And predictably, it's at the New York Times, a Nicholas D. Kristof article, Killing Them Softly.

Nick's got his knickers in a wad about an admittedly silly policy of the Republican Party, the idea that we should cut off aid to various charities that provide services to women internationally if those charities offer or promote abortions. He's gone down to tour shantytowns, because apparently no one in the Bush administration knows about conditions in Africa. (We should all thank St. Nick here for taking his African Slum Tour and, presumably, filing a brief with the CIA, the State Department, and the White House to address their 'ignorance.') After a long sob-story, he sighs, "Mr. Bush probably sees his policy in terms of abortion or sex, or as a matter of placating his political base. But here in the shantytowns of Africa, the policy calculation seems simpler: women and girls will die."

Which, of course, is an argument about just about any policy you'd care to choose, especially when dealing with Africa. The same calculation could be laid at the feet of the EU for their agricultural subsidies, which help keep Africa poor, and thus those women from having their own thriving economies to support them. Or at a policy decision to focus on the fight against terrorism, or to cut taxes, or a prescription drug benefit, thus depriving the U.S. government of resources it could otherwise use to help those women. Or on the umbrella groups to which the money actually goes, who choose not to select charities that don't practice abortion. Or (and yes, I admit this is a radical concept) at the feet of the charities involved in deciding that their mission had to include abortion at the expense of all their other activities in the face of a Bush administration policy.

I'm no more enthusiastic about the policy than St. Nick is here, and there's a good argument (however much I might disagree with it) to be made for his position, but his article contains not a hint of reason at any point. Nowhere does it describe why the moral imperative is on the Bush administration to fund these, rather than on the charitable organizations to either have policies that, like it or not, the elected government has decided are determinative, or seek other sources of funding. True, he doesn't go so far as to say, "And because of this, there's blood on Bush's hands," but the implication is certainly there.

If you're going to level that kind of accusation, especially in a national newspaper that (purportedly) has ethical standards, you should at the very least feel obliged to make a reasoned argument, instead of turning out sob-story emotional pornography.