Insensitive man that I am, I would be the first to tell you that I think that single parenthood is a bad idea. That’s not to say that I think that single parents can’t raise their children well, it’s just that I believe that a child is going to be much better off if he has two parents (and still better if one of those parents is stay-at-home). Purposely becoming a single parent seems to me like it’s immensely irresponsible.

That said, I find this proposed Indiana law making it illegal to have a child out of wedlock through means other than sex disturbing (though perhaps not as much so as some other people seem to find it).

Let’s get this cleared up, first. I read through the bill, and it is almost definitely not a bill designed to outlaw non-marital sex, nor is it designed to punish those who have a child out of wedlock as a result of non-marital sex. I’m reasonably certain, based on the wording, that it is aimed at protecting society from being forced to pick up the bill for children born outside of marriage, not, as some have suggested, an attempt at preventing homosexuals from having children.

That said, it is not the government’s place to be telling people how they are allowed to get pregnant. (It’s also not the government’s place to pay parents for having children they can’t afford to care for, but I digress…)

Two things:

1. Assuming that the intention here is, indeed, to protect society from paying for children born out of wedlock, how does it help to prevent people from having children through artificial means? I haven’t looked at the numbers, so I could be wrong, but it seems unlikely that single mothers on welfare are getting pregnant through artificial insemination instead of going the “old fashioned” route of having sex.
2. Two wrongs don’t make a right. It is wrong that the government is being forced to pay for irrespnosible actions on the part of those who would have children they can’t afford, but attempting to counter that by invading people’s privacy is inconscionable. The proper response would be to clean up welfare to make it merely a temporary assistance to help people get back on their feet.

Honestly, I have little doubt that this law, even if it is voted into effect (which seems unlikely), would be held as Constitutional. The biggest issue here is that there are no doubt liberals who will try to use this proposal to paint all those who have any conservative beliefs with the same brush.

( þ Vodkapundit; Protein Wisdom )

Eric at Classical Values examines whether the death of Joel Hinrichs can be fairly called a suicide.

…[H]ere’s my legal hypothesis as to how such a murder-suicide goal might have resulted in accidental death. Suppose I decided that I wanted to blow up myself along with all the patrons of a large business enterprise when it was full of customers. Suppose I managed to hide myself somewhere inside the place after it closed with a goal of staying there overnight, then detonating myself at 10:00 a.m. Suppose further that because of the instability of my ingredients, the bomb went off inside the building at night, and it killed only me. Would that legally be called a suicide? I’m not so sure; in fact, I think it wouldn’t be, because I had no intention of dying at that time.

I don’t know the facts of the Hinrichs case, but I’m now curious about the legal hypotheticals here.

Supposing a suicide bomber’s bomb went off early, killing him, it’s an accident. Now, what if the early explosion was not not because of instability in his materials or his homemade bomb, but because of a flaw in a piece of the electronics he used? It’s an accidental death, caused by a failure of a consumer product. Is the bomber’s family now entitled to sue for compensation, as a defective product caused the accidental death of their son?

Honestly, the accident or suicide question made me think of an urban legend about the man who was killed by a shotgun blast as he fell to the ground after leaping off a building. Even if it’s not true, it’s an interesting thing to think about.

I’m not going to touch on the main topic of his post (Eminent Domain does, as Dean points out, have a long history of being abused, where “public use” is twisted to mean things that are certainly not public use… like townhouses), but Dean says the following in the comments:

Moreover, even if you wanted to say “public use” only means “owned by the government”–and that seems like a strained reading to me–then they could just take the land and charge private developers to use it. Which if you think about it is rather more dangerous, for it could be used for government to seize all land and force everybody to pay them rent, all to a great “public use.”

Of course, the government already owns all land and forces everyone to pay rent. They just call it “property tax” so that we don’t catch on and demand that our landlords start paying for maintenance.