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Read other letters about this article
but I must be sleeping since I thought that you said you blamed young American women for the uncommonly rate of abortion in this country.
You must have anticipated these caveats I would have with that:
1. You say abortion is a contitutional issue...determined by the supreme court in roe v. wade, no less. How many young women supreme court justices are there? Really? That many? Next point...
2. Has there ever been a young woman able to avail herself of abortion services without help (at least once) from a young man? Men have access to birth control too...condoms...no? they don't always work, but as conservatives like to say, abstinence does. any man who is against abortion has the option of not have sex with a woman who he believes will be likely to have an abortion. Having a good relationship with the young woman, an open line of communication, and planning in advance to raise a family together are helpful tools that can empower him and them to avoid the abortion situation.
3. You don't address the fact that there are equal numbers of young women in Europe. And legalized abortion in Europe. And yet abortion numbers are lower than here. Young women are not your serious answer to my question, why do Americans have more abortions than Europeans with access to legalized abortions do? Unless you can prove a shortage of European young women, in comparison with the United States, your answer makes little sense.
And, you don't address my suggested answer which is that the U.S. has gone down a bad path with some of the abstinence only sex ed programs which have contributed to the highest rate of teen age pregnancy and STD infection rate in the "first" world...I suggest that maybe there are more abortions in the U.S. because there is more overall unprotected sex among teen agers here...
I appreciate your analysis of the Vietnam war era...but that's before my time. I do remember reading though that Richard Nixon campaigned on the promise that he would end the war in Vietnam and it took him well toward the end of his second term to fulfill that promise...I guess compared to some of the new conservatives, he could be called liberals' best and brightest, but it's a bit of a stretch.
I'm a pragmatist who doesn't fully embrace any particular ideology, but my tendency is to believe that the strong are less in need of the protections of government than the weak. I actually share your dislike of deficits...but I'm afraid I can't be quite as savoir faire as you are about the economic failing of banks and crashing of economic systems (as economists conservative and liberal are speaking about). Do you have a form of independent income that keeps you safe from all storms? I don't. I've worked between one and two jobs all of my life. David Brooks essay in the New York Times writes movingly about the dangers of this recession and the biggest one that I remember is diminished expectations. This might be the way it affects me, and it might be the way it affects my friends and contemporaries....funny that this past era is already being described as a gilded age...but it wasn't gilded for everyone. I guess some of that wealth grabbing just wasn't a part of my world.
and I could be laid off from my job as early as January...depending on how things go. I feel less que sera about it...whether or not what they are doing will save the economy I'm not sure. But I understand the urge to do something, because the suffering for a lot of people will not be only in their heads, to quote a certain conservative economist, phil gramm...and keynsian economics is preferable to a depression like the 1930's...
