Blind men and elephants

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I am.

Over at Balloon Juice,

http://www.balloon-juice.com/archives/004814.html

John Cole read the same story I did, several days ago -- about the 16 year old who got her 18 year old to stomp on her womb until she miscarried her twin fetuses: he's now being charged with a felony, because of a state law that makes a fetus equal to a human life, making what he did murder, while she's not being charged with anything -- and came to a wholly different conclusion.

John Cole's reaction is that both the girl and her boyfriend should be charged, though he's good enough to concede that "perhaps" it shouldn't be with "capital murder."

My reaction, of course, is that this was exactly what was wrong with requiring parental consent for abortion. The reason this girl was driven to this sort of bizarre and desperate behavior -- which if Mr. Cole had bothered to read the news report he would have discovered -- was because her mother had decided she should not have an abortion.

The girl, at sixteen, didn't want to have a child. She sure didn't want twins. She didn't want to get married. She didn't want any of this. The mother was forcing this on her. The mother was taking her choice away from her. Had the choice been left in the girl's camp, there would have been no stomping and no heinious act for John Cole to be shocked by. There would have been a first trimester abortion -- or, probably, a judicious use of birth control, much earlier on.

Imagine such a thing.