FETAL PAINS.

Kathryn J. Lopez:

In the new version, with about 40,000 views, we are told that the Texas Infant Pain Capable Protection Act will take us all “one step closer to theocracy,” marking a “war on women” and a ”a battle for vaginas.” “Owning your uteruses gives them a thrill.” The bill is a “a pain in the uterus.” Never mind the pain of the child. Never mind the pain of pretending there aren’t lives abortion hurts, beyond the dead child. Because apparently we’re comfortable not hearing the cries that should rock our consciences.

She talking about a Schoolhouse Rock parody, the very existence of which she considers "confirmation that absolutely nothing is, in fact, sacred." Someone should make a pro-choice Little Lulu cartoon and really blow her mind.

Meanwhile Megan McArdle does what I have come to recognize as the the typical libertarian abortion thing of acting as straight man to foam-mouthed pro-life conservatives:

Make no mistake: I’m pro-choice... But that doesn’t mean I view abortion as having the same moral weight as a haircut or a nose-piercing -- just another personal choice about what you do with your body.

I'm all for women's lib, but these bra-burning kooks, etc. Enter stage right National Review's Witchfinder General David French, who reads this absolutely the way it was intended:

I think McArdle is largely right. Americans tend to be reluctant to “force” women into diffcult circumstances...

Love those quote marks.

...but are broadly unsympathetic to abortions for convenience — thus the backlash you often see even from pro-choice advocates when people admit, for example, to killing their child to preserve a short-lived pro volleyball career.

Bet you didn't know that most abortions are enjoyed by the Undeserving Pregnant -- sluts who deserve what happened to them and just want their unborns sucked out so they they can get back to hot yoga.

McArdle states that it is “impossible to completely separate the good [abortions] from the bad,” and — legally — she is largely right. Government can’t possibly construct a screening mechanism that separates ”good” (i.e., publicly supported because of the mother’s acknowledged difficulties) abortions from the “bad,” nor would the pro-life movement ever support such a regime. The pro-life answer is to match our honesty about abortion with charity towards mothers in crisis, to ameliorate as best we can the pressures and difficulties that lead to the “bad” abortions.

By "charity towards mothers in crisis" he means steering them into fake "pregnancy centers" of the sort French and his buddies are trying to turn every women's health clinic into, and by "ameliorate as best we can the pressures and difficulties that lead to the 'bad' abortions," he means make all abortions illegal.

Oh, and he complains liberals are defaming him and his Operation Rescue buddies as "absurd caricatures of intolerant fundamentalists." He doesn't think he's got this image problem because of the crazy shit he says; he thinks it's because "America’s pro-abortion radicals are disproportionately clustered in the mainstream media and popular culture." Buddy, people were onto you in the days of the Pharisees.