Conservatives criticize official for opposing reproductive choice. Yes. Really.

The conservative blogosphere has exploded with condemnation of a federal official for expressing opposition to reproductive rights. Yes, you did not accidentally inhale: the same people who would forcibly stop a woman from aborting an unwanted pregnancy, and force her to give birth against her will - including thousands of officials who once held jobs in the Bush administration on the strength of this position - are now a-blather because 32 years ago a Dr. John Holdren, now director of the Obama White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, better known as the "science czar" (barf) expressed support for a Chinese-style "one child policy" with "population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion."

Consider my experience, with what those two variants of opposition to reproductive choice mean in practice. Back in the 1980s, my then-wife and I wanted a child - but we were faced with a significant risk of genetic defects. The prospective results of having a genetically defective child were so catastrophic that for many years we did not dare to take this risk, and nearly resigned ourselves to never having a child. And then amniocentesis for genetic testing became available, together with safe and legal second-semester abortion, eliminating the risk: now we would be able to try again if our first fetus happened to be defective. Fortunately our first fetus turned out to be OK, and eventually became a healthy child. Thanks to the availability of safe and legal abortion we became parents. Without the availability of abortion we would have continued to face an unacceptable risk, and we would have been forced to remain childless.

And then consider the position of the Conservatives. They, under the previous administration, happily endorsed the appointment of officials whose anti-abortion position, if enacted into law, would have forced me to remain childless. But now they turn all hysterical at the appointment of their fellow scumbag whose policy, while despicable, would have been less devastating to my happiness, than their own policy would have been.

Oh well. One more fact in evidence that the bulk Conservative is cognitively crippled, unable to think conceptually about either life, or morality, or politics. But then, they do not even pretend that what they have, instead of ideas, is the result of anything beyond intuition, "common sense," and supernatural revelation. Their usual opponents, on the other hand, are beset by delusions of cognitive adequacy. Creepy and loathsome, the slime on both sides of the sewer.