I turned to the New York Times yesterday and saw that, remarkably, they had decided to publish yet another op-ed from Will Saletan arguing that conflicts over abortion can be ended if people would just agree that Will Saletan is completely right about everything. The "practicality" of this solution, I must admit, continues to escape me. Fortunately, Jesse, Steve and Mary have saved me some time by dealing with many of the obvious problems with this argument.
What continues to amaze me is that Saletan still doesn't seem to understand that perhaps anti-choicers support the criminalization of abortion for reasons that go beyond a desire to protect fetal life, although of course his ability to place op-eds seems to depend on his ongoing failure to understand this. (You would think that the recent movement for abortion regulations that inherently can't protect fetal life but can make obtaining abortions less safe for some women might have tipped him off, but I guess not.) As Steve says, Saletan's argument essentially amounts to a claim that if cultural reactionaries simply abandon most of their core principles we could end the culture wars. Alas, tautology is not a plan.
--Scott Lemieux
