The author seems very happy to encounter "unusual" views like Katha Pollitt's in the Slate exchange between Pollitt-Saletan that this article has a link to. (If the author would like to encounter more such views, I suggest that she subscribe to The Nation and/or live awhile in Berkeley.)

I want to address Pollitt's view (which the author does not explain): Saletan had expressed his hope in a recent NY Times op-ed piece that through sex education and birth control, the number of abortions might be reduced. Pollitt's counterpoint is, Why should abortion be seen as something to be avoided at all?

It saddens me to read this. She realIy has to ask?

I am unequivocally pro-choice. But I'm definitely not pro-abortion.

My conviction is that women must have control over their own bodies, and aborting is a distinctly better choice than bringing yet another unwanted child into the world.

Yet it can't be a good thing for people to get accustomed to extinguishing a potential human life as a matter of course. DESPITE the fact that pro-lifers sometimes make the same point (pathetically and fanatically), this point actually makes sense.

I feel it would be a bad thing if abortion became the principal means of birth control.

Even worse, if abortion were practiced so commonly that no one felt the least qualms about it, then in the worst case scenario, someone with power could decree that foetuses of a certain race or gender or social class or predicted IQ must be aborted. This specter, which may seem ridiculously unlikely at this moment, is something we can never rule out. If we've learned anything from the history of the last 100 years, it's that some of the most heinous acts imaginable are well within the realm of possibility.

So I would much, much rather see the need for abortion averted by sex education and birth control. (Valuable side effects would include a decrease in the prevalence of STDs and teen pregnancy.)

The author writes:

Since I published my piece on the dearth of women writing about abortion on the New York Times Op-Ed page -- roughly 17 percent of Times Op-Eds on abortion were by women in a two-year period -- I've been asked if that's higher or lower than the percentage of women on the Times Op-Ed page generally. Based on a survey by the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, it looks as though it's about the same.

Great -- this is how journalism is supposed to operate. Facts should be put in context and compared with other relevant facts. Questions must be asked.

Even though someone had to prompt the author to look into this, it is surely to her credit that she wrote about this as a kind of addendum to her earlier piece. Now I wonder, Has it occurred to her to look into why only about 17% of the NY Times op-ed articles are by women? And why so few women are writing opinion pieces in general? It is remarkable that she doesn't raise the question.

Some women write superb opinion pieces and some are outstanding investigative journalists. But (and I hope this is completely untrue) if most women writers tend to ask as few questions as Ms. Franke-Ruta -- or seem to understand as little about journalism as many of the Broadsheet contributors -- that could explain why the Times and other venues publish so few opinion pieces by them.

I have no idea: It could be due to anti-woman prejudice; it could be because only about 17% of the submissions are from women.

Whatever the case, the next question should perhaps be, Why is *that* the case? (E.g., Why are only 17% of the op-ed submissions to the Times fronm women?)

If the paucity of opinion pieces from women is in fact due to sexist prejudice at the Times and elsewhere, it would be very valuable to verify that fact and get publications to cut it out.

I think that colleges should admit applicants according to their grades, aptitude, attitude, accomplishments, and recommendations.

If for some reason male applicants don't measure up, on average, to the female applicants, then tough luck.

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But making things more complicated is that there are other considerations (as discussed in the 3/23 NY Times op-ed piece by Jennifer Delahunty Britz, Deean of Admissions at Kenyon College. (Cf. http://snipurl.com/o4ug.)

Women college applicants mostly prefer to go to a college that's closer to 50-50 in its female male proportion than the 60-40 that we're rapidly approaching. Colleges like Kenyon have learned that a skewed female-male ratio will deter women (and men, too) from applying.

If there were an agreement, consent agreement, or law requiring colleges to admit purely on the basis of bona fide qualifications, that would lessen the effect of a skewed sex ratio, for then going to a different college won't solve the sex ratio problem.

But that won't make many college women happy.

So it's a real enigma what the best solution to this problem is.

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P.S. Although I don't favor affirmative action for males in this case, it should be noted that many of the same people who strongly oppose affirmative action for men are the same people who strongly support affirmative action for women in situations where they are underrepresented.

One really has to go through contortions to "justify" having both opinions at once.