Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Morals? What Morals?

I was watching a snippet on MSNBC this morning as they were discussing the morning after pill and new deregulation that allows the drug to be purchased over the counter, with no age requirement. The one man on the program began to tepidly question the consensus, first by declaring himself a social liberal, then wondering aloud about the implications of a (I am paraphrasing here) barely pubescent young girl impregnated and left to deal with the consequences and the probability that the pill will aid in the cover up of the serious crime of rape etc....

Good questions. The woman doctor on the panel answered, essentially, and, it seemed, uncomfortably, that we can't let our notions of morality enter into the calculation. The right of an eleven year old girl raped by her uncle to access a powerful drug without her parents knowledge must apparently trump silly notions about morality.

But since when do liberals, or anyone else for that matter, pass laws without moral judgements? Laws are moral judgements.

Liberals know this of course, including the aforementioned doctor. She has indeed made a moral judgement, indeed several of them. Among them are that parents have no right to know that their precious 11 year old daughter has been raped by the perv uncle. And that an 11 year old should navigate such a treacherous situation without the help of parents or a doctor but with, perhaps, her perpetrator. And that it is ok to regulate any drug except those that can terminate a pregnancy.

With disturbing moral judgements such as those, I understand full well why she would pretend that moral judgements are not part of her calculus.