Mississippi, our third-world friends

The Mahablog has a very thought provoking post today:

I have a proposal. For a lot of reasons this proposal could not be carried out, but let's pretend ... what if we told Mississippi it could outlaw abortions altogether, including the infamous partial-birth abortions, once it got its infant mortality rate down to under 5 deaths per 1,000 infants?

...

In my version of this folk tale, as Mississippians finally confront issues they've been ignoring for so long, they'll experience a gradual awakening. And when that infant mortality number is finally under 5, they'll understand why banning all abortions isn't a great idea -- because driving a problem underground, or across state lines, isn't solving it. And maybe they'll also realize that women who choose to terminate pregnancies aren't all selfish, stupid cows, but human beings with complex human lives to deal with.

I love the thought, but I don't buy the outcome. Maha believes that Mississippians will look at the issue and come to the realization that only liberalism will solve the problem. Heck no. You can throw every number in the book at these people, showing them how wrong they are, and they will not even come close to questioning their ideals of conservatism.

In my version of the folk tale, the Mississippi state legislature will pass a law banning couples from having sex unless they are deemed 'healthy enough' by a doctor. Then, they will look at the fact that since infant mortality rates among blacks and hispanics are higher, they will disallow blacks and hispanics from giving birth in the state. None of those laws would even come close to working, but as we've found out with Iraq, no matter how fucked up a situation gets, today's conservatives will make it a hundred times worse before ever questioning their faulty assumptions.