One of these moments I am going to go find a few threads about France and respond to those, But I think I can only take on one before nap time.

Can we have a new rule? Like the one regarding how far a thread may go before somenody mentions Nazis? Just substitute abortion or Bush. It would be too conceited to make it Hogan's Rule....and I'm not quite sure what the rule should be. Just that there should be a rule.

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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.

Not having much of an opinion of spirituality, I don't tend to separate what people do -- how they vote, say -- and what supernaturally-driven beliefs/values they hold or espouse. So I am thinking my lumping is OK.

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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.

As much discomfort with this dilemma as you have consistently expressed, I would expect you to abstain or something. Yet you would still vote for the guy that got thousands of fully-grown, way-past-full-term humans killed for a lie.

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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.

I think that any devout atheist would take you to task for a bit of circular logic. The notion of the hard-to-understand all-powerful deity has seemed absurd for many years. If we have a hard time understanding him, how do we know he's all-powerful? Or all-loving? The guy could be Norman Bates for all we know. Freaking sadist! Torturing people with the unknown, he is!

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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.

All sorts of people across the spectrum there, I'll agree. I'm just having a hard time coping with the notion that so many of the devout are happy with having voted for a war criminal.

Well, I mean, shit, we *hung* Tojo, right?

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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.

I think that the world would be a better place if fewer women found it necessary to contemplate an abortion. I will opine on women's turf that much. To that end, I think efforts like sex education, contraception and generally helping young, often very poor, people envision a life with more choices and self-determination would be good. Now a good chunk of the folks who pulled the lever for Bush would like to reduce family planning to a less practical, more spiritual process. It can be called absurd, but I do *not* have a hard time imagining some of those folks defining "life" as beginning at spermatogenesis/oogenesis -- *just* so they can makesure that nobody has any extra fun!

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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.

I should have made "you" more general -- say the entire body of people that voted for Bush. And those people in Kansas

I *do* believe that you have been outflanked, though. In some ways I am less concerned about those anti-clinic forces in Mississippi and elsewhere. With RU486 and the drugs that will inevitably follow, it will be quite possible for a woman to make a personally pragmatic decision on Thursday and stand in the same pews with you on Sunday, with no one else the wiser.

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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.

You can find good and bad science without too much trouble, and I wasn't trying to make too much of an inherently virtuous role for science in this issue. Just couldn't help making fun of those folks in Kansas on the way to saying that the position of abortion foes is going to continue to erode in the face of pharmacology.

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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.

I don't think you answered my original point. Why is "accept" too strong a term? History has shown that women have gotten abortions under the most difficult and often dangerous circumstances, notwithstanding the ill will or good will of their oft-religiously-inspired advisors, benefactors, oppressors, and/or parents.

As much spiritual inspiration as you take in protecting the "innocents", it strikes me as an other-worldly tilting at IUDs. Women are going to continue to have abortions and one question is how safe they will be. On the basic elements, you seem aligned with those folks in Mississippi on making sure that abortions performed to some community/insurable standard are not available, just those that have a much higher chance of killing a woman.

And, I forget if you answered this question: Am I right in thinking that you would prevent RU486 from being distributed if you could? Even if it were only to be legally prescribed within, say, two weeks of intercourse? Ah, looking below it looks like you *would* prevent same.

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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?

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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?

I would tend to lean toward the "viability" notion that courts have leaned on, as problematic as that is and will continue to be.

I have never worked with a truly anacephalic infant. They don't live long. I have worked with one or two who were pretty close. If their mothers had received some sort of prenatal care and in the course of that -- based say on an ultrasound -- made a decision to abort a little on the long side, I think I would understand. It is ironic that the most brain-dead child I ever worked with (aged six or seven at the time IIRC but essentially brain-dead at birth) was born to a zealously religious mother who kept her alive -- kept the insurers and the lawyers going and kept the two-shifts-a-day nurses coming -- by sheer force of will. That was her choice.

Anyhow, my opinion hasn't changed much. To my jaundiced, aspiritual eye, your morals and ethics appear grounded in mysticism. Women have miscarriages quite frequently. Sometimes women weren't quite aware they were pregnant. Some of these occasions might be greeted with a "Whew!" Many other times this a very sad event for people trying hard to have a child or just really let down after the elation of a pregnancy. And it can be a horribly sad and aweful situation in the case of a stillbirth.

These aren't all the same to me, though. By the very strict notion of spritually-driven "innocent life", I'm guessing that first woman should feel guilt for uttering "Whew!" and that the sad, disappointed 5-weeks-gestation miscarrying woman should be obliged to have a full funeral ceremony. I don't think so.