Amy is right to emphasize the fact that the partial birth abortion ban does not ban late-term abortions, since it seems to be a point on which many people are misinformed. So why are pro-lifers going after D&X abortions? Well, I think pro-lifers have targeted "partial birth abortions" mostly for tactical reasons, rather than moral ones, which as Amy points out, wouldn't make sense for a serious pro-lifer. It's a pretty gruesome procedure that involves dragging the unborn baby partially out of the womb and then sucking out his or her brains so the skull collapses, and it's sounds way too much like infanticide for a lot of people, hence the popular support the partial birth abortion ban enjoys. So, to answer Amy's original question, what I think pro-lifers are hoping to accomplish is to focus the abortion debate on what actually happens to a fetus during abortion, to get through the euphemisms that are often used to describe abortion. If you can horrify people with this procedure, maybe they'll start to be horrified by abortion in general. Plus it's good for a generally de-moralized movement to feel like they're making some kind of progress (pro-choice feminists, with their hysterical reactions to this issue, only feed pro-lifers' probably incorrect perception that this is a big victory for the "culture of life").

Now, as to what Republicans want, which was the subject of the Ampersand post that brought this discussion about, there's probably some truth to Amp's analysis, although I've always felt that the abortion issue is potentially as dangerous for the health of the Democratic party as it is for the GOP. It may also be a matter of pro-life Republicans (because there's no denying that many of them are very sincere in their beliefs) realizing that most Americans want some restrictions on abortion and worrying that once there are some reasonable restrictions on abortion (like a ban on late-term or post-viability abortion), the whole issue will finally be settled and go away. Their goal may be more to recast the debate and persuade more voters that noabortions are acceptable rather than to actually stop any abortions. Maybe that's me being really cynical. But I should also note that Ampersand isn't the only one who thinks that Republicans are just stringing along pro-lifers; some pro-lifers agree.

This week brings another Crescat guest-blogger. Sara Butler is a 4th year at the University of Chicago, and has her own blog of no little repute-- Diotima.

She's also been a long-time blog-debating partner, on marriage, on abortion, and so much more. Her arrival for the week will probably mean more intra-blog argument than usually goes on around here. I think that's a good thing, and I hope you do too.

As always, send lots of email to me, her, or both.

The 20 best movies? Previous entries in this question have come from all over the place-- here, here, here, here, here, here, or many other places.

Originally I was going to try criticizing all of these lists, but I thought it would be easier to just lay out the best 20 myself. It seems to be the norm to limit oneself to the past 20 years (which is how this whole argument started), so no Casablanca. (Incidentally, while it's not my favorite movie, Casablanca is clearly the best movie of all time).

First, the clear choices. One simply can't avoid The Princess Bride (as Amy said, "How many other movies are worth memorizing in their entirety?"). Similarly, Silence of the Lambs is a winner under any metric (there's a reason it won Oscars for director, picture, actor, and director). A little more controversially, The Godfather III needs to go on the list too. Since I'm restricted to the past twenty years, it's the only eligible Godfather movie, which is all right, since what makes Godfather III so great (and people don't always realize this) is that it's able to build up off of all you've already grown to love about the characters beforehand. Sure, Sofia Coppola is a blight on an otherwise perfect movie, but it's got a lot of capital to spend. (If it were eligible, Godfather II would be a clearly superior choice).

Now for romantic movies. There are three obvious choices here, too:

1: When Harry Met Sally (It has the orgasm-in-the-diner scene, some of Billy Crystal's most hilarious dialogue, and it features the University of Chicago; romantic comedy doesn't get better than this.)

2: Moulin Rouge! (A lot of people hate it. But it does what it does really, really, well, the Tango Roxanne is fabulous, and Nicole Kidman makes an absolutely ravishing redheaded courtesan.)

3: Shakespeare in Love (The dialogue was written by Tom Stoppard, and it shows.)

That's six total so far. Now what about action/epics?

1: Braveheart. No question about this one. I've only cried in a movie theater once. This was it.

2: The Return of the Jedi. Empire might be a slightly stronger film, but ROTJ is the only Star Wars film eligible, so you have to pick it. The Emperor's throne room scene is great, great, stuff, but it's repeatedly interrupted by the fricking Ewoks. Still, tarnished gold is still gold. Luke makes a better semi-dark Jedi than whiny kid.

3: The Fellowship of the Ring. A Lord of the Rings movie is obviously on the list, and The Two Towers won't cut it.

4: Leon. Assassins are cool. So's Natalie Portman. So's the houseplant.

That's ten.

Then there are the weird psychological movies, that feature an enigmatic but charismatic main character who changes everybody's life:

1: The Talented Mr. Ripley. The music's great, the scenery's gorgeous, Matt Damon is creepy, Jude Law is affably despicable.

2: Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Understanding this movie is a test of character. But a critical one.

That's twelve.

As I see it, I'm left with fourteen serious contenders for the remaining eight slots:

Election, Othello, A Beautiful Mind, Rain Main, Amelie, Good Will Hunting, As Good as it Gets, The Dead Poets Society, A Fish Called Wanda, 12 Monkeys, American Beauty, The Truman Show, Fight Club, and Shrek.

From Terry Pratchett:

The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles - kingons, or possible queons - that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expounded because, at that point, the bar closed.

Do you remember the pair of articles Steven Landsburg ran in Slate on higher divorce rates for parents of daughters than for parents of sons? [His original Slate articles are first here and then there.] Well, now the NYT reports on the study:

Parents, and especially fathers, appear to invest more in their families when they include a boy. They put more money into their homes, spending an additional $600 a year on housing, according to a study of families with an only child by Ms. Lundberg and her colleague Elaina Rose, an associate professor of economics.

In addition, fathers increase their workweeks by more than two hours, and their earnings, after the birth of a first, male child. When the first child is a girl, workweeks increase by less than an hour.

The effects go beyond mere dollars and cents. Among unmarried couples, fathers read to baby girls and put them to bed as often as they do for boys. But the fathers feed the boys, change their diapers and play with them more often than they do with baby girls, concluded Ms. Lundberg, Ms. Rose and Sara McLanahan, director of the Center for Research on Child Well-Being at Princeton.

I don't know if, or how, raising daughters and raising sons differs, but if I should ever have a son, it might be useful to have the father around to clue me into anything about sons that I hadn't learned from living with the male roommates (I have no brothers, but two sisters). This of course in addition to other reasons I'd hope the husband would stick around, love of the life, blah blah, never a desire to separate.

Do we have any readers who are fathers who prefer sons and are willing to explain their preference (anonymously, if you'd like)?

UPDATE:
In a similiar vein, the NYT also reports on steps the Indian government is taking to reduce female infanticide, particuarly through ultrasound testing and then abortion if the fetus appears female. This practice had been most prevalent in the Punjab, where there are 754 girls for every 1000 boys.

Predictably, my previous post on partial birth abortion has generated some interesting responses, particularly to the question, "a dead fetus is a dead fetus, no matter how it was killed. Right?"

Ricegrad emails to say:

I think, but could be wrong, that D&X abortions are often used when it's too late to abort the baby in any other way.

But the slippery slope goes both ways here, I think. Pro-abortioners want every possible form of abortion to be legal, to guard against an overturning of Roe v. Wade. Pro-lifers, on the other hand, want to guard against the slippery slope leading towards an increasingly less important view of life. Abortion is bad enough, the thinking goes. But partial birth abortion leads to the possibility of things like infanticide.

Meanwhile Bill Dyer writes:

No. Arguably -- and in the visceral reactions of most Americans, including a great many who are neutral to pro- on abortion rights -- a first-trimester immediately-post-embryonic fetus is a nonsentient piece of tissue that's at most a "potential human-someday if everything goes right"; it looks more like a shrimp than a human, and imagining flushing it down a toilet doesn't make people want to vomit.

Whereas a late third-trimester fetus is a baby in every respect but its
present location.

Both my correspondants seem to share a common misconception on the partial-birth abortion ban: that it would limit the circumstances under which one could receive a late-term abortion. In fact, it does not ban late-term abortions, just one particular method of conducting them. As this Slate article suggests, alternative procedures work just as well for most cases:

I do not perform the "partial-birth" procedure and that there is no likelihood that the ban's passage would close my office and keep me from seeing her. The fetus cannot be delivered "alive" in my procedure—as the ban stipulates in defining prohibited procedures—because I begin by giving the fetus an injection that stops its heart immediately. I treat the woman's cervix to cause it to open during the next two days. On the third day, under anesthesia, the membranes are ruptured, allowing the amniotic fluid to escape. Medicine is given to make the uterus contract, and the dead fetus is delivered or removed with forceps. Many variations of this sequence are possible, depending on the woman's medical condition and surgical indications.

I think there might well be a substantive moral difference between first trimester and third trimester abortions. (For our blog's previous discussion of the subject, start hereand follow the links back.) However, that's not what's at stake here. What's at stake is not if a 22 or 23 week old fetus is killed, but whether the killing is done when the fetus is entirely inside, or only partially inside the womb. But I think any serious anti-abortion argument has to recognize that the significant moral distinction is not where the fetus is killed (or else, why is abortion a problem?)

It seems to me that the only cases in which a partial-birth abortion ban will stop an abortion is a very few that are particularly medically complicated. But are these really the ones to which we most object, or is it the otherwise healthy pregnancies ended because the mother has simply changed her mind regarding her child?

Tyler Cowen points to a study showing that women prefer "cads" for short-term relationships, a phenomenom the author says supports the "sexy sons" hypothesis--that sexy fathers produce sexy sons, who will have a greater chance of producing children themselves.

I rather like Tyler's take on the article:

I can't get my hands on the original paper. But the explanation, as offered, leaves a gap. It shows that a "cads equilibrium" is stable, once in place. But why are the sons of cads, themselves cads presumably, seen as sexy? One woman may want a cad, if she knows that other women will (later) want her son. But where does the female preference for cads, viewed more generally, come from?

The standard evolutionary psychology answer is that a) sexiness is a good indicator of healthiness and b) "caddish" behavior shows the sort of agressiveness that allows a man to be successful in competition for status and scarce resources.

But on the subject of evolutionary psychology generally, I am reminded of the witticism (a bit of Googling attributes it to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing) "This book contains much that is good and new; pity that the good is not new, and the new is not good."

The Observer has posted an update to their top 100 novels list, in the form of the top fifty reader suggestions for additions. Though the reader's choices are slightly geekier, the tenor of the list is much like that of The Observer, which is to say that it reads like something that a young professional would compile while trying to impress his date without sounding unbearably pretentious.