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That being said, you pretty clearly told us that, electorally speaking, you are pretty much aligned with the folks I call by [the religious right]. Same omnipotent god, right?
Only because I was given a binary choice. And I believe it is probably right to lump me with the religious right, but if I am aligned it is spiritually, not politically. There are plenty of things I'd vote against that "the religous right" wants as a rule, but generally I'm not given that option. I've lamented this as a dissapointing part of the process many times before.

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If a large group of people are worshiping a "one, true deity", how is it that the omnipotent deity does such a crummy job of communicating what the rules are?
I don't believe God has done a crummy job of telling us the rules; rather it is we that have put the barrier of sin between us so that we have difficulty understanding.

And there are many who claim to follow Jesus with whom I do not align myself at all, including spiritually (these very same would probably feel the same way about me). Jesus makes it very clear in the NT that just because someone claims to represent Him or doing things for Him, it doesn't mean that they are.


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You know, of course, that some folks don't accept your basic assumptions re "life of the child".
Right, which I have stated many times. But really this is off point from what I've been trying to say. My whole argument here has been that I have started with a premise and acted logically from that premise. If you disagree with my premise it's one thing, and I think that's the discussion we ought to be having, but I take exception to telling me that my actions are wrong without adressing the premise from which they flow quite naturally.

I believe a LOT of the abortion topic gets mired in highly charged accusations and self rightousness, on BOTH sides, when the dicussion really ought to be about "when does life being" and "at what point does life become a person deserving protected under the law". Because if the answer to those questions leaves with abortion taking an innocent life, it is clear that the law should not allow that. If, however, we agree that abortion is not taking an innocent life then it is equally clear that no one should tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body.

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What is almost ironic is that I think, thankfully, that you have been outflanked by (shudder) science.
I have not been outflanked by science, and if I had I wouldn't shudder about it. While Science may inform these questions, it cannot answer them because we are dealing with a moral issue. Science can tell us all about a form of life, but it is left to us to agree whether that life is worth protecting. We did not free slaves because of science, though science could give us all the clues to determine that the color of a person's skin does not change the fact he or she is a human. Many groups of people throughout history that have been unjustly hurt and killed, fiannly becoming liberated not because of science, but because people were enlightened and saw the truth of the moral issue before them.

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amateur abortions that you, on balance, seem willing to accept
"Accept" is too strong a word, I think. There are MANY wrongs in the world that I cannot stop. People are dying of aids in Africa, and while my church has built an orphenage to aid young children who've lost their parents, we do not have the power to stop the spread of HIV. We could possibly take the strong measure of killing everyone who test positive, but that is not an acceptable answer, as much as it hurts my heart to see what Aids does to these people. Similarly, I think we should do all we can for women receiving dangerous abortions, I don't see allowing the killing of innocents as being an acceptable solution.

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And how would this play out if we were talking about 2 week old babies? Would that change things? If legalizing the killing of 2 week old babies made it safer for women who did it, would we consider allowing it?

This, I would like to think, in our current society, is a false dichotomy. I'd never contemplate this, nor would I want to.
I know you wouldn't- my question is WHY you wouldn't. Protecting life only because it is ouside of the womb seems rather arbitrary to me. Is life two weeks before birth nonexistent and life two weeks after precious? My wife was born over a month premature and could have easily been aborted, yet clearly she had all of the qualities necessary for life and protection under the law- with the exception that she was in the womb rather than out of it. Would it have been OK for her parents to take her life? Under the law the answer is "yes", as long as they did it while she was still inside. I'm not OK with that, and I'm not OK with a society that allows that to happen.

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I think that your positions are based on an artificially bounded conception of life
And I think that yours are artifically bounded at birth.

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If, in the broader historical context of women, pregancy and women's right to self-determination, you are willing to argue that women shouldn't be free to employ an early-stage abortifacient like RU486, then all I can conclude is that your "life" definition is simply something based in mysticism
This all comes back to the question of the premise. When do YOU think a life becomes a human enough to be worth protecting under the law?
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-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.