{"id":261,"date":"2006-02-15T11:36:17","date_gmt":"2006-02-15T16:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=261"},"modified":"2006-02-15T11:39:10","modified_gmt":"2006-02-15T16:39:10","slug":"wal-mart-and-the-morning-after","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=261","title":{"rendered":"Wal-Mart and the morning after"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Politics is nasty enough when it&#8217;s about real issues, because it<br \/>\nalways reduces to somebody holding a gun on somebody else.  But<br \/>\nsomehow I find it hardest to take when it&#8217;s about faux issues, all the<br \/>\nmachinery of coercion enlisted to no purpose other than for fools to<br \/>\nposture at each other.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a perfect example. The state of Massachusetts, responding to<br \/>\na lawsuit backed by abortion-rights groups, has <a href='http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/news\/2006\/02\/14\/D8FP75783.html'>ordered<br \/>\nWal-Mart to sell emergency contraception, the so-called &#8220;morning<br \/>\nafter&#8221; pill that prevents implantation of a fertilized egg in the<br \/>\nuterine wall.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Leading off the parade of morons in this little drama is the<br \/>\nReligious Right, for huffing and puffing that the action of this pill<br \/>\nis tantamount to killing a human being.  Way to go, guys!  Keep those<br \/>\nwomen barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen where they belong; perish<br \/>\nforbid they should be allowed any control over reproduction just<br \/>\nbecause pregnancy can easily kill them. Your new slogan, I guess, is<br \/>\n&#8220;Every child of rape is a child of God.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>No less idiotic are the three women who sued.  Hello, girls? The<br \/>\neffect period on the pill is less than the amount of time to ship the<br \/>\nlittle suckers from Canada.  Order on-line and save.  Better yet, show<br \/>\na little forethought: buy in advance from some local pharmacy that<br \/>\nwants the business Wal-Mart isn&#8217;t getting and keep &#8217;em handy.<\/p>\n<p>Ahhh, but <em>that<\/em> sane and sensible course wouldn&#8217;t do anything<br \/>\nfor the public visibility and fund-raising of the groups backing them.<br \/>\nThe First Law of Victim-Group Politics is: You can never have too many<br \/>\nvictims.  If they don&#8217;t occur naturally, you must create them.<\/p>\n<p>Bringing up the rear, and the worst of the lot, is whatever meddler<br \/>\nin the Massachusetts legislature thought it was a peachy idea to<br \/>\nmandate what Wal-Mart sells.  Repeat after me: it isn&#8217;t <em>any of your<br \/>\ndamned business<\/em> what Wal-Mart sells.  There&#8217;s this concept called<br \/>\n&#8220;free enterprise&#8221;.  Maybe you&#8217;ve heard of it?<\/p>\n<p>And all this foofaraw is completely meaningless.  Because the bluenoses<br \/>\ncan&#8217;t actually prevent anyone from buying morning-after pills, there is<br \/>\nabsolutely no point in political mandates intended to ensure that they can.<br \/>\nBut Wal-Mart does its propitiatory dance to the right, and Massachusetts<br \/>\npoliticians do their propitiatory dance to the left, and nobody anywhere<br \/>\ngains a damn thing.<\/p>\n<p>Nobody, that is, except professional busybodies &mdash; people who want<br \/>\nto politicize <em>all<\/em> choices. A swift death to all such vermin would<br \/>\nleave the rest of us far better off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Politics is nasty enough when it&#8217;s about real issues, because it always reduces to somebody holding a gun on somebody else. But somehow I find it hardest to take when it&#8217;s about faux issues, all the machinery of coercion enlisted to no purpose other than for fools to posture at each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}