In direct contravention of my wife's explicit instructions, herewith I inaugurate my first blog. Long may it prosper.

For some reason, I think I have something to say to you. You think you have something to say to me? Email me at: gideonsblogger -at- yahoo -dot- com

 
By the way, in case anyone wondered in the wake of my comments on the northeastern GOP that I'm just a namby-pamby socially-liberal but fiscally conservative type, nothing makes my blood boil quite like stories like this one about the attitudes of abortion providers towards statutory rape.

(Actually, taking campaign contributions from Red China gets my blood boiling even more. But let's let that pass for the moment . . .)

The funny thing is, I understand how the Planned Parenthood types think. I know they think they are doing what is best for these girls. They think that if anyone else gets involved, the girls will be more frightened, less "in control" of their lives, and less safe. Far better the girl get an anonymous abortion and then undergo counselling for whatever other "issues" she has that may have contributed to her pregnancy (notice how, in a statutory case of rape, it's now her fault; what happened to blaming the perpetrator, not the victim?) than for her to be thrown into the criminal justice system against her will and forced to deal with her crisis in front of so many other people (parents especially). And besides, so many of these girls are in troubled circumstances: broken homes, family abuse and neglect. Shouldn't we just place our trust in the abortion providers and let them do the job that needs to be done?

I went to school in the early-90s heydey of date-rape hysteria, and even then feminists got themselves all confused on the subject of underage sexuality. They wanted teens to be entirely free to control their destiny - have sex if you want, with whomever you want (preferably of the same sex), and deal with the complications however you want (if these include pregnancy, preferably by means of abortion; you don't, after all, want to "ruin" your life). And they managed to hold all these opinions simultaneous with a terror of male predation and opinions that sexual relations between men and women were per se oppressive. If you can hold all these notions in your head simultaneously, and you have convinced yourself that an abortion is an entirely morally neutral decision, and if you have convinced yourself that sexual experimentation is a positive good, then it makes perfect sense to hold a young girl's right to an anonymous abortion to be more important than bringing a statutory rapist (and possibly a forcible rapist) to justice.

I'm sorry, I'm getting a little upset. I'm going to go back to work.
posted by Noah at 4:02 PM