand the Catholic point-of-view that they're not bound to bend to the mores of contemporary society. I understand, but I'm not Catholic and those two facts are not completely unrelated.

Fewer Teens Engaging in Sex, Study Finds:

The National Center for Health Statistics said that for girls aged 15 to 17 the percentage who had ever had intercourse declined from 38 percent in 1995 to 30 percent in 2002.

For boys, the agency said, the decline was 43 percent to 31 percent.

"There is much good news in these results," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said in a statement. "More teenagers are avoiding or postponing sexual activity, which can lead to sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancy or emotional and societal responsibilities for which they are not prepared."

I think most of us (except boys from 15-17) would see this as good news.

A couple specifics of interest. First is that boys report having had sex in greater numbers than girls do. My first thought was that the boys were perhaps more forthcoming/exaggerative about their sexual experience. Especially considering this fact mentioned later:

Teen girls' first sexual partners are most commonly boys one to three years older than they are, usually a steady boyfriend, the report said.

The last part of it is in-and-of-itself a good thing, though we get back to the honesty issue. But if the age difference is 1-3 years then many or most the boys they're sleeping with are out of 15-17.

But then again, I suppose the girls could be racking up more sexual partners than the boys of that the 15-17 year old boys are closing the gap by sleeping with girls 12-16, which is possible.

It's worth noting one last nugget:

While there was a drop in sexual activity at ages 15 to 17, the share of never-married females aged 18-19 who had ever had intercourse was 69 percent in 2002, up from 68 percent in 1995.

By contrast, for 18- and 19-year-old boys the share dropped from 75 percent in 1995 to 64 percent in 2002.

The contrast is pretty strange and I haven't a clue why it might be.

But if this is linear (and the 15-17 year olds of today will become the 18-19 year olds of today) then they're only marginally pushing back their sexual activity by a couple of years. 18-19 is a lot better than 15-17 by most measures, though 20-23 would be a lot better since the 18-19 year old set are in a period of serious transition in their life and in some ways have even worse judment than 17 year olds who are pretty set in their own way.