Palin's Choice

Ruth Marcus argued yesterday that Palin's speech last week makes her pro-choice:

For the crowd listening to her at last week's dinner, Palin's disclosure served the comfortable role of moral reinforcement: She wavered in her faith, was tempted to sin, regained her strength and emerged better for it.

As for those us less certain that we know, or are equipped to instruct others, when life begins and when it is permissible to terminate a pregnancy, Palin's speech offered a different lesson: Abortion is a personal issue and a personal choice. The government has no business taking that difficult decision away from those who must live with the consequences.

Christopher Orr differs:

The fact of the matter is that even in Palin's ideal pro-life world, many women would still have to make the difficult choice of whether or not to have an illegal abortion--just as in my theoretical examples, the hungry man would have to decide whether or not to steal and the tardy woman would have to decide whether or not to break the speed limit. Like Marcus, I prefer a world in which abortion is a legal option. The fact that Sarah Palin disagrees doesn't mean she would banish moral decisionmaking from the world, but rather that she would have the law place a heavy finger on the scale.