You'll Thank Me Later

There are two types of mighty soldiers who man the Vagina Watch, that perpetual duty to preserve and protect the nation's Fetus-Americans by policing vaginas. The first type is genuinely religious, and is fully embodied by Miss Kathryn Jean Lopez, who believes that abortion is evil and must be stopped because only God can take a life. As we can see by this post, Miss Lopez sees pregnancy from rape as a blessing, and her anti-abortion beliefs are consistent in this narrow instance.

Miss Lopez also believes that there should be no separation between church and state, no premarital sex, no birth control, and that the role of women is to serve God and men by bearing their children and taking care of their home, and live through men by supporting their endeavors. She is as nutty as a Megan McArdle nut cake, but she lives her beliefs.

The second type is the opportunist, who demands that everyone else live by his beliefs while holding different standards for himself. He is the leader while the Miss Lopezes are the followers, in his own eyes if nobody else's. Ross Douthat believes that pregnancies from rape are "exceptional circumstances" that produce "unique agony" and anyway forcing women to carry their rapist's baby to term is probably a "political impossibility." Despite his own political compromises, Douthat goes on to criticize Obama's, calling Obama an extremist for supporting his own party's platform.

Douthat's entire post is a work of art, as he attempts to convince Democrats that capitalizing on the Republicans' extremism is a terrible political mistake. He does not discuss the constitutional right to privacy, which is hard and boring and the only thing that counts. He tries to sway his audience emotionally, which is a mistake because not many people can empathize with an emotionally stunted misanthrope. Watching Douthat at work is like watching Monk, as Douthat tries to convince everyone else to live with his own personal quirks, foibles and compulsions. Just because Douthat wants to live in a narrow little world of arbitrary rules doesn't mean that we do.

Especially when those arbitrary rules are designed to preserve Douthat's personal power and career and their consequences are designed to affect only women.