> suggesting that abortion should be illegal, which is a mainstream position in the USA, is such a crazy-far-right position in Denmark

Personally I think Americans are spoiled.

In Romania under Ceausescu (so before 1989) abortions were illegal. Hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of women (in a country with a population of less than 19 millions) ended up doing illegal abortions under unhealthy, unsanitary conditions. Many of them had health issues because of that, thousands died or were prosecuted for it.

Many of the women that didn't manage to get an abortion, ended up with unwanted children. Conditions were tough as we were living with harsh austerity measures, many of these parents barely had enough money to put food on the table, many of these children grew up in families that didn't want them, many of these unwanted children were given up for adoption, filling the streets with beggars.

Abortions may be murder, but making them illegal is also murder.

If you are interested in what happens when abortions are made illegal, there's a good documentary movie about what happened in Romania. Search for "Copiii lui Ceausescu" (in translation "Ceausescu's Children")

There were 193,491 legal abortions in the US in 1970. Prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion was a state-by-state matter, and the lines were being drawn in fairly predictable ways based on the right/left state-makeup of the time.

I do appreciate the correction, though I'd have appreciated it more in a more constructive tone.

For me, it was just normal boytalk sharing personal preferences for small or big female body parts, for them it was as exciting as leaking out of school to smoke a cigarette.

I think it goes deeper than that. A remarkable well-documented(#) fact in the history of sexual life is that sexual perversions were much worse in places where sex was considered a sin (eg. the West), than in places were it was considered natural (eg. China).

I am really concerned that, after a while, the sexual PC pressure could backfire in North America. We all know how "Hell is paved", right?

(#) http://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Life-Ancient-China-Gulik/dp/B00...

As for sexual perversions being worse where sex is considered a sin, that makes a lot of sense. Japan would be a great example: genitals are censored, yet they make some of the weirdest most perverse porn one can think of.

Thinking about it I'm regularly seeing kids aged 13 or 14 smoking cigarettes in front of their schools in Paris. French people have a special ability to free themself from the rules.

LOL! Although the Western Hemisphere is a big place, and North and South America comprise a lot of countries, I can assure you, in standard English, and fair or not, "an American" === "a United States citizen".

I think perhaps the confusion here is due to the fact that the Irish don't see themselves as being divided according to the French tradition of left and right, but according to which side of the civil war they think was right.

It's perhaps instructive to note that the people and organisations that oppose abortion in Ireland today are often the same ones that supported Franco's rebellion during the Spanish civil war and that both things were supported for the same reason: catholicism. The Irish right wing has more in common with the right wing in the rest of Europe than it gets credit for.

This is a very valuable piece of data!

Despite all that's great about PG's essay: Funny is not an oracle of universal good! Humor is wonderful. It's universal. It's tremendously important, but it does not make you right, and it is not license to do and say whatever you want.

Rationality is wonderful. It's universal and tremendously useful. But we all know that just because a human is applying rationality, that doesn't men she/he is necessarily right. Likewise, what tickles your own funny bone might not tickle someone else's. Humor and rationality are universal. Your own POV and your own application of those are human and flawed.

Funny is not an oracle for all that's good. Most of the time, humor is an orthogonal area of concern. It does not make one righteous, and it's very unlikely that someone failing to be funny gives one an excuse to be self-righteous.

Well, obviously as this is an extreme far right position (I'm american living in Europe and I realize this...).

And banning abortion is tantamount to signing the death warrant on hundreds of young, confused, scared women. So, yeah, these are considered extreme views, because they're extreme.