I want to thank Ramesh Ponnuru for responding so thoughtfully to my post on Obama’s abortion statements yesterday. I especially appreciate his digging out the CDC numbers about instances of multiple abortions, though, for what it’s worth, I think my point about pro-lifers caricaturing those who get abortions as lazy or selfish stands. And since we don’t know the reasons the women behind the CDC numbers had multiple abortions, I’m not sure how it follows that they were using “abortion as birth control,” in the sense that it is the only form of birth control they practice. (Is that more clear?)
As I’ve gotten older, my own views on abortion have clouded somewhat — in part because I know more and more women who’ve had them. Their experiences, if anything, have made me less ardent. But I also feel as strongly as I ever did that the government has little business in validating the some of their reasons but not others. Ramesh gets to judge them, if he wants to, and so can his church, but I don’t want my government to.