- Terrance This Is Stupid Stuff

Terrance D., a frequent commentor whose thought provoking blog has recently been added to our Fun Reads list, has a good piece that points out the inconsistencies in the arguments of one Mara Hvistendahl, whose new book Unnatural Selection decries the practice of sex selective abortions performed at an alarming rate, usually to eliminate female offspring.

Here he points out one of the many problems of Mara's recommendations to combat sex selective abortion now so common place in China and India:

"Second, make sex selective abortion criminal activity for the doctor and health professionals involved in it (5 year prison sentence) and any helpers who know what is going on (1 year prison sentence). (p. 244)"

Wow! Remember when an argument for legalizing abortion was that if you kept it criminalized women would just continue to get dangerous back alley abortions? And now here are pro-choice people suggesting that criminalizing sex selective abortion is the way to go. Who cares about back alley abortions any more?

Hmmm.

The title of Terrance's blog plays off one of A.E. Houseman's poems as found in his A Shropshire Lad. In "Terence this is stupid stuff", the poet and classical scholar refers to himself as Terence and jokingly sets about critiquing not only the gloomy nature of many of the poems of A Shropshire Lad, but even the poetic devices used in their writing. One should not take oneself too seriously, and our Terrance certainly does not. It's good stuff!