Rachel Maddow Never More Absurd Than as Apologist for Abortion

Rachel Maddow rarely talks about abortion with anyone who deviates from her firmly held belief that it should be readily available for the entirety of any pregnancy, preferably on the taxpayer dime.

How can you tell? By the shallowness of her pontificating about it. (video after page break)

In her most recent "Lean Forward" promo for MSNBC, Maddow inveighs against conservatives as hypocrites who want "small government" but -- wink, wink -- not really.

Small government is a great political brand, it looks great on a bumper sticker. People who don't want the government to help unemployed people or the elderly or people without health insurance, who don't want the government to create jobs, they say it's 'cause government has to be small. (pause for dramatic effect)

They also want government to be monitoring every pregnancy in the country to make sure the government's chosen outcome is the result of that pregnancy, under penalty of jail! So make your case that you don't want the government to help the economy, but don't give me this small government stuff, c'mon.

"Under penalty of jail" -- in other words, after abortion is again rendered illegal, a key element in Maddow's contention.

Then again, murder is illegal -- yet this does not require government monitoring of every American's whereabouts and actions to protect him or her from homicide.

Arson is illegal -- yet the government does not monitor every single structure in the country to make sure the government's preference that those structures remain untorched is ensured.

Vehicle theft is illegal -- yet government does not maintain surveillance over every car, motorcycle and SUV, while they are parked or in motion, in its stalwart efforts to prevent larceny.

Maddow is tossing out one of those bold, pseudo-profound assertions that liberals love and which fall apart upon even perfunctory examination, as with her deranged Amish bus driver analogy.

Does she actually believe that in the medieval days before Roe v. Wade, government monitored each and every pregnancy? I'd venture to suggest it wasn't monitoring any. My family included eight kids, our closest aunt and uncle raised six, three other sets of cousins numbered five each, our next-door neighbors with four children -- and I don't recall a single mother in the bunch ever complaining about that annoying government agent who invariably came to the door while she was laid low with morning sickness.

Something tells me this sort of thing would have raised the shackles of the fathers in our circle had it ever actually occurred -- as it surely must, according to Maddow, when abortion is illegal.

It's also a false premise that outlawing abortion would require jail or prison for anyone. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, Congress may decide on incarceration as punishment -- for convicted abortionists -- but fines could prove just as effective and the presumption of innocence would still apply.