URLs du Jour

2022-05-12

[Multiverse of Dimness Too]

  • You can probably guess the answer. Jason L. Riley has a good question: Why Won’t the Left Talk About Racial Disparities in Abortion?

    In the three decades since [Bill Clinton's smarmy remark about wanting abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare"], the U.S. abortion rate has in fact declined—in recent years it’s fallen to about half of what it was in the early 1980s—yet significant racial disparities persist. In other contexts, group differences in outcome set off alarms on the political left. The racial gap in test scores has brought calls to eliminate the SAT and other admissions tests. The racial gap in arrest and incarceration rates has brought calls to legalize drugs and reduce resources for law enforcement. Racial differences in wealth and income fuel progressive demands for slavery reparations and a larger welfare state. And so on.

    When it comes to abortion, however, left-wing concern seems to stop at making the procedure safe and legal, even while black-white disparities have not only persisted but widened. A 2020 paper by public-health scholar James Studnicki and two co-authors cites data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to note that the black abortion rate is nearly four times higher than the white rate: “Between 2007-2016, the Black rate declined 29% and the White rate declined 33%—meaning that the racial disparity actually increased rather than decreased.” Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence in a 2019 abortion case observed that “there are areas of New York City in which black children are more likely to be aborted than they are to be born alive—and are up to eight times more likely to be aborted than white children in the same area.”

    My answer: the left is unconcerned with making consistent arguments.


  • Could. Should. Maybe will! Drew Cline of the Josiah Bartlett Center makes an interesting argument for reform: How N.H. could increase access to justice through occupational licensing reform.

    New Hampshire could become one of the earliest states to enable low-cost legal assistance by loosening occupational licensing regulations on the practice of law. If House Bill 1343 passes, paralegals would be able to provide limited legal representation to lower-income individuals in district, circuit and family court.

    Paralegals have some legal training but are not attorneys and do not have law degrees. They are prohibited from practicing law or representing clients in court.

    Restricting the practice of law to attorneys only, no matter how simple the legal matter, creates a shortage of legal representation and increases the cost of that representation.

    As a result, 80%-90% of people who appear in family court in New Hampshire have no legal representation, bill sponsor Rep. Ned Gordon, R-Bristol, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month.

    This will make Shoshana Weissmann happy, and that makes me happy.


  • It's Thursday, so… it's a good day to link to Kevin D. Williamson's "Tuesday" column at NR. He claims it's behind the "NRPlus" paywall now, so if you're not in that group, too bad. Maybe the following will whet your appetite: The Specter of Christianity.

    These pro-abortion maniacs. Yikes.

    I wish our bishops were in fact and in deed as pro-life as the people who hate the Catholic Church seem to think they are.

    The Catholic Church is officially against abortion, of course — there is no circuitous Jesuitical workaround for “Thou shalt not kill” — but a great many senior figures in the American church are inclined to impersonate country-club Republicans circa 1992: “Sure, we’re against abortion, but let’s not make a whole thing about it.” Pope Francis may be silly about many things — and possibly an outright heretic if you want to get mean about it — but he remains solid on abortion: an “absolute evil,” he calls it. And the pews aren’t any more reliably pro-life than the pulpit: Catholics have on average about the same attitude toward abortion as other Americans, and the horrifying fact is that even a third of those who attend Mass weekly identify themselves as “pro-choice.”

    (That is dismaying but not surprising. Jesus and Immanuel Kant both thought of people and institutions in terms of trees: “Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit”; “Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.” Christians have as much trouble going against the grain as anybody else does, and the American church is planted in the same soil as Scientology and Facebook and Gilligan’s Island.)

    KDW notes the oddness: there are numerous Protestant denominations that are more reliably pro-life than today's American Catholics. "But the maniacs remain fixated on Catholics. That is interesting."

    And there's much more. Really, if you're not an NRPlus person, your life is lacking. (And it's at a 60% discount for a limited time! Sorry to sound like a sales guy. I swear, I don't get a cut if you subscribe.)


  • That's usually a safe bet. Robby Soave points his finger at a cow the MSM consider sacred: The U.S. Baby Formula Shortage Is the FDA's Fault.

    U.S. officials could have made such shortages less likely by approving baby formula that is widely available in Europe, but per usual, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has other priorities. The agency has a long history of taking forever—years and years and years—to approve foods and medications that European officials have already decided are perfectly safe for human consumption. (One particularly good example: sunblock.) This is yet another in a long line of failures: Both the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) screwed up the early approval process for COVID-19 testing.

    When asked about the shortages, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, praised the FDA for taking swift action to get the compromised baby formula off the market.


    Robby concludes: "The FDA should really stop erecting regulatory hurdles that make it harder for working-class parents to feed their families."

    Multiverse of madness, indeed. What genius put me in this one?

  • And on the LFOD watch… The Fox station in Spokane offered its website readers a story about Rising Suicide: A State by State Look.

    And in the uncoveted second spot… behind only Vermont… is:

    2. New Hampshire
    Average Annual Increase in Suicide Rate: 2.89%
    Change in Rate from 1999: 107.89%
    Suicide Rate in 2016: 15.8
    National Rank in 2016: 20

    New Hampshire is the first state on this ranking whose suicide rate has more than doubled since the end of the millennium. However, despite this grim trend, the state still remains in the bottom half of states for suicide mortality nationwide. However, if the speed of this growth continues, New Hampshire will soon break into the top half of states for suicide. This is a grim prospect for the state that has always strived to live free or die.

    Note that this is ranking states by the increase in suicide rates between 1996 and 2016. According to the CDC, and its latest numbers from 2020, New Hampshire has (indeed) broken into the "top half of states" with a suicide rate of 16.4 per 100K. In New England, only Vermont has a higher rate (18.1 per 100K).


Last Modified 2024-01-30 3:59 PM EDT