Several times in the past year I've made the argument that some time in the next decade the pro-life argument for better birth control and sex education will take off. As a former member of the religious right, I can tell you most of them care more about abortion than about abstinence (I mean, murder is a lot worse than fornication). Furthermore, the evidence exists now that despite having fewer abortions per pregnancy in the US we have a lot more abortions per person because of bad sex ed and bad avalibility of birth control (see this article). Finally, there are leaders in the religious right who have at least a little bit of pragmatism to their morals--even concerning sex. For example Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family says that parents shouldn't discourage masterbation because its much less dangerous and harmful than teenage sex and you need to choose your battles. I really think that one of these days someone important enough will pick up this argument and it will catch on because it makes so much sense.

However, once and a while I run accross an article like this one by David Broder in the Washington Post (link via Matthew Yglesias) which discusses how the Bush administration has just made a decision which will result in hundreds of thousands of additional abortions and tens of thousands of additional deaths, all so to play to the conservative base by not supporting abortions in China. How can you possibly sell this as "pro-life"? I really don't get it. I know a lot of people in the religious right and I can't see any of them continuing to support this policy for more than 5 minutes once they've gotten some real information on it. Isn't the reason you have leaders, like say a president, to explain to their constituency why they should be supporting something which initially looks like its against their beliefs?

I don't think there's hypocrasy in being "pro-life" and for the death penalty, however I do think there's something hypocritical about being "pro-life" and supporting a policy which kills babies and toddlers. Even if life begins at conception it doesn't end at birth.