By AS I KEEP SAYING, THE GOP NEEDS TO CAMPAIGN TO MAKE AMERICAN ABORTION LAWS “MORE EUROPEAN.” BBC: European Abortion Rules. Imagine, for example, what people would say if Texas tried to impose this rule:
Between 12 and 18 weeks of gestation, the women must discuss the procedure with a social worker. After 18 weeks, permission must be obtained from the National Board of Health and Welfare.
Abortions must be performed by a licensed medical practitioner and, except in cases of emergency, in a general hospital or other approved healthcare establishment.
That’s what it would take to make Texas’s laws as restrictive as Sweden’s.
When She’s Right, She’s Right
Via Edroso, I was interested to see that the underlying issue that caused the day free speech died chez Althouse was a dispute with Glenn Reynolds, in which Reynolds was of course wrong. I guess Reynolds is at his very worst in bloodthirty warmonger mode, but his greasy resentful misogynist mode is surely a close runner-up. I endorse everything Roy says. To add a little bit, here are two things that MRAs willfully fail to understand:
- Child support is for the benefit of children, not parents.
- Women alone bear the direct physical and emotional costs of pregnancy, and under our current political arrangements generally bear a disproportionate share of the burdens of childrearing as well.
Lying about being on birth control is, to be clear, a bad, unethical practice. Nonetheless, a man who in such circumstances is nonetheless asked to contribute child support is not the victim of something comparable to sexual assault. We went through this a while back with Dalton Conley, but he fact is the costs of pregnancy just aren’t borne equally between men and women; it would be nice if they were, but they aren’t. Somebody has to decide whether to carry a pregnancy to term, and that should obviously be the woman who bears the costs. And if a woman decides to bring a child to term, this fact can’t obviate the financial responsibility the father might have for contributing to the well-being of the child, and the costs associated with childbirth are still not evenly distributed despite Reynolds’s whining on behalf of men who might have to make a financial contribution to the well-being of his child. A woman who gets some measure of child support didn’t just win the lottery, and child support shouldn’t be determined based on point-scoring between partners but based on what’s in the best interest of the child.
As a bonus, Roy found this gem among Reynolds’s many anti-choice in passive-aggressive “pro-choice” clothing arguments:
I agree, let’s make Texas’s abortion laws as restrictive as Sweden’s! I’m glad Reynolds has come out in favor of repealing the Hyde Amendment (and, indeed, comprehensive public health coverage), making abortion easily and widely available in public hospitals, and lavish public child care support. I mean, surely a principled supporter of abortion rights like Reynolds doesn’t just want the restrictions without the many important aspects of European policy that make abortion more accessible to women as well as the policies that make it easier if a woman chooses to carry a pregnancy to term, right?
Man, Reynolds has been working this con a long time.