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Assuming you mean legally aborted, you're wrong. Seven months gestation is generally considered the outside limit for legal abortion in the US. Roe v. Wade states that a fetus may not be aborted if it is viable outside the womb, even if it requires life support technology, and specifically mentions 6 to 7 months as the time when that's possible. Medical technology has improved a good deal in the intervening 32 years and earlier dates are possible now. But no one would suggest that an 8-month fetus even begins to fit in the realm of legally abortable, now, back in 1973, or when your wife was born.

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When do YOU think a life becomes a human enough to be worth protecting under the law?

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Plus it seems weird to pin a point of ethics to a moving target

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And in a tangentially related vein, I've always been bemused by the hyprocisy of people who are adamant that abortion is murder, an absolute evil that must be stopped at all costs... oh, wait, except in cases of rape or incest where apparently [i[those fetuses are not deserving of protection.

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Since science will someday not need for a womb to be involved at all, let's make masturbation illegal. Menstruation, too

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And since science will someday be able to use random genetic material from parents instead of eggs and sperm, let's make sneezing illegal. And skin flaking. And hair loss.

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<sarcasm>Great logic.</sarcasm>

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Plus it seems weird to pin a point of ethics to a moving target

Quite simple. Since it seems little doubt that medical advances will one day push that date right back to fertilisation, pin it to a stationary target such as fertilisation. Problem solved.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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?

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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.