Saturday 19 May 2007

Let's talk about sex (in the NYT)

In a minor miracle, a guest columnist in the New York Times has written an op-ed on sex and contraception that abstains from the culture war. Not a single shot is fired.

Something has to give of course: the writer (a surgeon) manages his unlikely feat by taking a shot instead at the entire political class in the States:
One statistic seems to me to give the lie to all the rhetoric about abortion, and it’s this: one in three women under the age of 45 have an abortion during their lifetime. One in three. All politicians ... say they want to make abortion at least rare ... But it’s clear they haven’t been serious ...

The burden of the argument is then that individuals need to get serious: parents, certainly, but really adults in general. (I knew that abortion was chiefly an adult issue, but I didn't know the numbers: apparently only 7% of abortions in the US occur in minors.)

Just about everyone, no doubt, would have things that they might want to say on the question, that the article leaves out. But the writer is 100% for real on all of the things that he does say. On this topic, I'll count that as a result.

(Sorry, but columnists in the NYT are in the Times Select paid section. So this is another free ad.)

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