Reproductive rights, Blumner style

You've got to love the St. Petersburg Times' editorial pinata, Robyn Blumner.

Her editorials emit a steady stream of inconsistency--just the sort of thing that political/religious/philosophical geeks like me love to lampoon, maim and otherwise examine under the lights.

In spite of my pledge to try to get in some type of comment promptly every week, this one is almost a full week behind. But excuses simply cause a deepening of the delay, so I'll have at it.

What is it this week? Blumneconomics? Bush-bashing? Another one-sided account of constitutional issues?

Not exactly. It's the ever-popular issue of saving the planet.

Blumner regales us with some Joni Mitchell lyrics (as if that song hasn't been covered enough already) and gives us the tried-and-true population bomb speech with some references to Cedar Key and Florida's natural beauty thrown in for local flavor.

She doesn't get to her real point until near the end:

Humans can either survive this the hard way or the easy way. The hard way is to do virtually nothing and come to equilibrium through massive population devastation. The easy way is to return to sustainability through planned parenthood - making one-child households a cultural imperative everywhere, with birth control universally accessible.

But, as we all know, religious extremism and its followers in officialdom stand in the way of such rational public policy. The world's major religions continue to encourage reckless reproduction levels with many condemning birth control and abortion. So, instead, we're on track for the hard way.

(The St. Petersburg Times)

Shouldn't we expect Blumner to find the Chinese approach a helpful model? Granted, that was mainly Chinese culture and not religion as such that favored large families, but regardless of that China's one-child-per-couple policy seems to resonate with Blumner's column--though it's notable that she shies from the line with "cultural imperative" rather than "law." "(R)ational public policy" in the next paragraph, not that I'm paying attention.

The big problem, of course, is Blumner's own stance on reproductive rights.

What scares me most about McCain, beyond our 100-year presence in Iraq, his itchy trigger-finger relative to other foes, and his enthusiasm for tax cuts for the rich, is his fiercely conservative record on women's reproductive freedom.
(Spokesmanreview.com)

Reproductive freedom? Like, a woman can decide to have fifty children if that's what she wants?

Call me a cynic, but I think Blumner would shout an atheistic "Hallelujah!" if the Supreme Court discovered the government's right to limit the number of children a woman can bear using the "living constitution" judicial philosophy. It would take care of the messy process of amending the Constitution. We'd probably all be dead from Malthus' bomb by then.

Let's just say I doubt Blumner's sincerity whenever she wraps herself in the Constitution. Just as it is for many others, the Constitution is her tool to make the world more the way she wants it.

Today, she justifies limitations on the President's Article II powers because she holds a liberal view of war and wants to damage the party in power. Tomorrow, she throws over "reproductive rights" for the good of the planet. And both times she'll be wrapped so tightly in the Constitution that the Framers should charge her for a body wrap.

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