Jay Tea at Wizbang always has an interesting twist on things. His post on a Cassy post about Planned Parenthood tangentially relates to a post I wrote some time back – Soldiers are Idiots; Teenage Girls are Brilliant – so I’ll take the opportunity to restate my point.

4) If you divide the total number of abortions provided by Planned Parenthood in 2006 by 365, you find out that they performed an average of 793 abortions a week day — presuming they operated 24/7/365. If you knock off weekends and holidays, it’s probably closer to 250 days, which brings the total up to 1158.6. That converts to roughly, five years worth of American casualties in Iraq every three and a half DAYS.

That’s a lot of abortions. Considerably more than the deaths of soldiers that the left is so conveniently wrought up about. Obviously not everyone who supports abortion rights is against the war. But if there were a Venn diagram where abortion rights supporters are blue and anti-war people are red, there would be a pretty big section of purple in the middle.

There is a consistent theme among anti-war activists that our military is tricked and bribed into enlisting – hence the “justifiable” war on recruiters. After all, they’re fooling these naive kids into joining and fighting Bush/Israel/Halliburton’s War for Oil. Pregnant teenaged girls, on the other hand, are completely immune to influence from anyone when making their decision whether to abort.

Shep Smith administered a rare smackdown to Naomi Wolf when she declared that we need to “get our babies out of Iraq.” The “poor kids fighting the war” meme persists in spite of all evidence to the contrary. And this L.A. Times writer, overflowing with compliments for teenage girls’ maturity and ability to choose abortion, complained that his 21 year old nephew’s decision to serve was a “product of manipulation.” So thirteen and fourteen year old teenage girls are more capable of making an informed, rational decision than recruits? It’s the hypocrisy of how many of those people try to have it both ways that drives me up a wall.

You can make a case (which I won’t agree with, but it can at least be done) that young teenage girls are qualified to decide whether or not to have an abortion. You can make a case (which, again, I won’t agree with) that 18 year olds are unqualified to decide whether to serve in the military. But you can’t do both.

Updated: Jay Tea very kindly linked back with There’s Just No Accounting…:

With all due respect to Laura, I see a way to not only reconcile the two, but tie in numerous other issues with a Grand Unified Theory Of Liberalism.

Laura’s omission is in thinking that the matter is about “choice.” It’s an easy, even seductive mistake — the word is at the forefront of their arguments, it’s not too difficult to think that that is what it’s all about.

…No, abortion and enlisting in the military are far more like other matters like AIDS and the mortgage crisis.

AIDS is viewed as a tragedy, a disaster, a blind curse that could afflict anyone at any time. Its victims are viewed as noble, suffering people who deserve nothing more than our sympathy and support and especially our money.

The mortgage crisis, apparently, resulted from evil, unscrupulous mortgage brokers who chased down innocent victims, coerced them into signing loan agreements that they wouldn’t let them read the full terms and conditions, then rubbed their hands and waited for the inevitable to happen. Then they cackled and rubbed their hands in glee as they set about foreclosing.

What is the unifying element of all these matters?

The overwhelming rush to deny people the logical consequences of their actions.

I love the Grand Unified Theory Of Liberalism, and as always, Jay Tea’s post is original and very thought provoking.