Bill, read my follow up commentary.

Do you even notice what you're doing there, Bill? You're defining the idea that a fetus is a human being as being out-of-bounds from the start. That's fine, I guess, but then you oughtn't to pretend that you're simply trying to be 'reasonable' about the whole issue.

If fetuses are, human beings, though, and we're killing... murdering... a million of them every single year, then the Holocaust comparisons are tragically apt.

As one who does believe that we've murdered tens of millions of babies over the past several decades, the people who distress me aren't the extremists, but the moderates. Someone who says, "I don't believe it's a human being," I have no problem with. I think they're horribly, tragically, mistaken, but I don't think they're evil. On the other hand, someone who says, "Yeah, I think they're killing human beings, but I'm not comforatble telling them not to," is completely horrifying to me.

According to every survey that's taken on this issue, tens of millions of Americans believe that abortion is the killing of a human being. My question, then, is why aren't there more people speaking in Holocaust language?

I'm not understanding your analogies here. Intent is rather important in assessing morality of actions and, certainly, the woman's intent here is clear. I don't deny that there are rare situations where an abortion might be preferable to the alternatives. Avoiding the need to buy large jars of mayo at Costco isn't among them.

Gotta take issue with one more 'fast-one' you tried to pull here, Bill. You write:

"Many are so enamored with the concept of fully realized life with equal rights at the very moment of conception, that they refuse to accept the idea that in certain cases, some may consider abortion to be the best course of action."

Nice try. You make it sound like abortion opponents are blind to the reality that many disagree with them. In fact, I would venture to say that there are approximately zero people who "refuse to accept the idea that in certain cases, some may consider abortion to be the best course of action." Everyone understands that some -- many -- may consider abortion to be the best course of action.

We just think they're wrong.

I understand the moral consistency of the pro-life argument, and in many ways, I have a lot of respect for it - much more on that here, here and here.

But I think that we need to get the terminology straight.

Do I think that a newly fertilized egg is a life? Yes. Do I regard it as a human being with equal rights and value to the woman who is carrying it? No. The argument goes, why is a zygote, that has no more cognitive or emotional consciousness than it's individual unfertilized components, a form of life that demands government intervention to protect it? When such intervention legislates and enforces responsible biological function on a fully realized human being with her own rights?

Because of the concept of spirituality? (And yes, yes, I know that there are secular humanists that are opposed to abortion) once again, there is no consensus about abortion that provides the basis for a law against all abortions, all the time, or its enshrinement as a murderous taboo.

In that way, it's perfectly logical for someone to say that they are not comfortable legislating the biological function of someone else's body. You can think that it's morally wrong, but not feel the need to impel the government to enforce this belief ... obviously the lack of consensus on this issue makes things very hazy.

So yeah, I might be one of those people that horrifies you. I don't place equal value on the zygote, but I think taht the whole "it's not a life" game is a matter of semantics. I am averse to the concept of abortion, but I don't think that the government has enough of a mandate to declare it murder.

Face it, absolutism on the issue is a minority position.

James -

A deperate woman who aborts her kid, may have the primary intent of avoiding the devastating consequences of a realized/continued pregnacy. She terminates the pregnancy as a means to fulfill this intent. Some on the pro-life side of the issue would lable her as a murderer no matter what the circumstance (rape, incest, etc)

In teh same way, we have INTENT to kill innocent civilians, in the sense taht we KNOW that it will happen a certain percentage of the time. It's an sematically animated argument to suggest otherwise.

Such are the perils of moral calculus.

Brilliantly stated, Bill.

Hopefully some of the wingnuts on your side of the fence will take something from your argument.

But as you stated, it's probably not going to happen. These folks have ingrained the absolutist pro-life igornant mindstate into their very core of being. For them to question their own beliefs would lead to nothing less than their own spontaneous combustion. So they go on, tenaciously attached to their viewpoints, refusing to even consider another. Similar to the fools on the left that take Michael Moore's propaganda as the truth and refuse to listen to counter-arguments.

Once again, well done Bill.

re: "Nice try. You make it sound like abortion opponents are blind to the reality that many disagree with them. "

I was unclear in my prose, not trying to pull a "fast one." Updated with bolded text.

"that they refuse to accept the legitimacy of the idea that in certain cases, some may consider abortion to be the best course of action."

Accepting that the opinions of others on this matter may be thoughtful and somehow legitimate (and not just the extreme purview of murdering extremists - what I mean to say is more legit than CostCo lady) would cause one to understand how they might not have the mandate to casually condemn all pro-choicers with incendiary terms.

Tell me Spoons - do you think that a 16 year-old who is raped should be forced to carry the child to term?

Nothing like a little moral relativism to skirt the issue and avoid the fact that this woman. Someone who gives no more thought to offing her own offspring than she would take to schedule a manicure.

Bill is the true bloody face of the pro"choice" movement, she is just one of the party faithful that has carried her beliefs to their logical, final conclusion. Terminating the lives of her twins and just carrying the one boy to term allows her to continue HER life without any bothersome inconviences. That way she can dole out her "motherly love" in carefully measured doses and still be in fashion the next fall.

"Face it, absolutism on the issue is a minority position."

Who are you arguing with? Does anybody claim that absolutism on abortion is a majority opinion? If I may be permitted to speak on behalf of the pro-life crowd, we get it. We're in the minority. So what? If we honestly and sincerely believe that a million murders of babies are being committed ever single year, are we supposed to feel better about it? Do we have a duty to avoid using language that makes the majority uncomfortable?

I also mention, as an aside, that I used the terminology "human being," not "life." I did that purposely, to avoid being accused of playing semantic games. Anyone not scientifically illeterate would have to admit that a fetus (or whatever) is a life. That doesn't answer the question, though. I used "human being" as a shorthand to mean a full-fledged living human individual. I was trying to avoid a misunderstanding, not create one.

You also write: "The argument goes, why is a zygote, that has no more cognitive or emotional consciousness than it's individual unfertilized components, a form of life that demands government intervention to protect it?"

Two responses, one philosophical, one practical. 1) in no other context do we regularly hold that a person's 'cognitive or emotional consciousness' determines whether they have rights (although actually, I'd like to know your basis for your assertion regarding the cognitive and emotional development of this 'creature'). 2) We are not primarily talking about 'zygotes,' here (although I would oppose abortion even if we were). Many women will not even know that they are pregnant at that stage. We are talking about some embryos and mostly fetuses. The greatest number of abortions take place late in the 1st trimester. At that point, the fetus's body parts are all distinguishable, it can hear sounds, suck its thumb, and its skin is sensitive to touch I'm not saying whether any of that should make a difference to you: that's up to you. I'm just trying to keep this discussion factually accurate.

"Tell me Spoons - do you think that a 16 year-old who is raped should be forced to carry the child to term?"

I think that no babies should be murdered. Period. I think that regardless of the circumstances that led to the baby's existence. The fact that a woman was the victim of one horrifying crime does not make me feel better about making her child the victim of another one.

I'm not meaning to dodge your question, just pointing out that I disagree with the underlying assumptions. In short, my answer to your question, as I understand it, would be "absolutely yes."

Bill, let's not brand all of the pro-life crowd absolutists. I consider myself to be very pro-life, but I also think that abortions are acceptable in instances of rape, incest or in an instance where there is a clear and present danger to the mother's health (and I'm not talking about some minor medical difficulties).

That's not exactly the thoughs of an "absolutist." I'll not speak for Dr. Joyner, Michele Malkin, Michele Catalnato or any of the others you linked, but I don't think that I personally can ever be considered an extremist in this matter or an absolutist.

Most of us who are pro-life think that a life is a life and that there are not different levels of life. In the instance of a mother and her child, one life cannot be valued higher than another. That is obviously not your way of thinking but it is ours. So when we pro-lifers use terms like "death" and "murder" in conjunction with abortion, what else would you have us do? When looked at from our perspective, is abortion not a murder?

You would say that a baby in the fetus stage of its life has no right to life. We who are pro-life say it does. The fact that we think abortion is murder is just a side-effect of that basic belief and is no more extreme than thinking that abortion is not murder.

Spoons -
I understand the moral consistency of the pro-life argument(please visit the third link that I provided in my comment above for more info on the matter), and in many ways, I respect it.

But you can express how you feel with Nazi analogies all you want - if that's what you believe, I would expect no less. Just don't think that you are going to convince anyone of anything when you employ those terms. And don't be surprised if such rhetoric drives people away from your position (much like the ANSWER rhetoric drives people away from the more reasonable anti-war arguments)

Mengele tortured live Jews, Gypsies, etc. with sadistic experiments. Even if one thinks that first trimester abortions are wrong or not, this is not in any way an accurate analogy. I find it offensive.

For reference, here's a little taste of Josef mengele:

He grabbed her by the neck and proceeded to beat her head to a bloody pulp. He hit her, slapped her, boxed her, always her head -- screaming at the top of his voice, "You want to escape, don’t you. You can’t escape now. You are going to burn like the others, you are going to croak, you dirty Jew." As I watched, I saw her two beautiful, intelligent eyes disappear under a layer of blood. And in a few seconds, her straight, pointed nose was a flat, broken, bleeding mass. Half an hour later, Dr. Mengele returned to the hospital. He took a piece of perfumed soap out of his bag and, whistling gaily with a smile of deep satisfaction on his face, he began to wash his hands.

And a case in point on rhetoric:

Morgan says:

"Bill is the true bloody face of the pro"choice" movement"

hey Morgan - fuck off.

See? Not much was accomplished there.

Rob -

I don't "brand all of the pro-life crowd absolutists."

Just the people that use Nazi analogies and accept absolutely no compromise or exception in the matter.

Bill, I understand your point. Insults and rhetoric don't solve many instances.

However, where do you expect the pro-life movement to compromise? We feel that to abort a baby is to kill it. What room for compromise is there within that?

Unless you're talking about instances of rape and such, on which topics I'd have to say that I disagree with Spoons. I don't believe that rape babies should have to be carried to term. Nor do I believe that incestous babies should have to be born. I also believe that the mother and father (if he's in the picture) should have a choice when the pregnancy presents a clear and present threat to the life of the mother.

Doh, I meant to say "Insults and rhetoric don't solve many problems."

Sorry.

"Mengele tortured live Jews, Gypsies, etc. with sadistic experiments. Even if one thinks that first trimester abortions are wrong or not, this is not in any way an accurate analogy. I find it offensive."

Here's an interesting thing to think about. Now, I'll ask you to trust me and let your guard down for a minute, because the following is not an argument, but sincerely a discussion point.

Ask yourself: why was the Holocaust evil?

It seems like one of those questions that's almost too obvious to ask or answer, doesn't it? It was evil because it caused immeasurable suffering among Jews and other victim groups. It was evil because of the lost lives an opportunities of the murdered. It was evil for the cruelty shown by the perpetrators. It was evil for the acquiescence by people who knew about the murders and did nothing. You can probably think of a dozen or more forumations.

I think you can probably break down the reasons that the Holocaust was evil into two categories: objective reasons, and subjective reasons (that's not a value judgment). The Holocaust was evil because of the results (objective evil). And the Holocaust was evil because of the malicious intent of the perpetrators (subjective evil).

Now, consider abortion (and here I may argue some, so raise your guard if you must). Looking at abortion from the standpoint of those who believe that abortion is murder, then it seems clear that abortion in the U.S. is every bit as objectively evil as the Holocaust was (remember, I'm asking you to look at it from our perspective for purposes of understanding our view; I'm not asking you to endorse it). Since Roe, we've had something like 40 million abortions -- 40 million murders -- in this country. Objectively, that's an evil that dwarfs the Holocaust in sheer numbers. From that standpoint, it's a wonder that the pro-life crowd isn't more extremist than it is. I confess that though I'm not religious myself (I guess agnostic would be the most accurate way to describe me), I sometimes worry that I'm a great moral failure because I don't do much to work against abortion (actually, I don't do anything, other than write about it occasionally.)

Now lets look at the subjective 'evil' of abortion. I like to think that most people who support abortion rights don't really believe that abortion kills a human being. I know that a few (including yourself, sort of, and also John Kerry), say that they believe that, but I don't really believe they mean it -- or at least, I don't believe that they mean it the same way I mean it. Maybe I'm just being willfully blind, but I can't believe that large numbers of the 'personally opposed' crowd really believe that a embryo/fetus is a full-fledged human being, but are okay with permitting its murder. If I'm right, though (that few people feel this way), then abortion is much less subjectively evil than the Holocaust, because the people performing or having the abortions lack evil intent.

In short, from my standpoint, I think aboriton is far more objectively evil than the Holocaust, but much less subjectively evil. But what does that mean as a practical matter for determining what policy should be. If the majority of perpetrators of the Holocaust had been well-intentioned (they weren't, but probably some number did honestly believe that the Jews weren't fully human and could therefore be killed), would that have been an argument for letting it continue?

Are comparisons to the Holocaust likely to persuade many people to be pro-life? Of course not. Do I think anything will persuade people? Not really. I think abortion is pretty much a lost cause. People aren't much open to persuasion on this issue, I think. Besides, being pro-life is simply too 'uncool.' Moreover, a thoroughly corrupt Supreme Court has insured that even if my side were able to persuade most people, it wouldn't make much difference as far as policy is concerned. So what's the point? There isn't much of one, I guess. Still, while I find the situation too hopeless to actually try to do something about the abortion Holocaust, the least that my conscience will permit me to do is to call the evil by its right name.

Well Bill, you've certainly proved one thing, that nothing gets us rabble screaming at you better than using the abortion word. I wrote about what I found particularly disgusting at my place, so I'll just add 2 cents worth here. I'm with Spoons that the cause of the pregnancy, rape/incest etc does not change or justify the commission of a further crime (obviously in using that word I'm showing I'm "pro-life" as the saying goes). Bill your comment about a zuygote being a life, I agree, and of course it does not have the same rights as the mother.
Yet breal it down a little further: there is a large difference between sins of omission and sins of commission. If we stand back and do nothing then it will become, without further intervention, someone with exactly the same constitutional and moral rights as the mother. There fore, to my mind at least, intervening to stop that process is indeed immoral as we are actively stopping that process from continuing.
James has a good point that intentions are important in valuing the morality of an act. Rob also makes the popint about serious medical danger to the mother's life. Even the Catholic Church agrees here, not something you often hear. Abortion per se is not allowed. Medical treatment to save the life of the mother which has, as a side effect (note, not the main intention) the effect of killing the fetus is a morally pure, even if one not to be wished, act. That connects closely with your point about the relative values of those concerned. From what I recall it is also the Judaic take on the subject.
Finally, about the legal aspects: I don't see any way in which, even after another few decades of fights on the subject, the majority of Americans will acept abortion as being illegal in all circumstances. It just ain't going to happen.
As I said, just 2 cents worth.

Gotta go with the others on this, Bill. I don't think the quality of life should have an impact on whether or not it is a protectable life. The fact is, as I see it, it's an innocent life, and it should be protected in any trimester. If we start going down the road of what's worth saving if it's an inconvenience to others, and whatever, we open up a new can of worms which extends beyond abortion. (Terry Schiavo is a good starting point.)

And then we're going to have people who will misuse such a minor allowance to their own advantage. Rest assured, this lady might not have a legitimate reason for abortion now, but if we did the whole first trimester thing, I believe she would have manufactured a reason. Such is the power of selfishness.

Look, for the sake of simplicity and human decency, I think it should just be illegal, period. It's best to err on the side of caution when lives are at stake, I feel. Too many variables for my taste, on the secular level.

Re: your update, Bill. No hard feelings re: your criticism. I understood and accepted that many would react viscerally against my 'Mengele' comparison when I wrote it. This has remained mostly civil, however. I've actually gotten less criticism than I expected; probably because this specific story strikes many as egregiously horrible.

You know, something just occurred to me. I've critized the pro-choice bloggers who are horrified by this story as being morally inconsistent. I now think I understand the reason for their position. They recoil at this story because of the cavalier attitude of the mother. I bet that this makes her actions seem more subjectively evil. I felt they were inconsistent because I found her actions no more objectively evil than abortion generally.

My hypothesis is, large numbers (possibly a majority) of Americans feel that subjective evil is more 'important' or 'compelling' (not exactly the right words) than objective evil. I, however, am not very interested in subjective evil; only objective evil.

I understand that there is a risk that pro-choice people will think that I am denigrating their positions. I understand that in many instances, 'subjective' evaluations are viewed as being of inherently less value than 'objective' evaluations. That's not the way I mean it, though.

What do you think of that theory?

The legal bedrock to a woman's right to use medicines or surgery to end a pregnancy rests on the fact that her physical person is put at risk by pregnancy.

It's not the Costco Mayonnaise.

Without getting into my rather flinty views on when her rights trump the life developing within, I do want to make a single point.

THE FATHER HAS NO SAY in whether I am at risk of being seriously or permenantly injured or dying from my pregnancy or not. My doctor does, and I have the final say in what risk I will endure.

If I have an ectopic pregnancy, waiting for paternal permission will either kill me or leave me very gravely injured or at exceedingly high risk of death.

In that situation, dad can bugger off.

I'm pro-choice, within reason. This story was not within reason. Her excuses and attitude are obscene.

Frankly, after reading her advise to a 16 year old that had an abortion at 14... telling her to explore the website more instead of telling her she should get some counseling for her grief... I think she's mentally deficient.

Whenever a social issue like this comes up for any reason (gay marriage amendment is another example) I really wonder if the pro war-on-terror coalition can even survive the fissure between social conservatives and social liberals. After all, if you really believe, like Dennis Prager and others, that those who favor gay marriage are in every way morally equivalent to Al Qaeda or, like "Spoons" above, that those who take anything other than the most hard-line pro-life position are complicit in something worse than the Holocaust, it becomes clear that many "putative" allies in supporting the Bush administration's foreign policy are, in the minds of many social conservatives, actually the most extreme enemies. After all, if one truly agreed with Prager or "Spoons" or with Michelle Malkin, whom as I understand are voicing opinions that are somewhat common to social/religious conservatives, then defeating us non-social-conservative/pro war-on-terror Republicans and independents who are not hard-line pro-life or hard-line anti gay marriage or whatever, would be every bit as much of a moral duty as defeating Islamofascism, possibly even moreso.

When I see these culture war type debates go on, it's all very depressing. For one thing, I wonder about what will happen if we do indeed win this war and Western civlization survives. Will the more extreme elements of the social conservatives then turn on their former allies? Will it be violent? After all, if one does truly agree with Prager that the struggle against Al Qaeda and the struggle against gay marriage are one and the same, clearly methods beyond the ballot box and cloture votes would be warranted? And if one truly does agree with "Spoons" above that anyone who doesn't take a hard-line pro-life stance is complicit in the a Holocaust how many times over, then wouldn't any method be warranted to fight us modern day equivalents of "Hitler's Willing Executioners"?

I also wonder in all seriousness why social conservatives are even interested in defending the United States if (at the very least) a significant minority of its citizens are, by their own standards, evil.

Spoons: don't forget that it's normally hard to judge subjective evil, because we generally don't know what's going on in someone's head. In this case, however, the writer devoted considerable skill with words to telling us. The mental recoil that most people have been experiencing has at least as much to do with the horrific picture so presented, as it does with her actual actions.

Eric: Because the primary disagreements are about matters of fact, not matters of value. Most pro-choicers come to this incorrect conclusion because they are wrong about the nature of abortion. Those who think that abortion is equivalent to infanticide, and still support it, are rare ... and pro-lifers are disturbed just thinking about them, as you can see from Spoons' comments above.

Since no one else is chiming in I'll run the risk of posting twice in a row.

I agree completely with Stacy's post linked above. This woman, Amy Richards, is depraved. I found the story horrifying, shocking. The callousness, the selfishess. The piece literally left me speechless. I couldn't believe what I was reading. My reaction had nothing to do with whether I'm "pro-life" or "pro-choice" (however elastically those terms may be employed) but everything to do with the fact that I'm a human being and possess some basic sense of morality. To kill two fetuses simply because you don't want to sacrifice any aspect of our Manhattan lifestyle is deeply immoral.

But, here's the rub Spoons. Intellectually honest pro-abortion types (I think both sides should drop their tiresome game of euphemisms and dysphemisms and simply settle on pro and anti-abortion or pro and anti legal abortion perhaps), acknowledge that abortion is killing. We also know that there are all sorts of public policy issues which turn on the question of when killing should be permitted. That is to say: not all killing=murder. If you really consistently applied an anti-killing ethic then you would end up in the "seamless garment of life" Catholic church position: anti-abortion, anti-death penalty, anti-euthanasia, and anti almost any war. This is a very rare position in American politics. The question is how much killing are you willing to accept and in what circumstances.

I'm a bit busy at work, so I'll comment in depth later, but eric is representing many of my thoughts very well.

The father has no say? You're saying that an involved father's opinion shouldn't matter when it comes to pregnancy?

Listen honey, that's not just your baby in there. Its the father's just as much. If there were an emergency and the father wasn't around or couldn't be reached of course your decision if the only one that's going to matter. If the father is around then I think his decision needs to be heard as well.

I knew three guys who, shortly after high school, would have become fathers had the mother not gotten an abortion. These girls went and got abortions without even telling the father they were pregnant. And these guys aren't bums. They're hard-working, contributing members of society. I know they would have cared for those children, but nobody bothered to tell them they had that responsibility.

When a woman becomes pregnant she has entered into a situation where her rights aren't always the end-all consideration. There are the rights of the baby and the rights of the father to be considered as well.

There's no easy answers for every situation, but we have to make every effort to ensure that rights of all parties involved are considered.

"After all, if one truly agreed with Prager or 'Spoons' or with Michelle Malkin, whom as I understand are voicing opinions that are somewhat common to social/religious conservatives, then defeating us non-social-conservative/pro war-on-terror Republicans and independents who are not hard-line pro-life or hard-line anti gay marriage or whatever, would be every bit as much of a moral duty as defeating Islamofascism, possibly even moreso."

Hmmm hmmm. The difference is that I don't think the abortion battle can be won by my side.

Also, just for background, I'm an agnostic who is pro-gay marriage. I can't think of a single "social issue" on which I'm particularly conservative, other than abortion, which I view as a life and death issue, not a social one.

"And if one truly does agree with 'Spoons' above that anyone who doesn't take a hard-line pro-life stance is complicit in the a Holocaust how many times over, then wouldn't any method be warranted to fight us modern day equivalents of "Hitler's Willing Executioners"?

That's a very fair question, Eric, and one I've struggled with at length. Here are my answers, which you may or may not find satisfactory.

1) As objectively evil as I believe abortion to be, I think the lack of subjective evil constrains, to some significant extent, the actions that are appropriate to combat the practice. You didn't really say what you were thinking of, but I inferred that you were talking about the people who advocate violence against abortion docs, for example. One of the main moral problems with that approach, it seems to me, is that the doctors don't believe themselves to be doing evil. Can it ever be justified, in the abstract, to do violence against someone who's doing something objectively evil, but who has no subjective ill intent? Sure, I suppose you could construct some sort of scenario (not necessarily involving abortion), but...

2) Any time you're contemplating actions that would otherwise be evil (pick your scenario -- bombing Iraq, amputating a limb, irradiating a tumor), there'd have to be very good evidence that they would successfully ameliorate a greater evil. If there's no hope of that, then you're just doing evil with no overriding good to balance it out. Bombing Iraq without freeing the people or eliminating a threat would be pointless. Cutting off a limb when the patient will die anyway is just butchery. Here, the people who go after abortion doctors or other evil stuff like that can't argue, it seems to be, that they're serving a greater good. Aside from the 'subjective evil' point I made above, there's just no evidence that those sort of extremist tactics work. If anything, they make it harder for anti-abortion forces to convey their message. Every time someone like me tries to argue about how evil abortion is, we have to answer for those who go around doing violence. It's not helpful.

How much would I do to stop abortion if I could? Honestly, I have no idea. Maybe my pessimism about abortion is a defense mechanism to avoid having to answer that question. I don't know. Admittedly, it's much easier for me believing that this is a hopeless cause, because then I don't have to do anything about it. It'd be easier still if I didn't talk about it. Actually, I usually try to avoid it, but sometimes my conscience gets the better of me and I feel like speaking out is the least I can do.

You know what I really wish about this whole debate? I wish some day a pro-choice person would come up to me and say, "You know, I disagree with you about a fetus being a full-fledged human being, but I respect and understand that you do, and if I believed what you did, I'd be as horrified as you are. I'm glad that I don't have to live my life believing I'm in the middle of the Holocaust."

It's never happened yet, though. For my part, I say to you pro-choicers who don't believe that the fetus was a full-fledged human being, that I understand and respect your view. If I believed as you did about the fetus, I'd be every bit as pro-choice as you are. There's no way I'd want the government to have the kind of power necessary to prevent abortion unless I thought it was absoutely essential to prevent mass murder. I still wouldn't say it was constitutionally protected (I'm too much of a textualist for that), although I might support an amendment to make it so.

Anyway.

Except that the people you're talking about in camp LLL only complain about the United States and Israel using violence. By in large they tend to either be disturbingly quite (or even more disturblingly, jubilant) when "jihadis" blow themselves up, taking out several innocent people along with them. The only absolutist bone in their reality discordant bodies is their blind and absolute hatred for the United States and Israel.
They're actually relativists. Morals, values, ethics, and facts are shiftable in order to support their feelings and wants (and more often I think, to help them dodge the responsibility of thinking).
Absolutism is the belief that 'A' is 'A', while relativism is the belief (or wishful thought) that 'A' can also not be 'A'. At it's core, the rift between neo-cons and liberals comes down to those basic premises. That Saddam needed to be dealt with during the Clinton era, and that while Saddam and the situation in Iraq didn't change after Clinton left office, Saddam no longer needed to be dealt with = 'A' can also not be 'A'. Saddam needed to be dealt with during the Clinton era, Saddam didn't change when Clinton left office, Saddam still needed to be dealt with = 'A' is 'A'.
This is an important distinction that we can't afford to muddle because "'A' can also not be 'A'" is completely irrational. It's a non-thought.
Republican pro-lifers believe that a human being is a human being at the moment of conception, so the idea of going to a doctor's office to have that human being killed is very comparable to Dr. Mengele's experiments and SS men throwing babies into fire pits. However no reasonable person can see a how a man that liberated two countries that were under the rule of murderous and oppressive regimes is just like a man who placed damn near all of Europe under his oppressive regime which was responsible for the murder of some 12 million people, which is exactly what what the liberals he's referring to frequently claim. There's no equivalance here.

Helpful hint: Camp LLL does moral "calculus". Seeing, where that's landed them, we'd be well advised to stay good and clear of that kind (and all kinds) of fuzzy logic.

Candace -

A. "They're actually relativists" - reread my post, i point this out. their sole consistency is anti-West, anti-authority

B. abortion in all forms, at all times, is not comparable to the sadistic experiments conducted by Mengele.

I agree, Eric, although I do think the terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are fine, as long as you use both terms and not just one. Both terms are a bit self-flattering, but used together, they are reasonably accurate in identifying which side you come down on when forced to choose between protecting life and respecting choice.

As for me, I'm pro-choice generally, but I share Malkin and Spoons's outrage over stories like this one, which force me to wonder if I'm on the wrong side of the issue. At a minimum, I think freedom of choice should carry with it some obligation to exercise that freedom responsibly, which Amy Richards has not done. If she had abused her First Amendment rights, her Second Amendment rights, or just about any other right actually mentioned in the Constitution has badly as she abused her pseudo-constitutional "right" to an abortion of convenience, she'd be facing criminal charges right now.

1.) Apollogies, it's just that I fixed in on the bold type and missinterpretted (sp?) the context of what followed. I thought you had confused the two. My bad. :)

2.) You're also right on the Megele issue, but I think the SS comparison is still valid, within the context I mentioned earlier.

I know I said it on my own blog, but I wanna vent for a minute here.

Everybody treats this as if it's the woman and her fetus. The woman and her fetus. The woman and her fetus. I get it. It's her body. And I'm not the sort of Neanderthal who would run around insisting that a man can dictate to his woman whether she may terminate her pregnancy.

Then again, that's about the father's rights. I want to talk about the father's obligations.

Where in all this debate is talk of the father's obligation to support thie child? If the father has just gotten his wife/girlfriend knocked up, he has some responsibility for that child. Doesn't he have the responsibility to help raise the child? Doesn't he have some voice in advocating with the woman, trying to persuade her to carry the child to term ... or not carry it, as the needs of the family dictate?

What about the man's obligation to support the mother of his children? If she is frightened, isn't he obligated to assure her? If she needs financial support while she carries their child, does he not have the duty to work double-time, triple-time if needed so that she can carry the child to term? If the expectant mother cries, should he not provide a shoulder she can cry on? If the mother falls, should the father not lift her up?

I would answer all of these questions "yes." If my own girlfriend became pregnant, she would demand that I support her through the pregnancy; in fact, she would demand that I assist in decisionmaking, from deciding whether to terminate the pregnancy to choosing colors for the baby room. And she would be right to do so.

One of my major problems with the tenor of the abortion debate is not the ubiquitous, whining cry of "father's rights." Rather, I am concerned that the continual focus on the mother's right to terminate her pregnancy vs. her obligation to carry the child to term has excused us hairy-type males from our obligations as fathers, husbands, and boyfriends.

After all, if it's "the mother's decision," then the father really has nothing to worry about, does he?

--|PW|--

So let me get this straight: taking the word "God" out of the Pledge is absolutely necessary and to the survival of the republic; but killing twins because you don't want your friends to see you driving a minivan is a matter of perspective.

I'm not an anti-abortion absolutist. But I am stunned by your position vis-a-vis this horrid woman.

I think most people, at the core, are pro-life. Unfortunately, the term "pro-life" is quite unsexy, and includes a lot of pretty negative, unpopular and unglamourous representations. ARE there pro-life absolutists? Absolutely. They are what I call strict anti-abortionists. They're just fine by war, they're religious zealots, they're preachy and scary. They are also only a fraction of the ACTUAL PRO-LIFE COMMUNITY, which is also comprised of reasonable, educated people who come from many different religious and political backgrounds.

People, I think, are "pro-choice" theoretically, because of the diversions and euphemisms the pro-choice lobby employs. Woman's body, who-am-I-to-judge, etc. But abortion is a right with a physical and bloody result. Those who are pro-choice and anti-war have no problem with showing the terrifying pictures of the beheading of American hostages, and yet they yell "LIES" when confronted with the actual images of aborted babies' bones.

Abortion is not a "medical" procedure. Those of you who maintain a "pro-choice" status because of rape & incest....Well, let's think about that. First of all, if abortion needs to be legal because of cases of rape & incest, why aren't we doing anything about these supposed horrors? What is going on that women are being raped continuously and need to abort their children? Most pro-lifers admit a gray area. Rape, incest, health of the mother, etc.

But we know--all of us, pro-life and pro-choice alike--that 93% of abortions are performed on HEALTHY mothers and HEALTHY babies, but have decided the little life will upset their own life and the direction THEY want their life to go. But we make our decisions and our decisions always have consequences. To put the life of another before your own is the most noble and honorable thing to do. Since when is a human being's life worth less than a diploma? Since when is a human being's life worth less than maintaining a cosmopolitan lifestyle in Manhattan? Since when is human life something to be thrown away when it is an inconvenience to us.

Would I force a teenager to have a baby? Well, why was she having sex to begin with? Why aren't we nipping these problems in the bud? It's like a dam is breaking and the pro-choice answer is to stick on a band-aid. We need to get to the root of these problems, and killing unborn babies is not a very good answer. It is, in fact, creating even more problems.

Pro-choice advocates claim that "forcing" a woman to bear a child is tantamount to psychological torture. Hey, I can tell you about psychological torture. It's not carrying a child. I've done it. Nine months of carrying a child? Piece of cake next to physical, psycho-sexual, sexual and emotional abuse. Women claiming nine months of pregnancy to be "tortuous" makes me think we deserve to be called the "weaker sex."

I think everyone in America should learn to perform an abortion. If you can do it without crying or vomiting, then go ahead, support it all you want. But we're talking about bones and blood here, people, not "choice."

"One of my major problems with the tenor of the abortion debate is not the ubiquitous, whining cry of 'father's rights.' Rather, I am concerned that the continual focus on the mother's right to terminate her pregnancy vs. her obligation to carry the child to term has excused us hairy-type males from our obligations as fathers, husbands, and boyfriends."

Pennywit, where do you get the idea that fathers, husbands, and boyfriends are excused? In fact, the law does require them to give financial support (although it also denies them any say in whether the child will be aborted). In fact, in many cases, husbands and boyfriends have been forced to financially support children even when they can prove that the children aren't theirs. I'm not sure why you think the men are getting off easy, here.

Spoons,

Parse my comments a little more carefully. In a legal sense, men are obligated to pay child support, etc. But in a moral and psychological sense, men are encouraged to think of the pregnancy as part of the "woman's body" and the decision to terminate pregnancy as the "woman's decision." This leads to a personal detachment.

My post is not about financial support, but about emotional and personal support.

--|PW|--

Eric Deamer wrote: "I also wonder in all seriousness why social conservatives are even interested in defending the United States if (at the very least) a significant minority of its citizens are, by their own standards, evil."

As a Christian, here's the rub: all life was created sacred, and for sacred purpose. Evil (in the true "old-fashioned" sense of the word) always seeks to bring about maximum destruction to as many lives as possible. Furthermore, all humans are fallen, in our thinking, in our emoting, and in our willpower. This is a continuous thread through the last 5000 years of Judeo-Christian theology. Every single day we're confronted with choices...often they are between shades of evil. To answer Eric's question directly: far and away the majority of conservative American Christians defend America precisely because history has shown that this country has the least evil type of human government, all others being more prone to tyranny by (surprise, surprise) corrupt leaders. Thus, the point is NOT to simply condemn evildoers for the sake of taking a stand (as many angry misguided souls do, forgetting that God is in the business of changing human hearts), but to minimize the damage and where possible turn our hearts toward God. Thus it's logically consistent to simultaneously strive for the overthrow of corrupt regimes the world over, while working toward the minimization of abortion. The one seeks the imprisonment/destruction of those whose proven pattern is callous disavowal for the worth of human life. The other is a barbaric practice which treats growing human life as mere tissue and the mother as an automaton devoid of capability or worth as a mother.

Another (unrelated) point: abortion leans heavily on myopic social prognosis--that those who are young, inexperienced, or less well-off (even if temporary, as in the case of, say, university students) will ruin their futures by carrying children to term, even were they later to give them up for adoption. This attitude is a "soft" form of the evil attitude on parade in the NYT article. Implicit in it are the assumptions that career tracks, education, financial hardship, etc. are worth more than a human life. Abortion seeks to avoid or negate difficult and complex questions...will I be able to care for this child? Am I responsible enough? Stable enough financially/emotionally/etc? Abortion is the extreme "no" to these questions. And what might the affirmatives entailed? Seeking help (be it spiritual, financial, or emotional)? Changing a lifestyle?

Each abortion is such a tragedy for all involved.

Spoons:

Thank you for your response. This has been a really good and even-tempered discussion, which is sure hard to come by on this issue. A lot of food for thought . . .

Anyway, to speak to the specific issue of bombing abortion clinics and other violent measures, I've run this thought experiment in my head a few times and come to the terrifying hypothesis that if one actually believed that each abortion is a murder (that is to say an unjustified killing), then it might even be a moral duty to engage in such tactics. You say that there is evidence that such tactics don't work, which would blow my hypothesis out of the water. However, at the level of thought experiment it seems to me that if one blew up an abortion clinic or killed a doctor that performs an abortion, it would have the effect of: a) stopping that institution or that person from commiting any more murders b)Scaring other doctors away from wanting to perform abortions, and c) Making women more generally fearful of going to get an abortion. Think of it! By killing one evil person you could prevent how many future murders? Hundreds? thousands? I'm not being facetious here. I really think that if one truly believes that every abortion, no matter what the exigent circumstances, is a murder, an infanticide, part of an ongoing Holocaust, then this is the position one would be forced into. (Failing there being some evidence, which I haven't seen, that such a strategy would lead in the long run to more abortions and not fewer). The fact that only a tiny fringe of the pro-life movement actually embraces this argument, makes it seem to me that the non-violent pro-lifers are making some tacit admission that there is more to the issue than the killing=murder formulation.

he father has no say? You're saying that an involved father's opinion shouldn't matter when it comes to pregnancy?

No, you don't get a vote about whether I am at risk of being seriously injured or killed by a pregnancy gone awry.

You do not share any of that risk.

If a baby is outside of my body, you have as much say as I do. Vis a Vis the life support for an anencephalic monster or the disposition of fertilized eggs.

You do not get to decide if I have to die from an ectopic pregnancy or not. You can not make medical decisions for me unless I am incompetent to make them for myself and you do so as next of kin.

Killing a person is neither absolutely right nor absolutely wrong. It depends on the circumstances.

Gotta disagree. Killing another human is always wrong. That being said, there are situations where it can be tolerated, defended, and even justified.

Sarahw:

Are you responding to my comments? I seem to be one of the only commenters to mention fathers.

--|PW|--

I think maybe she was responding to me, pennywit.

I'm not really sure I understand your point, though, Sarah. Are you just arguing about cases where a pregnancy threatens the mothers' life? Who do you think is arguing against you on that score?

Jacqueline Byrne wrote: "Pro-choice advocates claim that "forcing" a woman to bear a child is tantamount to psychological torture. Hey, I can tell you about psychological torture. It's not carrying a child. I've done it. Nine months of carrying a child? Piece of cake next to physical, psycho-sexual, sexual and emotional abuse. Women claiming nine months of pregnancy to be "tortuous" makes me think we deserve to be called the "weaker sex."

My hats off to women like yourself, my wife, and all the countless right-thinking mothers out there. You are some of the toughest human beings alive.

To SarahW et al re medical emergencies: that's one scary gray area. Let's just say that if my wife were ever in danger, I think I'd know when to butt out. Cases of rape or incest (i.e. sexual crime) are much thornier.

Spoons, Rob asserts fathers must be asked permission to intervene in life-threatening pregnancies.

I assumed he was addressing a follow-up to me, and I believe that he was based on the position of his response in the thread.

Quickly in response to Jeff G - reread the post - I was NOT defending this narcissistic woman and teh specifics of her story, rather commenting on the use of extreme rhetoric in the abortion debate at large. Clean out your ears ... er, eyes, or whatever.

And another thing, with perhaps only one exception, excellent debate going on here.

My apologies then, Bill. But why would you use this story to launch an attack against those who were (rightly) so offended by it? Why would you conflate people at the pique of anger with calculating moonbats?

Nevermind, don't answer that. I've decided I don't care.

The reactions just caused me to hit a boiling point. I point out the fact that this story is disturbing, I just get creeped out by holocaust references, whether anti-war protestors or conservative bloggers are the ones employing the metaphor.

protein wisdom or Jeff or whatever:

Some people used the story of this sick, depraved women, which anyone with half-a-conscience would object to, as a platform to launch over-the-top rhetorical attacks against anyone who is in any way, on any level "pro-choice", (or "pro-murder" if you prefer). As if you couldn't think that abortion should be legal sometimes, in some circumstances, and still realize how f'd up this Amy Richards chick is.

Speaking of the lack of paternal rights vis a vis abortion, I wonder if those people who insist on a father's obligation to provide support for a child he didn't want (which I actually agree with) would also insist on a mother's obligation to the father in the case where he *did* want the child that she chose to abort.

I'm thinking the financial equivalent of 18 years worth of child support would be an equitable weregild.

I don't think that a man should have any responsibility to raise a child that they didn't want and were taking measures to prevent having. Likewise, I shouldn't have to carry any pregnancy to term that I don't choose. So if I get pregnant, and I don't want the baby, and the guy does, well tough luck. Find someone who wants to have a child by you. Fairness dictates then, that if I get pregnant, and the father doesn't want the child, well, he doesn't have any say on wether or not I abort, but he shouldn't be obligated to support me and mine. Coming from a military family, and growing up in southern areas, I can testify that more than one husband has become one because his girlfriend deliberately deceived the guy, either by screwing with her birth control method (no longer taking the pill) and getting pregnant, or by simply lying about it - "I'm pregnant, we have to get married!"... two months later "Uh... I miscarried?"

If women claim the absolute right to decide wether or not to carry a pregnancy to term, then they should take absolute responsibility for their decision.

I have a somewhat different opinion of this with regards to married couples - but they've already made a committment to each other to support each other, and any offspring of their relationship.

Well, Bill doesn't like me very much, but I'd like to put in my two cents anyway, (mostly) on his side of the issue. I can completely understand the logic of the pro-life side, partially because I apply that same logic to wars of choice, but also because I apply it to this specific issue as well.

If, in fact, an unborn child constitutes a life, then I absolutely cannot agree with any position that considers it acceptable to take that life. If, on the other hand, no distinct consciousness truly exists until separation from the mother, then the issue becomes much cloudier... as has been stated by Bill and many others (I only rephrase it to clarify my own position). Right now I consider myself "on the fence" with regard to abortion, although maybe even to the right of Bill, because the more evidence I see, the harder I find it to deny that an unborn fetus does, in fact, constitute a life. Unfortunately, I do not have enough medical knowledge to make that determination, and I regard most sources associated with this issue as biased one way or the other, and therefore somewhat lacking in credibility. Until that changes, I really can't consider myself either "pro-life" or "pro-choice", though I lean to the "pro-life" side.

In my view, the same principles apply to wars of choice. If I believe an imminent danger exists which will likely cause the deaths of many on "our side", then I would view war as a justifiable option. If, however, I view claims to such a threat as exaggerated, innapropriately self-serving, or simply unreliable at best, and at the same time I view the deaths of innocent civilians in war as murder, then how can I support such a war and live with myself? Does this make me a "moonbat"? I would like to think not, but then, I don't go around carrying signs.

However, just as I can sympathize with the views of the "pro-life" side of the abortion issue, I can understand the motivations of those who choose to carry signs, however ineffectual (and even sometimes counterproductive) such actions seem to me. The people who do so believe, whether correctly or not, that George Bush, by invading and occupying Iraq, has caused the deaths of over ten thousand innocent civilians. Of course, this doesn't compare in number to the millions of "murders" pro-lifers believe to have been committed by abortionists, but it remains a large number of people; and regardless, "peaceniks" view even one life as too many. I also realize this view does not take into account the prior actions of Saddam Hussein, which lead to far more deaths, and I find it hard to say, but I have begun to come around to this view in small degrees. I can almost see, far off in the distance, the possibility that all the death and destruction caused by our invasion may seem "worth it" in order to remove Hussein from power. That does not change my view of the runup to the war or my belief that the Bush Administration deceived Americans into supporting the war; but then, to come full circle, even in cases of rape and incest, my sadness and horror and the death of an unborn child does not change either. In other words, if the medical health of the mother or a second child necessitates an abortion, then "the end justifies the means". I still don't know if this can be considered the most appropriate view of either abortion or the Iraq war, but I have yet to encounter a better model.

So what's the solution?

Myself, I think abortion is murder. However, I don't think I can prove it to a level that will satisfy five Supreme Court judges, and I doubt anyone else can, either.

Personally, however, I am tired and sick of pro-choice activists using the rare occurrence of "rape, incest, or endangerment of the life of the mother" to justify "abortion as birth control" and resist any attempt to increase restrictions on abortion. I find it disturbing that NARAL wants to force medical students to be trained in abortions whether they want to or not (because the number of doctors willing to perform abortions is decreasing).

My solution is that while I think abortion is murder, it should remain legal, but only before the 8th week of the pregnancy, and then the only legal methods would be in which the mother performed the abortion by her own hand, i.e., tested/safe medications like RU-486. Any responsible woman should know she is pregnant by that time, since pregnancy tests are cheap or free. Beyond 8 weeks, only endangerment of the life of the mother would be grounds for abortion.

Thus, if abortion is not actually murder, we've limited it and encouraged/required women to be demonstrate responsibility in its employment, rather than encouraging irresponsibility. And if it is murder, as many believe it is, then the issue can truly be between the woman and God (if there is one), rather than making a doctor complicit in the murder of a life.

Would you, Bill and Eric (and other pro-choice advocates) agree to my proposal?

...I do realize I might not have all the technical aspects 100% correct, but it is to the level I understand it.

Jeff G:

Why would you assume that only conservatives can make absolutist statements while "in the pique of anger", and all statements by "moonbats" are "calculating"? Do you not believe that a war can generate as much anger as the abortion issue? If so, I'm not sure why. And I don't think Bill was "conflating" anyone, it seemed like he had just reached a point of exasperation and decided to re-clarify his stance on the issue.

"I don't think that a man should have any responsibility to raise a child that they didn't want and were taking measures to prevent having. Likewise, I shouldn't have to carry any pregnancy to term that I don't choose."

The abortion debate really brings out some true colors. The language of the pro-choice advocates is like this: "Me me me choose choose choose me me me I I I I choose choose choose."

Nobody ever asks what they can do for somebody else. I mean, ideally, both men AND women should take responsibility for ALL their actions. If a woman gets pregnant because she was CHOOSING to be sexually active with a man who was also CHOOSING to be sexually active, and both of them know where babies come from, and oops the woman is "hit" with an unplanned pregnancy she "doesn't want" she has the "right" to "choose" what SHE wants. I have never heard of anyone's life being destroyed after doing the best thing and actually giving birth to the child.

The term "forcing women to bear children against their will" is ludicrous. Most women--except for rape victims--do not have the right to yell psychological torture when faced with a crisis pregnancy. 93% of abortions are performed on women who just couldn't handle their babies, so they got rid of them forever, opting for a sense of relief instead of allowing her child to live. Nobody is holding a gun to women faced with unplanned pregnancies and making them have children. This isn't the Handmaid's Tale. We aren't raping women for the sake of breeding and making them bear our offspring.

We confuse the "ability" to choose with the "right" to choose. We don't EVER have the right to get rid of another person because their little life is a hindrance to our social well-being. *THAT* is what abortion is all about, and the pro-choice lobby uses lots of fancy language and semantics and shallow, self-serving rhetoric to confuse people into thinking that they are pro-choice, when most people are horrified at the gruesome reality that is abortion.

Motherhood is NOT a right. Motherhood is a PRIVELEGE. And I gotta tell you, I know a lot of "planned" children who are treated like pets. The idea that unplanned children are potential murderers/psychopaths/criminals is a flimsy and unreliable argument. If abortion is such a great social right, why has domestic violence and child abuse risen to an all-time high?

I have been beaten, raped, and treated like a piece of trash. I have faced a crisis pregnancy. Never once did I EVER think that the child's life should be sacrificed because I was scared. And boy was I scared. It would have thrown a wrench in my plans, I knew that. But the child didn't ask to be conceived, and I knew that her right to live overrode my right to not be embarrassed, my right to control, my right to relief. I miscarried, but it only sealed my pro-life beliefs.

When I was faced with another unplanned pregnancy--this time in my marriage--we were poor, I had lost my parents, and we were completely lost. But I knew my child had a right to live. And when I saw her heart flickering like a light on the ultrasound, I loved her. She didn't BECOME my daughter. She always WAS my daughter. She wasn't in a cocoon. She didn't bust out and become a person--she IS a person, and she always was. And now she is two and a half and she changed my life.

To opt for abortion as a viable "choice" is to say, "I don't have faith in my community, I don't have faith in those around me, I don't have faith in myself." But I know the power that can be achieved when fear is conquered, and that is where life is. THAT is what we have to choose.

I'm a frequent commenter to a lot of blogs, but I'm using a different pseudonym for this post, which I am copying to some other blogs. (Hope that's okay) This woman revolts me: what a shriveled-up soul! And doubtless she's liberal and claims to love everyone and seeks for the common good, & etc.

Why didn't she consider carrying the babies to term, and giving them up for adoption? There are thousands of couples desperately trying to have children, who would have gladly accepted them.

This is awful, but especially so for me right now. My wife became pregnant unexpectedly this past spring, with our third child. We were stunned, because we are in early middle age, but we started planning to receive the new arrival.

But she had an episode of experiencing sharp pain, early in the second trimester. We went to the hospital in the middle of the night, and the staff diagnosed placenta previa and placenta percreta, two rare uterine disorders which are life-threatening when they occur together.

We met with a couple of doctors, and they were all blunt: It isn't a case of losing the baby's life or the mother's life; it's a case of the baby's or the baby's AND the mother's. The child was normal, so far; but continuing the pregnancy entailed an immediate risk of massive, uncontrollable hemorrage at any time, and certainly during delivery.

The moral calculus was brutally cruel. During our first pregnancy, I didn't even want any amnio tests, because I was so righteous and noble that I thought we would receive any child, no matter what kind of defect it had. (I was overruled, and things were fine, glad to say.) Now here I was, having to agree to stop the beating heart of what would have been my son, in order to save the life of my wife.

I fell into spiritual anguish, and still am. I would have no third child. The elements would not combine into a new human life. The universe would not have a new organ with which to perceive itself. He would slip back into oblivion, before he ever emerged from it. This, out of the clear blue sky, was my test of where my commitment to the right to life drew the line.

So we went back to the hospital and received the potassium chloride injection into the baby's heart. They thoughtfully turned off the overhead ultrasound monitor, but I peeked at theirs a couple of times. I saw a black & white beating heart one moment, and nothing a few minutes later. "All done," the doctor announced softly. We both wept, and the doctor consoled us with a practiced but well-appreciated manner. Now my wife has to carry the dead baby until chemical treatment makes it safe to remove it surgically. It's been a week, and will probably take a few more weeks.

And here this female creature is throwing lives away, because she doesn't want to discomfit her morally empty existence with anything that might make inconvenient demands on her lifestyle. Translation: She isn't ready to grow up yet. Christ! Tell me again about how compassionate the Left is in this country.

"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish." -- Mother Teresa

Jacqueline -
I should add, I suppose, that I also don't sleep with men I don't think would be acceptable fathers, which kind of negates the risk that I'd abort.

Personally, I wouldn't abort a pregnancy unless it were ectopic or some other life-threatening condition. Thankfully, due to conscientous use of birth control, I've never been faced with the decision - I've never even had a pregnancy scare.

The church I was raised in was always pretty vague about when life began (really, when the soul was implanted). We were taught to think that if a woman miscarried, that didn't mean that the soul of the baby had had its one shot on earth and was going to spend the rest of its time in limbo or something - we were taught that they'd get another chance, with another body. Which means that the church's teaching with regards to abortion were kind of ambiguous as well. It was something that was frowned on, but its not like we thought abortion was absolutely murder.

Since then, I've left the church, and from a purely darwinist perspective, I believe that aborting your own babies is contra-survival for the species, so well, I wouldn't want people who would abort out of sheer convenience breeding anyway. My support for abortion isn't selfish - it's practical. My suggestion that men shouldn't be forced to support a child that they have NO say in, in terms of its being born isn't selfish - its fair. I'm willing to give up a share of the decision to bear children, if the man who is with me is willing to support them.

That is not a good enough argument. It is extremely flimsy and way too arbitrary. We're talking about a human being, here, with its own identity, fingerprints, blood type, sometimes even gender, wholly separate from its mother. Whatever your reasoning, the decision that the unborn human being is somehow SUB-human and not deserving of the right to exist is always selfish and always destructive and always shortsighted. We keep the "choice" argument open by talking about severe deformities, mother's health, yadda yadda, but really, give me a break. That is not why the pro-choice lobby want to keep it legal. It's because we don't want to be told we CAN'T do something. But you know what? There are things we simply should not do. The blatant killing of unborn children is unjustifiable, as there are 1.5 million abortions performed annually. There is a lot of money behind the abortion industry, and the abortion platform is based on admitted lies (see: Bernard Nathanson, Beverly McMillan, Anthony Levitano, et. all).

Heaven forbid we go out of our comfort level so that another human being can live. Heaven forbid we do something NOT CONVENIENT for us. Heaven forbid we do what is right and just and life-affirming. Heaven forbid we be accountable for anything.

Jacqueline -
It isn't a good enough argument if you believe that life (a soul is implanted) begins at conception. I don't, so it works just fine with me.

At this point, unless god himself comes down from on high and states to the masses that life, and a soul, are present at the moment of conception, the question of wether or not an embryo is a separate human being deserving of the exact same rights as the actual human being carrying it is a philosophical one. You believe one way, until I experience gnosis and he tells me otherwise, I'll believe another way.

And that's why there will always be strong emotions and continued arguments about abortion.

I've thought about this a lot since I read the original post and wrote my comment, and I think this article and many of the comments about it have finally helped me understand how the right can view liberals as callous, inhumane, or even actively malicious, in the same way many liberals view the right. If you as a conservative believe that this woman, Amy Richards, represents liberal thinking, and have never seen a reason to reconsider that assessment (and may, in fact, have had it reinforced by some of the anti-Semitism and mindless Bush-hatred that often finds its way onto signs at peace protests), then I find it completely unsurprising that you would think this way.

In fact, I even think that if this woman does represent the extreme of liberalism, then I can agree with the view that it appears equally as "evil" as extreme right-wing Christian (or even secular) fascism appears to me and many other liberals. Until now, I viewed most of the commentary about "hate" and "moral depravity" on the left as little more than a disingenuous attempt to co-opt the objectively righteous tone of most liberal rhetoric. Now I can't say with much certainty. I no longer know whether I want to associate myself with either political side, since both extremes seem to contain such astonishing disregard for human life in their own way. If this miserable excuse for a human being can somehow distort the idea of freedom into "freedom to destroy a life for one's own convenience", then I could certainly never view her as my political ally in any way. Yet, I also cannot accept the "moral calculus" that deems it appropriate for a single nation to so dominate the affairs of others, often at the cost of many thousands (or more) of lives. No, this does not mean that I only object to "the US and Israel", as one commenter put it; merely that the utterly disproportionate degree (population-wise) to which those two nations have the tendency to negatively affect the lives of others through the use of military force for self-interest seems completely unacceptable to me. Equally so if any other nation possessed such a capacity (just for one example: I have, since the beginning, objected to Russia's unconscionable scorched-earth campaign in Chechnya -which almost no one in the Western media gives the slightest attention).

I do sometimes wonder why Israel, among all the nations of the world and with its relatively tiny population, receives so much attention, but I had always ascribed that to the religious baggage that comes along with any discussion of the Middle East, along with its status as a virtual protectorate of the United States. Still, can I deny that perhaps some elements of the "anti-war" left base their criticism of Israel more on anti-Semitism than genuine altruism? Well, no, I can't say for sure. I hope not, but I don't know (maybe you can call me an "anti-Semitism agnostic").

Regardless, I certainly would not support that viewpoint if I became convinced that a majority of anti-Israel feeling derived from anti-Jewish sentiment. Likewise, as I said before, with abortion. As Spoons said very eloquently, if one considers an unborn fetus a life, then accepting the intentional deaths of millions of fetuses would appear morally equivalent to accepting the deaths of millions of Holocaust victims; in fact, it seems possible in that worldview to perceive abortion as worse than the Holocaust, if only because an unborn fetus has even less ability to protect itself than a victim of a Nazi concentration camp. I still don't know if I would go quite so far as to agree with that view, but I can understand and sympathize with it.

Jaqueline -

I have to point out that not all abortions take place because the pregnancy is considered merely "inconvenient" by some irresponsible fool. Depending on the family and financial situation, oftentimes the consequences are rather severe.

It's condescending and arrogant to make the assumption that all people have the same resources and circumstantial ability to deal with an unwanted pregnancy.

Sometimes the consequences are not being able to have any more children, with a strong likelihood that the one you're carrying will die anyway. My best friend just had to make that decision - she and her husband have a four year old son, and they were trying to have another baby. She got pregnant, and it was ectopic, and she was bleeding heavily, and was informed that if she wanted to have any more children, the best option was for her to abort the pregnancy she had now and try again in a few months.

It isn't always about 'convenience', and sometimes "talking about severe deformities, mother's health, yadda yadda" is really the reason they're arguing for legal abortion.

"I have to point out that not all abortions take place because the pregnancy is considered merely "inconvenient" by some irresponsible fool. Depending on the family and financial situation, oftentimes the consequences are rather severe.

It's condescending and arrogant to make the assumption that all people have the same resources and circumstantial ability to deal with an unwanted pregnancy."

Of course not "all." But how about "93%"? Even the Alan Guttmacher Institute has evidence that most women opt for abortion because the pregnancy is inconvenient for them and/or they do not have the emotional/financial resources they feel they need to carry the pregnancy to term. The truth is, pro-choicers do nothing to help women NOT have abortions. Right-wing abstinence-only education is not working, nor is the condoms-in-schools approach of the liberal Left.

I say "yadda yadda," because I have been doing research on this subject for eleven years, and have yet to come across a really valid argument for abortion that is not self-serving on the mother's part.

Celeste, I was not talking about a soul. I was talking about an identity. I was on the fence for many years, until I started to research what abortion is. That means--biological, embryological, psychological, and everything else.

Atheist or non-religious embryologists maintain that the human being is a human being at the moment of conception. That is a medical fact, and is many medical textbooks. It is not a religious argument, it is a fact. That you used the term "embryo" to dehumanize the tiny child only goes to illustrate how far the pro-choice community will go to deny the unborn the most basic, instrinsic human right--the right to EXIST. You use the stage of life against it to justify its killing. You deny its humanity to justify its killing. If we start to view and accept the fact that the unborn are persons, we are more likely to make more informed choices. It is in the best interest of all women to see all their children--including those in the womb--as equal and deserving of life.

If a teenage girl gets pregnant, it is implied that having a child would "ruin" her life. Would it? Or would she merely have to adjust her life, and rearrange things and put some things on hold? To give into the myth that motherhood should come only when the woman gives the green-light is dangerous. The truth is, the pro-choice lobby is not helping women actually cope with what motherhood and pregnancy is, but treating children as a commodity and an accessory.

Financial trouble? Give the child up for adoption. Deformities? What is this, Auschwitz? We can't have non-perfect babies? We can't have beauty in children who have cleft-palates, Down's Syndrome, cerebral palsy? We kill them out of mercy? No, we don't. We kill them because their existence is a hindrance to the kind of life we want to lead.

Again, Celeste, you mention a soul. I never did. It was, actually, the argument of two pro-life Atheist Jewish Libertarians (one of them a lesbian) that pushed me over to out-and-out pro-life activism. The gruesome truth about the procedure--the baby trying to get away from the abortionists' tools (survival instinct), the reassembling of the baby in a metal tray to make sure all the parts are there, checking the mother to see if any parts are left so that they won't decompose inside the mother's body, the smell of burning human flesh when the bodies are thrown into incinerators....These are not lies. This is the "choice," the "liberty" pro"choice" activists are fighting for. Pick on someone your own size.

Bill, I am sorry if it sounded like an arrogant claim. But the true arrogance lies in dehumanization of an entire group of human beings because to give them the right to live would put a damper on the material plans of the mother/society, etc. By this reasoning, pro-choice women have some audacity to demand good prenatal care. If you don't view the unborn as people, what's all this about prenatal care? Why would a pro-choice woman take her folic acid, not eat sushi, do what her doctor says.....to protect her non-person? Because suddenly the little tiny person is WANTED?

Jacqueline -
Forgive me for assuming you believed in souls. I haven't heard such absolutist arguments from people who don't before, so I made an assumption. Regardless, descriptions of the procedure aren't going to sway my opinion, nor will 'the baby trying to get away from the abortionists tools' make me decide that the baby is worth more than my own life. Vegetarians try that bullshit when they tell me not to eat beef also. I can call a fetus a baby without any qualms - if faced with a choice between my own continued survival and that of a tiny helpless innocent baby I am three weeks pregnant with, I'm going to choose my own every time.

But the problem is, if you ARE "three weeks pregnant" you haven't yet missed your period. So by the time you the pregnancy test is positive, your child will have a head, arms, legs, heart, liver, lungs, and, of course, the heartbeat you can hear and even see on the ultrasound.

The pro-choice argument continues to be shallow. If one doesn't believe that the baby is a person, then, of course, "no justification is needed." But most people, including pro-choice activists (like Margot Hentoff and Naomi Wolf) know that the unborn human being is a separate person.

We know that the unborn baby is a person who moves, yawns, kicks, cries, rubs its eyes, makes a fist, and even hiccups. So the argument that it's not a baby is starting to lose any credibility it once had. So that leaves us with the indisputable fact that the unborn baby is A BABY--it is a human person, the way all human persons look at that age.

So if we admit--pro-life and pro-choice alike--that the unborn baby is a "person," some "kind" of human being, and yet still say....but THESE humans are okay to kill.....THAT is fascistic thinking. That is, perhaps, the greatest injustice and infringement of human rights this world will ever see.

Pro-choice women might say, of course it's a baby, but it's living in my body, so it's a part of me. But it's not. Because a baby conceived without a placenta is immediately ejected from the woman's body as foreign material. The woman's body says, "This is not my body," and miscarries. Ectopic pregnancies are recognized, even by the Catholic Church, as quasi-pregnancies, and most abortions aren't performed on women with ectopic pregnancies. We all know that.

So we have to come to some conclusions.

It is EITHER a person OR it is not. Since we know it IS a person, we do not have the right to obliterate its right to live, especially seeing as it is vulnerable and dependent--and will remain so for, say, the rest of its life, because, let's face it, we're all dependent on each other.

So if we say the unborn IS a person BUT I have the right to take its life when I say is what the pro-choice argument really is. Imagine that logic applied to the rest of the world, to our community, to those who inconvenience us or hurt us. Would we justify the killing of someone who committed even a small crime against us? No. But yet we justify the killing of unborn persons because to recognize the humanity and personhood of the unborn would mean we would have to feel remorse.

The Supreme Court made a bad decision in 1974. The definition of human life Blackmun used in drafting Roe was based on **A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DEFINITION** of the unborn, based on the sensation of "quickening." We know now that babies are moving long before their mothers even feel it. I believe the Supreme Court was trying to make "legal" and politically "just" decision, but the reasoning is not only misguided, but completely false. The Supreme Court also said, in the Dred Scott decision, that black Americans were not human, either.

But, see, pro-choicers say, you're talking about BORN human beings. What is the difference? Nothing. We are persons as soon as we exist. We just look a little different. We will continue to grow and change until we die. I don't look the same as I did fifteen years ago, let alone in the womb.

Funny how the pro-choice argument believes that the Supreme Court is completely infallible, and yet they ridicule Catholics for believing in Papal infallibility. The Supreme Court is made up of people who, sometimes, can make mistakes. Their black robes don't give them Almighty Power, either.

Pardon me if I repeat someone’s arguments… I am late to the party…

Am I an absolutist?

I believe that ending a pregnancy is wrong. The only exception I see as reasonable is that for some extreme reason the medical staff has to make a life and death decision where aborting the baby would save the near term life of the mother. Note I said “near term life” not emotional well-being or if a pregnancy is not convenient.

As I said on the earlier thread, Adoption is a real option for the women that can’t or don’t want to raise a child. Is 6 to 9 months too much to ask to save a life? If it is, then add the joy of the adoptive parents to the mix, now is it enough?

Note that I didn’t use any “hot” words or vilify the pro-choice side.

At this point I am guessing Bill will say, “Yes, you are”…

BTW: This view is very consistent with my pro-war/preemptive views. I certainly think that the loss of innocent life is awful, but may be necessary to save the near term life of many other innocent people. Saddam was aborting adults, I would vote to abort him.

Sarah--

You say that the father should have no say in the matter. Yet Post-Abortion Stress Syndrome has been documented in men as well as women. One father in Kansas, whose girlfriend aborted their child without his consent, shot himself in the head (and died) on his dead child's due date in a Planned Parenthood parking lot. Don't men have a right to protect themselves from possible psychological trauma?

Bill--

I'm not sure why you mention that absolutist pro-lifers are a minority view, as though that should cause us to rethink our position. Abolitionists were once in the minority. People sought for decades to find a workable compromise on slavery, and for years most Americans dismissed total Abolitionists as nuts. But guess who had the last word? Obviously, the truth on every issue isn't always found in one of the two extreme positions, but occasionally it is, and I think it is on abortion. When I look at a fetus, or a zygote, or an embryo, I see a human being with rights guaranteed (sp?) her under our Constitution which all of us must respect. Now, I recognize that a lot of pro-choicers may not recognize the humanity of the unborn. I also recognize that a lot of white Americans who apologized for or supported slavery didn't recognize the humanity of Africans, and that a lot of Germans who supported the Nazi party didn't recognize the humanity of Jews. I am not calling pro-choicers Nazis or slaveowners, but I do think that one can compare them to those well-intentioned people who supported Nazism or slavery because I *do* recognize the humanity of the unborn. When I see a fetus, I see my fellow man, regardless of what stage in its development it happens to be in at the time. And when I see a pro-choicer, I see a well-intentioned person who is, nevertheless, a bigot. Am I not supposed to say this? Am I just supposed to be quiet while millions of people are getting slaughtered all around me because I have an unpopular position?

Um, Marc, i'm not telling anyone to be quiet, I'm just advising those on the far end of the issue to avoid calling me a freaking murdering Nazi. Extreme rhetoric does not help the pro-life cause. I thought that this point was made clear in my post.

And as far as the minority position goes, I find it ironic that many of the people that are the most strident pro-lifers use the OPPOSITE argument (regardinmg activist courts and the will of the majority) when it comes to socially conservative touchstone topics like gay marriage.

My point in pointing out that it's the minority position is not to say that the position is worthless, rather that there is not enough consensus to give you leave to condemn 2/3 of America in absolutist, vitriolic language.

As far as evolution on the topic goes, I have a feeling that science may eventually render abortion an outdated concept within a generation or so.

I don't know about you Jacqueline, but I ovulate two weeks before the onset of my period, so at three weeks pregnant, I'd be a week late, and since I'm on the pill, that's something I would DEFINITELY notice.

And I do place different values on human life. Bigoted or not, I value the lives of U.S. citizens more than I do the lives of citizens of other countries, and I would expect citizens of other countries to value the lives of their own citizens more than they do my own. I value the lives of those persons already born more than I value the lives of those persons still inside the womb, and unable to survive outside of it. I value the lives of law-abiding innocent people more than I value the lives of violent criminals. And at root level, I value my own life, and those I care about more than I do other persons. I won't get an abortion, unless the pregnancy endangers my life - so abortion law doesn't really concern me. I don't care enough about the lives of other people to demand they make the same choice.

I'm not suggesting everyone should have abortions, nor am I pleased that it's as common as it is. I'd be perfectly happy if these women chose to put their babies up for adoption (and they actually were adopted) instead. But it doesn't bother me enough that other people are choosing to abort their children to go picket, or lobby for changes in the law - just enough to deride those who do choose to abort for petty reasons, or are so bad at using birth control they have to abort multiple times.

Celeste:
I'd be perfectly happy if these women chose to put their babies up for adoption (and they actually were adopted) instead.

As someone that spent over 4 years on various adoptive parent lists before our wish was granted, I can assure you that the babies would be adopted. Not only that, but the birth mother would have a large variety of choices for parents of her baby. We put together a very slick marketing package highlighting our qualifications to be parents. We had to in order to compete in this arena.

BTW: My daughter is nearing 3 years old and we are back on the same lists looking for a brother or sister for her.

I hope Bill will forgive me for posting anonymously, but I don't feel like announcing myself to the world. Feel free to delete if you so choose. It's cowardly of me, but I don't really feel like being slammed for my choices.

What I always find interesting in any sort of abortion debate is how passionate people are over an issue that will likely never concern them personally. Neither side knows what it's like and I always find their arguments to be beyond reality; as if they were writing a script for a movie and had decided this is what the situation was, when in reality they were far removed from the actual situation. Well, neither side is correct in what they say. I can tell you this from experience. I have had an abortion. I am not proud of this. I am ashamed and am pretty damn sure I'll fry in hell for it, so if you could please spare me any condescension you might feel the need to jot down, I'd appreciate it. That's an honest request, too. I don't mean to be snide. No one can ever put me through more hell than I've already put myself through on this one. Trust me.

Would I have done it differently, knowing what I know now? It depends on the day. Sometimes I endlessly beat myself up for what I did. Knowing that I'll deserve whatever cosmic justice is meted out in the afterworld. Most days, however, I don't. I can look at it rationally and know that, even though I know I terminated a life, I can't judge myself too harshly for what I knew then about what I was capable of bearing.

Did I have a good reason? Was I in jeopardy? No. Was the baby deformed? No. Everything was fine. I was eight weeks pregnant and scared silly. Did they coerce me into it at the clinic? Nope. They gave me every opportunity to back out and then some. I had no good reason other than considering the type of life I could have given the child at that point in time, which wouldn't have been good. It's all well and good to say that "it will work out in the end," but when you're faced with a double blue line in the little viewing box on a stick you just peed on, I can tell you it pretty much looks like the world is going to end. Your world, it's true, will change, but if you're a responsible person and you were on birth control (as I was) your next thought is to wonder about the kind of world you can provide for your child. And it was always a child to me. This Amy Richards bitch never saw it that way, I'm sure.

Men will never know what it's like to carry a child. They will never know what it's like, even in those early days of a pregnancy, to know that your body is simply not your own anymore. And believe me, it's obvious that you're carrying a child. I'm firmly of the opinion that most men get their knickers in a twist over abortion simply because control has been taken out of their hands. It's a simple observation and not one that is meant to offend. It's just me calling it like I see it. For all of the arguments I've read over the years of men being enraged at the thought of a woman being able to have an abortion without them having any say in it, I haven't read many about how many men bolt at the first mention of the word "pregnancy." How many men ignore their responsibilities? More than stick around, that's for sure. The father of my child couldn't even see around the fright the words "I'm pregnant" engendered in him. He was more scared than I and of absolutely no use whatsoever. His solution: to get me drunk, so that I'd miscarry. Great father, eh? It was all left up to me. It would be nice to think that every child was wanted, every pregnancy was planned and that every man was responsible, but face facts: most men aren't. And it's not very different nowadays. A very good friend of mine is going through this right now: she, a college graduate and a professional, is pregnant and the supposedly very responsible, business owning forty-one-year old man who is the father of the child has decided "he can't deal with it" and has advised her to sue him now for child support, because he just might sell everything off and run. He "doesn't know" yet. It's a convenient argument to say that abortion has let men off the hook. Well, in my opinion, unless a man wanted to be on the hook, or was forced to hop on, he wasn't going to let himself be placed there in the first place.

And pro-lifers will never know the crisis of conscience any decent woman who's had an abortion endures for the rest of her life. It's been ten years for me. Not a damn day goes by that I don't think of that child. Not a day. Think about that for a moment, will you? I still cry some days, but I'm mostly over grieving for my child. I know I couldn't have done anything better for my child. I couldn't have carried them to term. It simply wasn't possible given the circumstances. It wasn't more "convenient" to have the abortion. It was simply the right decision at the right time. Does that make it right morally? I don't know, but I have to take into account the fact that, given where I was at at the time, the child might have had any number of bad things befall them. You can get all high and mighty about abortion and the women who just decide the inconvenience of a child is simply too much to bear, like this Richards woman, but no pro-lifer will ever be able to match the billy-club abilities of a decent woman's conscience. This is why I simply cannot stomach their arguments. No offense, Jacqueline, but your arguments--to a certain extent--simply preach to the choir. You're not bringing anyone over to your side of the fence with sheer vehemence. Abortion is one issue where people have to wrestle with their own conscience. You can provide all the facts you want, but to sit there and say there's never been any good reason for an abortion and there never will be any good reason for one ignores the land of truth and consequences the rest of us live in. It must be pretty nice where you live, with no moral conundrums. I wish I lived there.

Then you have the pro-choice people who seem to think that the fact a woman can terminate a pregnancy is a good thing. Well, it's not a good thing, but it's a necessary one. It's not something that should be praised. It should be abhorred, but available when necessary. Many things in this life aren't great, but necessary. Abortion is one of them. I, for one, never want to go back to the days where a woman didn't even have the right to use a diaphragm without her husband's permission. A doctor wouldn't prescribe one for her without her husband's permission. Remember those days? It was only about a hundred years ago. Not so very long ago in the big picture. During those days the greatest threat to a woman's life was pregnancy, and it was pretty much assured that multiple pregnancies would shorten her lifespan by years. Women wanted to live. They wanted to be more than just a baby factory. If you want to go back to that era in time, go right ahead. I won't be following you. It was a fight to get safe birth control; it was a fight to convince the world that women had a right to be in charge of their own bodies; was the fight to get "safe abortion" the same as all that? No, not in the slightest, although now that we have it there's no shoving the lid back on that box. Having control over your reproductive system means that you should use it responsibly. Women who take no precautions and use abortion as a form of birth control are reprehensible. But is accessibility to abortion to be exaulted as a chink in a political platform? No. It's not.

The simple fact of this matter is that until you've walked in these particular shoes, you don't know. You don't know about the endless nights of wondering and worrying. You don't know about the crises of conscience. You don't know the guilt you feel at the sense of relief that your life will go back to being normal at the expense of someone else's. You just don't know. The debate over abortion might become something people actually want to debate, rather than avoid like the plague, if people would only be reasonable in their stances and listen to the other side. But as I can see no one bothering to do that, it's not going to be solved.

Wow. Thank you for that comment, anonymous.

Okay. Abortion is analogous to war... and aborting a couple of fetuses because you prefer to live in Manhattan instead of Staten Island is analogous to blowing up school buses because you prefer to live in Palestine instead of the Gaza Strip.

I supposed if abortion weren't legal, Ms. Richards would become a displaced person in a refugee camp on Staten Island training her two disposable kids to become suicide bombers.

I consider myself passively pro-life, but I do find that one pro-choice argument absolves advocates of abortion as being pro-murder. I take this view from the writings of Mary Anne Warren, and paraphrase here.

She says that the traditional pro-life argument runs as follows: since (1) it is wrong to kill innocent human beings, and (2) fetuses are innocent human beings then (3) it is wrong to kill fetuses.

The problem with this argument is that the first statement (that it is wrong to kill innocent human beings) is a self-evident moral truth only if we assume that all human beings are members of the moral community, i.e. that being genetically human conveys with it automatic moral entitlement.

Why are humans considered to be beings of moral worth, i.e. why is it wrong to kill humans? Is it because we are genetically human? Do biological traits translate into moral worth? Is it wrong to kill humans simply because of the fact that they are human?

No, this simply begs the question. Why is it wrong to kill humans? It is not because humans are biologically human, but because they possess certain traits that define them as members of the moral community, i.e. they possess certain characteristics that make them “persons” not just “human beings.”

What traits indicate that a being is of moral worth? Warren suggests five, but says that they are loose criteria that she has not yet fully explored. One need not possess all, nor, strictly, is one criteria required to be a person, but she says that anything that lacks all of these five criteria is obviously not a “person” (an entity of moral worth) even if it is genetically human.

The criteria are, roughly, (1) consiousness (2) reasoning (3) self-motivated activity (4) capacity to communicate by whatever means (5) self-concepts; self-awareness.

Judging the fetus to these standards, Warren concludes that, while the fetus is unequivocally a “human being” (i.e. genetically human), the fetus is still no more a “person” than are most animals. Thus, she finds abortion ok.

I don’t subscribe to this argument, but I do find it interesting (even if it does sound a bit callous).

Bill-

The fact that 2/3 of the country agrees with you on first trimester abortion doesn't change the fact that the arguments in favor of it are based on arbitrary, self-serving dehumanizations of our fellow human beings, akin to what the Nazis used to justify their extermination of Jews. Nor does it change the fact that your position has resulted in the mass slaughter of millions of innocent human beings. You and the 66% of the country that agrees with you may not like it, but comparing pro-choicers to members of the Nazi party is entirely justifiable.

Now, if you want to say that vitriolic language doesn't get the pro-life movement anywhere, well, I'll agree that we should all debate these things calmly and rationally. But it seems to me that it isn't being called a "freaking murdering Nazi" that gets under your skin so much as it is being called a "Nazi". I would never call you a Nazi in the literal sense, but I reserve the right to compare you to one (calmly and rationally) because of similarities in the pro-choice and Nazi ideologies that are, in my opinion, as plain as day.

I'm a pro-choice Republican with a weblog.

Grant--

The argument that it is okay to kill fetuses because they are not sufficiently conscious or self-aware can, and has, been used to justify infanticide. In fact, Steven Singer, a premiere "ethicist" at Princeton University, made waves some years back by pointing out that none of us are really people by this criteria until around four to six years old. Therefore, killing a three year old child, according to Singer, isn't murder and should be allowed.

Consciousness is a side effect of natural human development, like puberty. A human being is no less a person (which is defined in any dictionary as a "human individual") prior to being conscious then she is prior to going through puberty. The inability of so many people to recognize the humanity of an unborn child is simple chauvanism, which they attempt to justify through redefinitions of "personhood". Maybe it's because I happen to be a member of a frequently dehumanized minority group myself (I happen to be gay) that I'm so sensitive to the blatant dehumanizations that pro-choicers bandy about like water. But whenever someone says, "Well, this is a human being, but it's okay to kill it because..." that's just wrong. Period.

abortion can be the right thing to do in certain cases

the right thing to do isn't always the point. related -- if you don't mind taking a stroll through this narrative -- is the effect of political logrolling on policymaking. decisions are made as if in the glare of the headlamp of an oncoming train because crisis is a popular means with which all situations are rendered extraordinary and therefore less subject to the confines of maturity. someone always will, so someone always does, so those who do not get left back in the ordinary; and those people obviously are in no position to understand the gravity of it. policymakers with enough slack to blow cognitive currency on non-critical decisions are generally not making or not known to be making critical decisions. those that escape that generalisation are rarely operating within the confines of the law. the answers the 9/11 investigation could find are more important than timely conclusions. what if it's worse than any of us even imagined? what were the chances the 9/11 investigation would come up with answers that didn't justify everyone, from the top to the street, left to right, from operating on hunches? it was logically impossible for the 9/11 commission to back up anybody's entire story. what are the chances any substantial block of opinion would have the capacity to comprehend any one version of it? vengeance is an unlikely response from anyone with the whole story, vengeance was an unlikely response from anyone with the whole story. it all becomes playing to the mob; if you stop to help an individual out before the crush against the next gate in the way of the mob folds them under, you probably won't be the one who lives to find the bolt cutters and break the lock. there's not enough time or space to learn, or agree, all the air is gobbled up by those confusing care and responsibility, responsibility and obligation, want and need, need and love -- people who don't care if they care more than they really care. whichever side of the culture war knows its losing will pick up an interest in state's rights. people on *all sides* offer their experiences not as argument for their case, but emotional blackmail should you decline to take their agony or indignance as all there is to be said. while it's like this, no one willingly gives an inch unless they're making a deal. civil society is in the eye of the dreamer. everyone uses orwell to back them up, so orwell probably wrote about this woman at some point. statistically, people spend more time in hysteria/histrionics than in love, and they are also more ambivalent about the loss of a family member they loved than they are of a pet they loved. what this has to do with innocent life, is exactly how much it doesn't at all.

"That is to say: not all killing=murder. If you really consistently applied an anti-killing ethic then you would end up in the "seamless garment of life" Catholic church position: anti-abortion, anti-death penalty, anti-euthanasia, and anti almost any war. This is a very rare position in American politics. The question is how much killing are you willing to accept and in what circumstances."
From Eric Dreamer above.
It may be a rare position in American politics but it is at least an intellectually consistent one. The exceptions to war are laid out by Aquinas in the concept of "Just War", the death penalty is opposed but not in all and every possible circumstance, euthanas