The South will rise again!

Except, the Confederacy never really went away.

- They kept slavery by the back door until the advent of World War II. They arrested people (including a few whites) for very minor crimes and put them in chain gangs or imposed savage $ fines which they couldn't afford to pay off, thus making them debt slaves (see lengthy Knowing Better YouTube video);
- They had segregation (in one form or another) until the 1960s;
- There is a high overlap between the states which execute most prisoners and former Confederate states.

Today, let's look at the thirteen states with "trigger laws", i.e. the anti-abortion states.

Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee - the five Western-most Confederate States.
Missouri, Kentucky - half-in, half-out Confederate States (they were 'slave states').
Oklahoma - wasn't yet a state at the time of the Civil War, but probably would have been a Confederate State;
Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota - were largely unoccupied at the time of the Civil War and not yet states. These four form a large contiguous block along the US-Canada border between Washington/Oregon (Pacific coast) and Minnesota (Mid-West?). Only Montana is missing from that block. Either Montana is relatively progressive, or they never realised that abortion was legal in the first place.
(Funda)mentalist Utah directly to the south of Idaho/Wyoming.
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Or maybe this is the usual American "progressive coasts, conservative interior" divide? Confederate states without trigger laws are the ones with some Atlantic coastline, plus Alabama, although that will probably be next.

"The 'leftover' girls: Afghanistan defines official age for females being left on the shelf as 13"

From The Daily Mail:

Afghanistan has upset its young female population by labelling those who have not been married off by the time they are 12 as 'left over girls'.

The Islamic government ordered its All-Afghanistan Women's Federation to use the derogatory term in several stinging articles about the growing number of uneducated, urban and single females aged 13 or over who have 'failed' to find a husband and are now  deemed 'undesirable'.

'Pretty girls do not need a lot of education to be married into a rich and powerful family. But girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult and will probably be sold to slave traders,' reads one article titled 'Leftover Women Do Not Deserve Our Sympathy'...

The conservative country is going under rapid changes with more girls shunning the tradition of being forcibly married and raising a family early. But the government wants to shame them into marrying young to counter the growing and serious gender imbalance among the of 35 million population.

Selective abortions means far more males are born than females - 1,392 boys to 100 girls. The government is also worried that hordes of unmarried men roaming the country could spark social havoc.

Things which happen in every community

Raping young girls

A Muslim community leader has said there is a "problem" of British Pakistani men thinking "white girls are worthless and can be abused". And the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) said it was "investigating why there may be a majority of Asians in these particular kinds of offence".

But police said grooming was "not a racial issue" and MP Keith Vaz also said "no particular race or religion" tended to be involved.

Sex-selective abortions

Dr Tony Falconer, president of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, said: "Anecdotally, there are social and cultural reasons for preferring one gender over another and we need to know more about why these occur. The issues are complex. For instance, women may be coerced or threatened with violence into having an abortion. The priority would be to identify who these women are and to provide them with support."

Forced marriages (1)

The charity said it wanted to help overcome "the mistaken assumption that the problem is a cultural one"... Ms Sanghera said: "It is not a cultural problem, it is abuse. The sooner people start to regard forced marriage in the same way they do domestic violence the better it will be for those affected by it."

Forced marriages (2)

"It's uncomfortable for people to think about, but it can't remain this hidden any longer. It's not simply about Muslim families; we also found that it happens among Chinese and African communities too, such as the Somali families. Nor is it something that comes across with new immigrants."

Honour killings

Happen to white girls too, of course.

I'm still trying to track down articles from the BBC or the Guardian in which somebody says that female genital mutilation, marrying your cousin, blowing up Tube trains and postal voting fraud happens "in every community".

Sex-selective abortion not in any way a 'cultural' issue: shock

According to Wiki:

A 2005 study estimated that over 90 million females were "missing" from the expected population in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan alone, and suggested that sex-selective abortion plays a role in this deficit. India's 2011 census shows a serious decline in the number of girls under the age of seven - activists believe eight million female fetuses may have been aborted between 2001 and 2011.

So it's not really a "western" thing and appears to be most common in south and east Asia. But see if you can guess the race/colour of the woman in the stock photo of "a woman looking remorseful after having had a sex-selective abortion" which the BBC use to illustrate their article on the subject.

Why there's no often no point in banning things

From the BBC:

Restricting the availability of legal abortion does not appear to reduce the number of women trying to end unwanted pregnancies, a major report suggests.

The Guttmacher Institute's survey found abortion occurs at roughly equal rates in regions where it is legal and regions where it is highly restricted. It did note that improved access to contraception had cut the overall abortion rate over the last decade...

Admittedly, that Institute is a "pro-choice reproductive think tank" so they would say that, wouldn't they? I suppose the Catholics will put out a report next week saying exactly the opposite and we'll be none the wiser.

Divine Intervention

From The Torygraph:

The Vatican has made an unexpected last-minute intervention on the eve of Ireland's Lisbon Treaty referendum with a warning the European Union threatens the country's "identity, traditions and history"...

"Pro-life outrage as hundreds of children survive ...

Wot? If they're 'pro-life', surely they'd be rejoicing?

Oops ... "... after being born within the legal abortion time [limit]"

Killer statistic: Data from the Department of Health shows that 909 children were born between 22 and 24 weeks of pregnancy during 2005. Of those, 250 survived for at least a year.

'at least'?

"MPs to vote on abortion limit cut"

In my 'Libertarianism & pragmatism' series, my reply to David Bergland's question "What should government policy be toward abortion?" was "Provided a woman can look a doctor straight in the eye and tell him that she really doesn't want the child, then she should be allowed to have an abortion, as easily and early as possible to minimise distress and to enable her to get on with her life."

There are two sides to this, as ever. If it is broadly agreed that 'late' terminations are A Bad Thing, then by all means, reduce the upper limit, but, as a quid pro quo make it much, much easier for women to have an early termination, the easier and earlier the better AFAIAC.

Update: Video of Mad Nad was here but it's disappeared again, ah well.