Ross Douthat is a Religionist Poet Quoting Hack

If ever there was a need for some genetically manipulated critter requiring maudlin, self-serving millennial look-at-me-effete-snob-and-intellectual-dilettante-that-I am qualities and the actual sense of an eggplant, Ross Douthat could provide the DNA.  I had to hold down a little bit of throw-up in the back of my throat while reading THIS spurious drivel. From under WHICH nasty critter-filled rock does the NYT find its op ed writers?

This is the paradox of America’s unborn. No life is so desperately sought after, so hungrily desired, so carefully nurtured. And yet no life is so legally unprotected, and so frequently destroyed.

How many stupid diatribes do we have to endure from people that confuse scrambled eggs with fried chicken in the name of a mythological angry sky god before we move on to the living breathing BABIES that are treated abominably in this country?

Prior to his own personal religionist conclusion, he dribbles this:

Some of this shift reflects the growing acceptance of single parenting. But some of it reflects the impact of Roe v. Wade. Since 1973, countless lives that might have been welcomed into families like Thernstrom’s — which looked into adoption, and gave it up as hopeless — have been cut short in utero instead.

And lives are what they are. On the MTV special, the people around Durham swaddle abortion in euphemism. The being inside her is just “pregnancy tissue.” After the abortion, she recalls being warned not to humanize it: “If you think of it like [a person], you’re going to make yourself depressed.” Instead, “think of it as what it is: nothing but a little ball of cells.”

He needs to look at the anti-abortion ‘swaddling’ in his own pathetic euphemisms before he gets all 3rd century on any one that actually CAN get pregnant.  Let me just clear this one up for him.

THIS is a fertilized egg e.g. clump of cells e.g. pregnancy tissue

This is a new born baby needing food, shelter, clothing, education and healthy mother

It takes around nine months of gestation to get from picture on the left to the picture on the right. Picture on the right shows  a living, breathing human being.  At some point during the third trimester, the protohuman might become something that can be sustained on its own. It may live. It may eventually breathe. There’s a lot of stuff before that picture, however.  A few fluttering heartbeats do not make a sentient human being.   A few little buds that may become arms or hands do not make up a fully sentient, breathing human being.  It is not up to you to figure out when it becomes a sentient being for every one, Ross.  Science–at this point–can’t even do it.  Science is the germane thing here for law; not your personal mythology.

But, more importantly, let’s keep this in mind:

One in four children are on food stamps in this country.

There is limited access to prenatal care in this country. Our rates for infant mortality are comparable to third world countries because access to prenatal care is restricted.

While extraordinary progress has been made in the last half century in infant survival and health, the decline in infant mortality rates in the United States has not kept up with progress in other industrialized countries. According to the most recent data from UNICEF, the U.S. infant mortality rate ranked 27th among 30 industrialized countries.  In fact, in 2002 our nation’s infant mortality rate rose for the first time in more than 40 years; after declines in 2003 and 2004, the rate rose again in 2005, then declined again in 2006.

There are lots of uninsured children and babies who are at risk every day of dying from very simple, curable diseases in this country.

There are more than 8 million uninsured children in the United States. Millions more are underinsured. As a result, millions of children lack timely access to comprehensive health and mental health services, and must delay or forgo preventive care and treatment due to cost or other barriers.

• Uninsured children are 10 times more likely than insured children to have unmet medical needs, such as untreated asthma, diabetes or obesity, and are 5 times as likely as an insured child to go more than 2 years without seeing a doctor. Regular health screenings help doctors identify and treat problems preventively and are crucial to a child’s healthy development.An estimated two-thirds of children and youth with mental health needs are not getting the help they need. In fact, unmet need is as high today as it was 20 years ago.
• Uninsured children are more than 4 times as likely as an insured child to have an unmet dental health need. In 2000, children missed more than 51 million hours of school because of dental-related illness.
• Uninsured children are more likely than insured children to perform poorly in school; in contrast, enrolling children in health coverage has been associated with greatly improved school performance.
• Uninsurance disproportionately affects minority children. While 1 in 14 White children is uninsured, the statistic jumps to nearly 1 in 9 for Black children and 1 in 5 for Latino children.

Hell, we can’t even vaccinate our living, breathing, children.

Despite these improvements, one out of four Black two year olds—and one out of five Latino two year olds—have not been fully immunized.

Now, can we talk about access to Birth Control, sex education and Family planning that very might well prevent the little MTV “mishaps’ about which your sanctimonious white male ass is in such a bunchy about?

•Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia explicitly allow all minors to consent to contraceptive services without a parent’s involvement (as of January 2010). Two states (Texas and Utah) require parental consent for contraceptive services in state-funded family planning programs.[5]

•Ninety percent of publicly funded family planning clinics counsel clients younger than 18 about abstinence and the importance of communicating with parents about sex.[6]

•Sixty percent of teens younger than 18 who use a clinic for sexual health services say their parents know they are there.[7]

•Among those whose parents do not know, 70% would not use the clinic to obtain prescription contraceptives if the law required that their parents be notified.[7]

•One in five teens whose parents do not know they obtain contraceptive services would continue to have sex but would either rely on withdrawal or not use any contraceptives if the law required that their parents be notified of their visit.[7]

•Only 1% of all minor adolescents who use sexual health services indicate that their only reaction to a law requiring their parents’ involvement in obtaining prescription contraceptives would be to stop having sex.[7]

•Teens are waiting longer to have sex than they did in the past. Some 13% of never-married females and 15% of never-married males aged 15–19 in 2002 had had sex before age 15, compared with 19% and 21%, respectively, in 1995.[1]

•The majority (59%) of sexually experienced teen females had a first sexual partner who was 1–3 years their senior. Only 8% had first partners who were six or more years older.[1]

•More than three-quarters of teen females report that their first sexual experience was with a steady boyfriend, a fiancé, a husband or a cohabiting partner.[1]

I would now like to suggest that Ross Douthart is an irrelevant voice on the topic and he should STFU.

(Recent unplanned-pregnancy movies like “Juno” and “Knocked Up” made abortion seem not only unnecessary but repellent.)

Here’s hoping his angry sky god forces him to a hell realm where he’s perpetually dealing with his own pregnancy under all the worst conditions imaginable.  I would gladly offer up the few I had as an example trying to bring youngest daughter to term.  Yes.  Abortion can be THE moral choice.  Also, it’s none of Douthart’s damned business under ANY circumstances.  Maybe that’s his issue and that’s why he thinks it’s a paradox of all things.