Wal-Mart and the morning after
<p>Politics is nasty enough when it&#8217;s about real issues, because it<br />
always reduces to somebody holding a gun on somebody else.  But<br />
somehow I find it hardest to take when it&#8217;s about faux issues, all the<br />
machinery of coercion enlisted to no purpose other than for fools to<br />
posture at each other.</p>
<p><span id="more-261"></span></p>
<p>Here&#8217;s a perfect example. The state of Massachusetts, responding to<br />
a lawsuit backed by abortion-rights groups, has <a href='http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/02/14/D8FP75783.html'>ordered<br />
Wal-Mart to sell emergency contraception, the so-called &#8220;morning<br />
after&#8221; pill that prevents implantation of a fertilized egg in the<br />
uterine wall.</a></p>
<p>Leading off the parade of morons in this little drama is the<br />
Religious Right, for huffing and puffing that the action of this pill<br />
is tantamount to killing a human being.  Way to go, guys!  Keep those<br />
women barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen where they belong; perish<br />
forbid they should be allowed any control over reproduction just<br />
because pregnancy can easily kill them. Your new slogan, I guess, is<br />
&#8220;Every child of rape is a child of God.&#8221;</p>
<p>No less idiotic are the three women who sued.  Hello, girls? The<br />
effect period on the pill is less than the amount of time to ship the<br />
little suckers from Canada.  Order on-line and save.  Better yet, show<br />
a little forethought: buy in advance from some local pharmacy that<br />
wants the business Wal-Mart isn&#8217;t getting and keep &#8216;em handy.</p>
<p>Ahhh, but <em>that</em> sane and sensible course wouldn&#8217;t do anything<br />
for the public visibility and fund-raising of the groups backing them.<br />
The First Law of Victim-Group Politics is: You can never have too many<br />
victims.  If they don&#8217;t occur naturally, you must create them.</p>
<p>Bringing up the rear, and the worst of the lot, is whatever meddler<br />
in the Massachusetts legislature thought it was a peachy idea to<br />
mandate what Wal-Mart sells.  Repeat after me: it isn&#8217;t <em>any of your<br />
damned business</em> what Wal-Mart sells.  There&#8217;s this concept called<br />
&#8220;free enterprise&#8221;.  Maybe you&#8217;ve heard of it?</p>
<p>And all this foofaraw is completely meaningless.  Because the bluenoses<br />
can&#8217;t actually prevent anyone from buying morning-after pills, there is<br />
absolutely no point in political mandates intended to ensure that they can.<br />
But Wal-Mart does its propitiatory dance to the right, and Massachusetts<br />
politicians do their propitiatory dance to the left, and nobody anywhere<br />
gains a damn thing.</p>
<p>Nobody, that is, except professional busybodies &mdash; people who want<br />
to politicize <em>all</em> choices. A swift death to all such vermin would<br />
leave the rest of us far better off.</p>
