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First of all, even if this point were addressed to men directly rather than to *their parents*, it would be awkward. It’s not every day that the vice president of the United States laments openly that dudes may have to be more discerning about whom they bone. No more shtupping everything that moves and then aborting your problems away in the aftermath, alas. Not in our post-Roe dystopian hellscape.

From now on, casual sex could mean that you’re “punished with a baby,” to borrow a memorable phrase from the last Democratic president. Or at least on the hook for airfare for the next flight to California.

But the weirdness is compounded by the fact that she’s appealing to parents. What parent out there is actively concerned that their son might get less tail now that sex is suddenly more expensive?

Which moms and dads are lying awake at night fretting that their boy who’s away at college won’t be able to pressure his reluctant knocked-up girlfriend to get rid of it because he doesn’t want to miss out on law school or whatever?

Men have no choice with respect to a woman’s pregnancy once they’ve done their part to make it happen. So Harris can only be complaining that the end of Roe means fewer sexual partners for guys or less ability to coerce the women they’ve impregnated into aborting. Either of which, she believes, should alarm their parents.

The closest she comes to a good point in all that is what I wrote yesterday about how, for some pro-lifers, reducing the number of babies killed is only part of the benefit achieved by Dobbs. The other part is raising the cost of sex. If casual sex continues at the same clip post-Roe as it did during the Roe era, irrespective of the impact on pregnancy, there are some social cons who would say that the great victory at the Court proved not to be as great as they had hoped.

Harris also got going on how the ruling affects her personally as a step-parent, godparent, and aunt. Uh, and also as a woman, Dana Bash had to remind her:

What can I say? The Democrats aren’t sending their best.

Per Breitbart, some lefties didn’t care for the tweet she sent after the decision was handed down either:

That bitterness reflects a divide opening up on the left in the aftermath of Dobbs over what the proper course of action is to remedy the ruling. Older Democratic establishmentarians like Biden and Pelosi have resorted to the old refrain — vote, vote, vote. Younger ones like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez counter that liberals have been voting for Democrats for decades and the party was still completely outmaneuvered by Republicans, producing the end of Roe. They want Court-packing, impeachment hearings, demonstrations, anything and everything available to undo the decision. “This is not something that’s going to be solved in a day, or in an election, or in a year, because we’ve got to strap in. This is a generational fight,” AOC told liberals outside the Court on Friday. “We have to fill the streets. Right now, elections are not enough.”

It’s not Harris’s fault that she happened to be on Air Force Two when the decision dropped, but her physical remove from the news antagonized progressives who view the party establishment as already too removed from the abortion fight. Case in point:

Harris was pressed today on what the administration is planning to do to help mitigate the consequences of the ruling and said something about defraying the cost of travel to blue states for women seeking abortions. Uh, where’s that money coming from? On what planet are Dems getting 60 Senate votes to pass that bill? Or is the idea to move money around within the executive branch to pay for it somehow?

They’ve had months to figure out a response and an extra heads-up of what was coming when Alito’s Dobbs draft leaked. Progressives are annoyed at their flat-footedness and getting impatient:

Frustration is building among liberals over what some see as a slow executive response from the president, despite weeks to prepare following POLITICO’s publication of a draft majority opinion forecasting the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. White House officials contend that things are more complicated than they seem, but that’s doing little to turn down the temperature in the party…

And the flurry of Democratic demands for quick action sparked a degree of annoyance in the White House, where aides say they’ve spent the last two months stress-testing ideas for blunting the ruling’s impact.

At the heart of the intra-party tension over abortion is a complaint Democratic lawmakers have also offered about the White House’s approach to spiking inflation: As a problem emerges and grows, they say, the White House is slow to offer guidance and taking too cautious an approach to Congress.

I did not foresee Democrats reacting to the end of Roe by immediately forming a circular firing squad. But it’s certainly in-character for them, I’ll give them that.

I’ll leave you with a little treat to tide you over until morning.

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