UPDATE: Jane Galt responds here and here. I think perhaps I was not very clear about what I was disagreeing with her about, so I've responded here.

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If I were going to write a parody of hard-nosed quasilibertarian policy analysis--an attempt to gently mock the tendency of some of my fellow travelers to only make the tough calls when it's someone else's ox being gored, and play into the stereotype of a libertarian as a person whose policies correspond astonishly well with his or her privileged status--and I decided to write about abortion, it might go something like this:

I'd sadly note the impossibility of a free lunch and the power of incentives to affect behavior in even the most private of realms. I'd talk about how naive it is to expect problems to be solved by well-meaning programs of governmental education--in this day and age, does anyone really not know that sex can result in pregnancy? That contraception makes it less likely? I'd shake my virtual head mournfully at the fantasies of my benighted friends on the left, pro-choice like me, but lacking the wisdom imparted by UChicago price theory.

No, the simple truth is that women--not me or my friends, you know, but other women--have unprotected sex and then have abortions because, well, it's not very costly; that's what Roe v. Wade means! "Safe, legal, and rare"--only in Shangri-La, I'm afraid; you only get to pick two. I'd write that, much as I hated to admit it (pro-choice as I am, you know), the deep, dark secret of all clear-eyed pro-choicers is that keeping abortion legal is, in fact, *the* secret cause of (other!) women's risky sexual behavior. Pro-choicers might talk a good game about safe sex, I'd sigh, but until we're willing to break out the coathangers, it's clear where our priorities really lie.

Now, to make this parody just right, I'd have to ignore what, on the face of it, would be the most obvious response to risky sex being too "cheap" relative to safe sex: target the "price" of safe sex *directly*, instead of getting at it only through the indirect (and, to the lustful mind, far less salient) route of penalizing those who actually end up pregnant. You know, the sort of line of thinking that might take into account the non-trivial costs of reliable birth control, especially for the uninsured (better not bring up how the state makes you see a doctor!). And I'd sure as hell better sweep under the rug all the unpleasant little truths about sexist social norms, about who pays for the pill, about the very real stigma that in many communities clings to any young woman who dares imply by what she purchases from her pharmacist or what she demands of her doctor that she is, in fact, sexually active.

After all, if I brought any of that stuff up, my readers might start wondering why the cross-national variance in teenage pregnancy and abortion rates is considerably greater than the variance in teenage sexual activity; they might think these considerations suggestive of a deeply undesirable set of policies and social norms that punish only optional public markers of sexual activity, like contraceptive use, while doing little to deter the private aspects, like actual sex. They might start thinking that this is one of those social ills that *does* hold out the prospect of unambiguous improvement; perhaps we needn't break out the coathangers, after all, if we want teenage pregnancy and abortion rates as low as those in Sweden!

Of course, the kind of change that would be required wouldn't be easy; it would involve shifts in both norms and policy, and a lot of down-and-dirty activism. It would mean confronting deeply embedded belief systems, ideologies that are quite hostile to female sexual autonomy. It would mean recognizing that the state is not the only cause of oppression in society, particularly for certain groups.

So of course, if any of that came across in my article, it would completely fail at its goal of good-natured parody. No, I'd have to go Vulgar Libertarianism all the way. And I'm not sure if I could make myself write an article like that; I don't know if I could keep a straight face, so to speak, while maintaining just the right level of contrarian snark. But maybe someone should, just for laughs.

Oh, wait.