It is a commonly accepted piece of kitchen lore that sufficiently large pieces of cheese (such as import-export grade Parma) which have developed mold on the outer service can be safely skinned of that mold without infecting it. I don't know if there's any truth to that: microbiology training is fairly low in non-related fields at the community colleges in my part of the world. But I've seen it done, and when some of those massive wheels of cheese are worth more than your biweekly net wage, you'd do it in a New York minute. Single-shot waste in the multi-hundred dollar range generally tends to become the problem of the person who did the wasting, and there's not a cook alive who, faced with the choice of making his bill payments or spending a few minutes peeling a cheese, didn't peel the cheese.
We're in a similar situation in North America with abortion. People don't like it. I'm pretty ambivalent about it. I put only mildly more consideration into the issue than I put into consideration of thinks like pap smears and mammograms. It's all woman's health, and not being a woman, I'm not, strictly, entitled to an opinion, beyond saying "Yes, I believe in universal health care for all." The state exists through the consent of the people and for the welfare of the people, and keeping the people healthy, all of the people, is the most fundamental mandate that goes along with their consent. Beyond that first impression of the matter of woman's health, my opinion carries all the weight in the field of medicine as they do in the field of Theology as practised and studied in Rome.
But, in this one small aspect of the matter, in this one class of procedures, it's a little bit my business. Seems like, even in Canada these days, you can't have an opinion on anything without having an opinion on this. I don't like it. It's entirely visceral and utterly irrational, and any rationalization I offered to explain it would be predicated on that initial lack of rationality.
Cheese, right? I promised you cheese, so keep your eye on the cheese. The cheese gets involved in this rant when I draw the connection between that analogy, and Planned Parenthood, medical non-profit and purveyor of Abortions and Birth Control. I know a lot of my readers are strongly against both, most having been kidnappees from Cam's blog after my coverage of R. v. Effert. It's a Catholic thing for some, and for others, just visceral. Counter to openness to life, as I recall.
Here's my thing. Abortion's only a part of what Planned Parenthood does. They also do educational programs and women's health clinics. Yes, abortion is morally wrong (assuming my gut instincts have anything to do with morality). But there's an extent to which a lot of people out there are perfectly happy to throw the Brie out with the penicillium and that doesn't do it for me. Sixteen percent of Canadian hospitals provide abortions. Suppose we were to extend our moral moratorium on the providers of abortion to those hospitals, and shut them down. Our system's already overtaxed without losing about a sixth of its capacity. I can't imagine the American system is running much better without diverting all of the actual health-care provided by PP into the hospital system (believe it or not, they aren't just pill-pushing abortion mills).
Do I think PP should stop performing abortions? Sure. I also think there's no need for the rum section of the local liquor store and that WalMart shouldn't carry firearms (and I say that as a man with a serious hankering to get back into his old marksmanship hobby). I'm morally opposed to the presence of "Grapples" at my grocery store. But some people don't have a problem with that. By and large, the market for all three of those things is large enough to sustain it. If Parliament were to ever legislate on whether or not grape-flavoured apples could be sold as a healthy food item, besides rolling my eyes, I'd let the majority have what it wanted. Does that mean I have to go get one? Of course not. I don't have to get an abortion, either. There's always adoption. Families in Canada have that right.
Do I think abortion laws need reforming? Absolutely. Just don't shut down hospitals and clinics while we're sussing out the language. And, for the record, with HHS and the birth control insurance mandate... sorta sounds like all the times I've heard "It doesn't matter what you believe, I'm right because I'm better at quote-mining Christ than you are" ... just out of the mouths of the liberal left, instead.
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