It certainly does.

I absolutely agree. Roe v. Wade is a compromise in that it establishes a point at which the government can step in and decree the continuation of a pregnancy. Were it up to me, the government would have no authority prior to birth. Roe v. Wade seems to me the wisest compromise given the cultural collision with which we are faced, so long as an exception at any stage in the pregnancy for the health of the mother is preserved, as was the case in the most recent Supreme Court decision.

Ironically, a compassionate government would be far more interested in universal availability of comprehensive pre-natal care and nutrition for any and all pregnant women, and universal availability of comprehensive nutrition and healthcare for all children, regardless of social or economic status. But then I guess that makes me a wild-eyed liberal/socialist/pinko-commie humanist.

It’s not as if said Gummint does anything after the baby is born to help take care of it: child care? health care? food stamps? something resembling a reasonable education (not in our public schools!)? No, once you drop that kid, you’re on your own, baby, and you have a loooong way to go.

I agree that we cannot cede to the fundamentalists the authority to define for our society as a whole either the point at which human life begins or the point at which a fetus has autonomous rights in which the state has a compelling interest.

It still seems to me to come down to a question of whether or not a woman has primary authority over her own reproductive system prior to the birth of an offspring, or in the case of Roe v. Wade, when the fetus is viable outside the mother’s womb.

Additionally, whether or not there is an apparent threat to the mother’s health, either physical or psychological, what are the larger implications of granting to the state the power to force a woman to continue a pregnancy (or, in the case of China, to mandate its termination)?

“When does life begin?” is by necessity the question here. In that if we allow it to be answered firmly and legally by the fundamentalists, that will be the end of legal abortion of almost any kind. Game over.

War and “justifiable homicide” and “self-defense” are neat comparisons, but what they all have in common is (perceived) self defense or national defense. So if we go down that path, you might conceivably keep abortion legal when the life of the mother is in danger, but that’s it.

So even though I appreciae your point, Ann, I’m unwilling to give that piece of ground to the fundamentalists. If we abandon the question of where life begins to them, they’re going to win. Already, with things like “Laci and Conner’s Law,” the ground is starting to shake in an ominous way.

They were busted when they told someone he had a bad ticker and needed a triple bypass. He’d scheduled a vacation to visit a friend and the friend either knew a doctor or was a doctor, and had him looked over, and the second opinion said, there’s nothing wrong with your heart… I believe the 2 surgeons are no longer practicing but the HMO, amazingly, is still in business. If you Google “surgery” and “Redding”, you’ll probably find it.

It made me a little nervous, but my doctors have never diagnosed me for anything that I didn’t have believable symptoms on…

If the tests your doctor performs were wrong that often, would you REALLY go ahead with the surgery? Wouldn’t you want something like, oh, I don’t know, maybe a SECOND OPINION?

Is the CIA ever going to do anything about the quality of its information??