Here is a fact of true metaphysical standing: no man carries a child to birth.

What? Too simple?

I once had a discussion of abortion with a woman in whom I was seriously interested, when she made that point in a way — in a tone of voice and with a look — that made more clearly to me than ever before that a determined woman will have an abortion, and no man has anything to say about it. In the same way that a person will acquire guns if they’re determined, or that a doper will cop whether the state likes it or not, she will do the deed, if that’s what’s really in her mind.

The very next thought in my head, though, was, “Well you’d bloody well do it without me, that’s for sure.”

Government funding for abortions is completely out of the question, of course, for more fundamental reasons of private property: don’t put a gun to anyone’s head to take their money for any reason whatever. Period. That’s that.

The more general question of moral probity in the matter can only be dealt with in terms of culture, which is notoriously unavailable to legislation. Individuals of conviction settle these questions over time, in the same way that die-hard racists will never be touched by the law while their enlightened opponants never needed the law to make for them the point that racism is a bad way to live.

The thing to do with “pro choice” individuals is to let them have their “choice”, and everything that goes with it, fully, to include the opprobrium and ostracism. Personally, I don’t hang with racists, or people who have abortions. They’re dismissed.

I hate this whole discussion. With minor reservations, I do my very best to stay away from it. That’s because it is bound up in values so intensely personal that there is no serious point at all in addressing it in terms of public policy. (That’s as if, of course, “public policy” were a valid concept to begin with. It’s not, but it is often necessary to stipulate to the fallacy in order to demonstrate its manifestations in reality.)

In the same way that civilized people do not refrain from robbery or murder on account of the state’s laws against these behaviors, it is a matter of culture to understand the responsibility of aborting a pregnancy — or becoming pregnant to begin with. The conservative mind, however, simply cannot grasp the fact that government is perfectly incompetent to prevent these behaviors, perpetrated by barbarians, with its presumptuous and paternal dictates against them. Nothing could be more clear than the criminal codes prohibiting murder, and thousands are killed by their fellows every year. The charade goes on: the government’s job is to prevent murders. This delusion is impenetrable with fact.

I maintain that no respectable person in ordinary circumstances would endorse abortion. To my mind, the person who does so has almost always arrived at the crisis because of a more fundamental irresponsibility over one of the most serious aspects of human existence. In brief: sex is nothing with which to fuck around. (I don’t care to deal with conceptual gimps who would nit-pick me on the matter of rape: this should be obvious.)

The deafening hullabaloo over abortion is, to me, of a piece with the stark shrieking irrationality of the rotten punks who plopped into a paradise whose origin they never understood — America in the 1960’s. They proceeded to pillage everything about this treasure as if it were their private summer camp, and nothing — but nothing — ever had a price. This whole amoral (not immoral, but amoral) mindset has come down to the present day, and you know it. If you think about it clearly, the very term “pro-choice” is a lie. It actually means “pro-death”, because that’s what they fight to choose. There is a reason for that. The “freedom” to run the empty charade of instigating a life and then calling “time out!” when the charade begins to sag under the weight of reality, is precisely analogous, in spiritual (not religious) terms, to all the economics of socialism: it’s about living off the capital without which there is no future. In more fundamental ethical terms, it’s about attempting to live without integrity of values.

That’s what this is about: dizzy screaming brats who want to have their cake and eat it, too.

It’s an entire conceptual edifice with which conservatives are simply not equipped to seriously deal. They are hopelessly lame at coming to terms with culture, which is why they are conservatives, and it’s why all they can think to do is go cry to government.

All of human history is rife with spectacular failure of every species of government coerced prohibition. There is not a single reason on earth why this one should be anymore successful, but go try to tell ‘em that.

Good luck.