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I understand how Allen and Romney have troubling pasts regarding Roe, but what statements/positions has John McCain made that should trouble those of us who support life?

To my knowledge, McCain has always been anti-abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother.

Link.

that Science and Technology are the main things giving momentum to the pro-life foreces, ie those of us who are hell bent on "cramming our religion down everyone else's throat."

I was somewhat on the fence about abortion until I saw the first trimester ultrasound of my first child- and saw a baby with a face and hands with five fingers, impossible to deny what I was seeing.

You are right that even if the pro-abortion forces strategically retreat to defend 1st trimester only it will ultimately be a losing proposition, thanks again to inevitable advances of science and technology, as prenatal surgeries someday will be performed 1st trimester and those 1st trimester babies someday will be viable on their own.

McCain's better on Life issues than on anything else.  I have serious doubts as to whether he would have nominated either Roberts or Alito.

Abortion is on the top of my radar screen.

I think that the issue at the Presidential level has to do with a) federal funding of abortions (the Mexico city) rule and (99%) with appointing conservative justices.

So I don't really care what McCain would do if he were governor of SD.  I care that he would appoint us a 5th vote to overturn Roe vs Wade and I believe he would at this point which leaves me with the following presidential candidate list:

1. Mitt Romney
   
   
2. John McCain
   
   
3. ??????

. . . it all pretty much comes down to McCain-Feingold (which President Bush signed into law), he doesn't think Roe should be overturned (neither did anyone else who voted for the 2003 Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban), and he apparently supports federal funding for fetal tissue research on already aborted fetuses.

So basically the only notable difference between John McCain and George W Bush is that the former supports federal funding for fetal tissue research and would allow more funding for research on embryonic stem cells.

* Assuming that you're inclined to trust ideological litmus tests from single issue pressure groups which in my experience tend to exaggerate and sometimes distort the views of the candidate who isn't "pure" enough.

about McCain's potential for appointments.  He is simply not trust worthy.  Given that a "textualist" will be kind of nomination that would most likely oppose Roe, that same person would most likely oppose McCain-Feingold.  JohnJohn will not cut of his nose...

McCain cannot be counted on to do anything but serve himself.

I am much less interested in the comments that candidates make than I am in the type of judges that they will nominate.

That's why I think that the first G.W. Bush biography to hit the bookstores after his departure from office should be titled, "Better than Reagan".

Bush got John Roberts and Sam Alito through a nomination process in which the activist left wanted a filibuster more than they wanted air in their lungs.

Reagan got Scalia through, true, but he also "settled" for O'Connor and Kennedy.

O'Connor was clearly designed to fulfill a campaign promise to put a woman on the Supreme Court.  But in retrospect, it was a poor pick.  Reagan put a judge on the Court who was a squish when it came to abortion, affirmative action, religious freedom, and many other issues that really, really matter.

And the Senate was in Republican hands at the time.  Reagan could've found a pro-life woman and got her nominated.

Therefore, GWB is the best president since Teddy Roosevelt.

My issue with McCain is whether we can trust him to put Roberts/Alito-type judges on the Court.

If not, I will not vote for him.

he won't!

I'm not really interested in getting into McCain's bona fides on this thread, or I'd have a rejoinder. The sole point of putting up that link was to back up the statement in the OP that McCain gave some pro-lifers the heebie-jeebies.

I've always said federalism was a loser's argument (in that you only make it when you've lost control of the federal government), and thus, given our losses of late, the Democratic Party has been making quite a few of those arguments.  Abortion is certainly one of them.  Decouple abortion from federal elections, and I would expect a larger number of anti-abortion Democrats to surface in states where the sentiment is strong.

Saletan counsels wisely.  I'm tired of the abortion issue - it has never mattered all that much to me, in part I guess because it has always been legal in my life time and I have no idea what the consequences were like for women before Roe.  I read an interesting article in Newsweek about "the girls who went away" or something along those lines, discussing the pre-Roe pattern of pregnant women leaving before they were showing and returning after either abortion or adoption.  What struck me was in some ways we don't have that problem anymore - the shame of teenage pregnancy and unwed motherhood has at least been reduced, if not completely removed.  

There are other consequences, of course, to carrying a fetus to term, but the scarlet letter effect is no longer quite so strong, which makes me think other effects may be weakening.  I like the idea of fighting along the fronts Saletan outlines, because if it is true "Conservatives are already fighting early abortion pills, morning-after pills, sex education and birth control," I am game for that fight, and it's one I think we can win in most places, most of the time.

Question for you, Leon: should it become technological feasible, what would be wrong with "consequence-free sex," by which I take it to mean sex without fear of pregnancy?  Or, given human error, very close to consequence free sex?  Wouldn't that nearly eliminate abortion in this country?  

I believe the major issue surrounding abortion is the definition of when life begins.  Now I don't claim to be a doctor and you could fit my medical knowledge in a thimbal and still have room for John Kerry's political skill.  However, I've often thought that while the definition of life is complicated by a person's religious views, we seem to have a straight forward definition of death (the end of normal brain wave function).  So for the purpose of abortion why not flip that around and state that an abortion is legal until the fetus has established normal brain wave function.  According to an article I read this happens at some point in late 1st or early 2nd trimester.  

Since this is the ultimate comprimise it may only piss off everyone and achieve nothing but it is an interesting approach to consider.

"Conservatives are already fighting early abortion pills, morning-after pills, sex education and birth control," I am game for that fight, and it's one I think we can win in most places, most of the time.

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If the majority ruled, Ds would win on those issues and/or they would stay at a state level.  Also if the majority ruled, 90% of abortions would be illegal (those outside the rape, incest, life trifecta) in most states.  That would take the issue off the national level for the most part.  I don't think politicians want it at a national level and I don't think most voters want it there either.  But as long as Roe is operative, it is impossible for people who care deeply about the unborn to ignore those concerns in Presidential and Senatorial races.

. . . been overly-susceptible to the heebie-jeebies?

Seriously if the standard is going to be "doesn't make the most paranoid person in the room uncomfortable" then there's never going to be an acceptable nominee.  I for one see no reason to allow that mentality to set the standard.

...from TheSophist on this subject a few weeks back?

is the eternal jihad in states where the numbers are close on the abortion question.  But that would be a long way from the eternal jihad at the national level.  Oooh, I think I'm giving myself gooosebumps.

My visits are sporadic these days.  I'm going to go search the comments for it.

Suffice it to say that Leon and I are gonna have to disagree with you on the implication at which you're driving here.

Absolutely not.

Which is strange because I would consider myself far more pro-life than Allen, Romney, or McCain.

I have always been outspokenly pro-life, and that was not easy in Seattle schools, let me tell you.

However, I do not feel comfortable denying abortion to a rape victim.  Why?  Because other women have chosen to have sex, an act which they know can lead to children.  They should take responsibility for their actions (and that goes double for the fathers).

A victim of rape has not made this choice, and while I would hope that she would not abort the baby, as a represenative of the state I'd have great difficulty using state force to require her to take responsibility for a choice she did not make.

I am interested in how others at RedState feel about this.  I have always made a pro-life position a very important requirement for a candidate.  Is this nuance important to anyone in determining candidate support?  I've always been more concerned with what kind of judges I can expect from them.

and it was a good discussion.  Leon, feel free to ignore my partial threadjack at your leisure.

If you are strongly pro-life, as you describe, and you believe that life begins at conception, fetus = baby, you are on very thin ice to argue that the product of rape is any less deserving of protection than the product of "irresponsible sex" or the product of intentional attempts to get pregnant.  Not my argument, mind you, but that would seem to be the logic.

At least, not from a public policy standpoint.

The point is that that's not the discussion I'm engaged in right. I get befuddled on a constant basis that I find my opponents constantly saying that "it's all about sex" when nobody I ever read even mentions sex. It's just an observation about what their true motivation is - not that it's helpful as a prescriptive matter at all.

Most of us extremists on this site (myself included) would be elated with a compromise that made an exception for rape (I am tempted to think that such a policy would be ripe for abuse, but that is another question), even if we didn't agree with it as a philosophical matter.

IOW, if someone approached me and said, "I have a way to end over 99% of abortions right now, but you never get to argue about the rape exception again," I'd take that in a heartbeat.

As the response to Saletan has shown, the converse is NOT true of abortion defenders.

Hey, I think the rape exception sells well politically, and certainly avoids certain rather, well, draconian outcomes for raped women.  But it does seem to possess some of the logical incoherence you suggest we would be faced with should we attempt to shorten our line and find defensible terrain by abandoning Roe for an earlier, viability based legal abortion position.

I think you almost have to concede rape/incest to win outside of the strongest anti-abortion states.

But I've got no problem embracing my incoherency, as a matter of pragmatism. When someone asks me, "Why should it matter if the child is a product of rape?" I can say, "It shouldn't," and actually advance (not hurt) my cause.

Seriously if the standard is going to be "doesn't make the most paranoid person in the room uncomfortable"

I'd just like to point out that I never said this or anything like it.

he wouldn't go for the controversial picks, but the safe picks-which means any smell of originalist/strict constructionist philosophy would likely mean they wouldn't get nominated.

That said McCain has always been good in regards to voting for judges-he voted for Bork, Thomas, and Bush's nominees.

on the abortion issue.  Now science, technology, and greater knowledge have pretty much rendered the whole trimest/abortion thing obsolete.  

the people in the middle are likely going to be mostly in agreement, and the debate at least would be held in a forum where it belongs.

I suspect that states where the numbers are close there is probably a huge middle ground the majority of people agree on, outside of the two extremes (and I am admittedly one of the people on the extremes in this issue with regards to abortion, but half glass is better than an empty glass, and I can always fight to get the full glass later through debate and persuasion, not the men and women in black robes).

I admit it, I am oppossed to this exception.

#1 the circumstances underwhich a baby is conceived shouldn't determine whether or not it is human enough to be protected.

#2 studies (which admittedly are few) indicate that rape victims overwelmingly choose to carry their babies to term (around 3/4's of them do).  In the most comprehensive study done, none of the women who carried their babies to term regreted their decision.  The majority of women who chose abortion regreted the decision.  Future mental health of women who choose to carry babies to term is also better than women who choose abortion.

I think the reality is that while we think a rape exception is going to help the rape victim, the abortion option seems to be causing more harm.

Although, I also agree with Leon down thread-I would take elimination of elective abortions with the rape exception included over no elimination at all.  I don't think it is best position, but I would taken, given that it would elminate about 90-95% of abortions.

I think you would be extremely hard pressed to find a presidential historian that would agree with you on that.

I don't think history is going to treat GWB very kindly at all. It's not all his fault, but he hasn't helped his cause much either. Katrina will always be regarded as a major failure, and the Iraq situation is far from resolved.

Ronald Reagan oversaw the fall of the USSR and the liberation of Eastern Europe. That's a tough act to top.

I am personally opposed to ALL abortions, except if the life of the mother is endangered (for example, an ectopic pregnancy that can't survive anyway).

But politically, the standard argument used by the NARAL / Planned Parenthood lobby is that forcing the victim of rape or incest to carry the child to term is forcing a woman to accept the consequences of a crime against her, and what woman would want to bear the child of the man who raped her?

Politically, polls published by the National Right to Life Committee have shown that only minorities in the 20% range support banning ALL abortions, but once an exception for rape and incest is allowed, support grows to 60% plus.

Since only a small fraction of unwanted pregnancies are from rape or incest (most are single mothers who consider themselves unable to raise the child), an abortion ban with an exception for rape or incest would save most of the babies, AND receive majority support in all but the bluest of states. If Roe v. Wade were overturned, the issue would go back to state legislatures, and we would have a few states where ALL abortions are banned, a few states where all abortions are allowed, and many states where abortion would be banned except in cases of rape or incest.

A further consequence of allowing abortions in cases of rape or incest would be that a woman seeking an abortion would have to accuse the child's father of committing a crime. A woman who loves the child's father would hesitate to do this, and would be more likely to try to arrange some way of caring for the child. This might incite more responsible sexual behavior (i.e. abstinence) among some MEN who would ordinarily want free sex without children. If a man can (under current law) have sex with an unmarried woman, and simply pay to abort the child, he is far more likely to indulge his desires than if he risks being accused of rape, even if the sex was consensual.

I agree with other posters that it might seem philosophically incoherent to allow abortions for rape and incest victims, but prohibit it for women who had consensual sex. As one pro-life rapist's daughter wrote on a T-shirt, "My father was a rapist, but why should I get the death penalty?" But politics is the art of the possible, not always the absolute good--and if 90% of aborted babies could be saved with a rape/incest exception, that would be a great improvement over the current situation, or allowing the current situation to continue for years until political support for an absolute abortion ban can be achieved.

If we can save 90% of the aborted babies, this will go a very long way. Even for people who didn't plan to have children, babies are very cute, and most parents fall in love with them!

The USSR didn't collapse until 1991 (although Eastern Europe started to fall in 1989).  To match up Reagan from early 1986 and compare it to W currently is probably better. Or to at least wait about 5 years after W has left office to compare, I think they will match up pretty closely.

better than RR on judges.  RR was the best President ever on foreign policy.  Was lousy on domestic policy, standing up to congress.  And was mediocre on judges.

Certainly not as mediocre as Bush41.

to the political realities of the rape exception, which is why I said that I would take an end to abortions with the exception included over no end at all.

But the evidence is there that the rape exception seems to be more about the politics of the issue, rather than the reality of it.  The reality appears to be that abortion after rape isn't a good thing for the baby (it dies) or the mom (who struggles not only with the rape, but the abortion).

The reality is that the pro life groups should probably highlight this aspect of rape more, so that even when a rape exception is included, women who do get pregnant don't feel pressure to get an abortion (interesting thing, in case studies many of the women who aborted did so under pressure from others who thought abortion was the best decision in that situation).

Morally there absolutely is a disconnect on the exception issue, which is why I am not going to advocate for that position, but you put it on the table along with a promise to end all the other abortions, and I will take it.

Suppose a woman claims that she was raped by an unknown person, but does not report the rape until several days later -- so no rape kit can be done.  Would the "rape exception" apply?  Suppose she does not report the rape until after she discovers she is pregnant, giving as her reason that she did not want her husband to know about the rape?  Suppose in the latter case she is not sure who the father is, but wants to be sure she does not bear the child of her rapist?

Is a minor capable of giving informed consent for sexual intercourse?  If so, at what age?  How do you repond to someone who argues that a pregnant 14-year old has been raped by definition?

In the context of the "rape exception," how is rape to be defined?  What standard of proof applies?

Actually there are more, but 2 that pop out regarding the SD law.

1.  The case doesn't get tried before the 2006/2008 election at the SC level.

This will look 'good' for republicans as their anti-abortion constituents will have no reason to doubt their convictions at overturning RvW.

At some future time when the case is heard by the SC, go to item 2 below.

2.  The case does get tried by the SC before the 2008 election cycle.

A).  The SD law gets overturned.

Will abortion opponents throw up their hands in disgust?  Will they quit voting altogether?  Will they actually defect to the Dem side to give them a try for a while?  I mean one can't picture a better situation to stack the supreme court than has happened since 2004.  If it gets shot down and effectively RvW is upheld, then what?

B).  The SD law gets upheld.

Now what happens to all of those single-issue-voters?  What will they lay awake at night worrying about now?  Will they cease to be a political constituency?

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On a related issue, I haven't seen it a lot in this thread but in past threads about abortion, redstaters by and large claim that the issue should be left up to the individual states to decide.  The problem with that logic is it holds about as much water as a sieve.  You can't genuinely tell me that it would be ok to have murder Ok in Idaho but not South Dakota for example.  Once RvW is overturned at the federal level there will THEN be a push to make abortion illegal for the US, and NOT leave the issue up to the states.   Likewise, it would be ridiculous to exempt rape and incest as 'ok' forms of murder.   An abortion in those cases isn't an act of self-defense, its premeditated.   To try and argue that premeditated murder is ok in certain cases would really be breaking new legal grounds.

I'm glad this issue is coming to the forefront, the weak arguments and flaws of logic made by BOTH sides will finally come to light.

Leon does not speak for me when he claims that "all that the current pro-life position in this country demands is that the states be allowed, on a local basis, to set abortion regulations in accordance with local norms and practices."

What sorts of things are we prepared to allow states to decide, on a local basis, in accordance with local norms and practices?    Is it OK for a state to permit euthenasia of a newborn child with medical problems that will require expensive treament?  Can a state impose penalties on a woman who gives birth to more than two children?  Can a state permit one human being to own another human being as property?  

When it comes to matters of such fundamental importance as the sanctity of human life, a house divided cannot stand.  Are separate-but-equal schools a greater affront to morality than the murder of an unborn child?

2.  The case does get tried by the SC before the 2008 election cycle.

A).  The SD law gets overturned.

Will abortion opponents throw up their hands in disgust?  Will they quit voting altogether?  Will they actually defect to the Dem side to give them a try for a while?  I mean one can't picture a better situation to stack the supreme court than has happened since 2004.  If it gets shot down and effectively RvW is upheld, then what?

B).  The SD law gets upheld.

Now what happens to all of those single-issue-voters?  What will they lay awake at night worrying about now?  Will they cease to be a political constituency?

The answer to A depends on who voted to overturn the SD law.  If the answer includes Roberts and Alito, then the GOP is fractured.  That would be a disappointment too severe, I'm afraid, for most of the pro-life wing of the party.  There may be a genuine third party attempt if that's the case.

But if it's 5-4 with Thomas, Scalia, Alito, and Roberts on the losing side, then the pro-life wing becomes even more energized to keep on electing Republican presidents and Republican Seantors.

The answer to B also depends on the details.  Is the SD law upheld on some distinction, but the core holdings of Roe are upheld?  It's hard to imagine how that could be, but law clerks are real creative.  Or in the course of upholding SD law, does a new SCOTUS majority strike down Roe v. Wade and overturn it explicitly?

On a related issue, I haven't seen it a lot in this thread but in past threads about abortion, redstaters by and large claim that the issue should be left up to the individual states to decide.  The problem with that logic is it holds about as much water as a sieve.  You can't genuinely tell me that it would be ok to have murder Ok in Idaho but not South Dakota for example.  Once RvW is overturned at the federal level there will THEN be a push to make abortion illegal for the US, and NOT leave the issue up to the states.   Likewise, it would be ridiculous to exempt rape and incest as 'ok' forms of murder.   An abortion in those cases isn't an act of self-defense, its premeditated.   To try and argue that premeditated murder is ok in certain cases would really be breaking new legal grounds.

I assume you haven't studied criminal law much.  I can genuinely tell you that not only is it okay to have legal murder in Idaho but not in South Dakota, but I can further tell you that is in fact the legal regime we live in today.  If the people of Idaho, through its legislature, decided to legalize murder, then the crime of murder goes away in Idaho.  (There may be some Constitutional prohibitions here, of course.)

Today, as we sit here, there are different crimes and different outcomes for the same act in different states.  If you run over someone with a car while drunk and kill him, you could be charged with Criminally Negligent Homicide, with Vehicular Manslaughter, Manslaughter 1, 2, or 3, or perhaps even Murder.  The crime for which you will be indicted, and the penalties flowing from it, depends entirely upon the criminal code of the state in which you will be tried.

Premeditation in murder is often an element of the crime usually codified as First Degree Murder.  But if some state wanted to do away with that, it can change its criminal law statutes and remove premeditation altogether.

So the logic might leak like a sieve to you, but that is in fact the law, and the world we live in.

-TS

You have made some very good points.  Politically, it may be easier to pass laws that provide for a "rape exception."  However, that doesn't make it right.

What kind of moral sense does it make to say that a woman who has been brutalized is thereby entitled to brutally murder an innocent unborn child?  This is supposed to be theraputic for her?

I think we would all be alot better off if we still had some of that shame of teenage pregnancy and unwed motherhood.

If your moral view is that a fetus is an entity entitled to legal protection like born humans, that doesn't make an exception for rape logically inconsistent. The key distinction is killing somebody that would survive if you had nothing to do with them, vs. letting somebody die because you refuse to lend any assistance.

For a fetus to survive to term, the mother has to donate the use of her body for about 9 months. Generally we're under no legal obligation to save anybody's life unless we've done something to voluntarily assume responsibility for that person's welfare. If some child is for example drowning in a shallow pond, and a passing stranger could easily save his/her life, people would correctly consider that person a lowlife scum if he didn't bother; but because of our society's respect for individual autonomy, most of us recoil from the idea of imposing a legal requirement to come to the assistance of a stranger. (Imposing taxes to pay for govt. aid is as far as we go with involuntary assistance.) If however you accept a job as a school bus driver or guide for a children's tour, you assume a legal obligation to the children in your charge even for unexpected emergencies.

In most places the law regards having voluntary sex as a legally binding assumption of responsibility for the welfare of any child born as the result of that sex, even if the pregnancy was unintended. If a fetus is entitled to legal protection, then the mother's legal obligation to lend the use of her body for its survival is analagous to a father's obligation to pay child support.

If a pregnancy results from rape, the mother has made no voluntary act assuming responsibility for the fetus' survival. If a voluntary act is required to assume a legal obligation to help somebody survive, then the rape victim is entitled to say "I want my body back with no boarders."

If there was some way for the rape-conceived fetus to survive without expropriating the use of the rape victim's body for months, e.g. transplant the fetus to an adoptive mother, that would be relevant. If the fetus is a legally protected entity, then the rape victim should have the right to withhold the use of her body, but not to insist on killing the fetus if it can survive without her body.

McCain cannot be counted on to do anything but serve himself.

Ditto. Just one thing, if you're shooting with both barrels now, what are you gonna do when he wins the nomination? Explode?Personally, I can't afford to get so worked up about it. Gotta watch the old blood pressure, you know ;-).

up.

The reality is that while the pro life issue is a major one for me, and is often a key to who I choose to vote for (although I think believing it is okay to kill a baby in the womb, and that the practice should be legal says as much about a persons worldview as it does about the issue of abortion), it isn't the only issue.

I don't vote, only because I am against abortion.  I vote for other reasons as well.

If Roe was overturned, the issue of abortion would move to the states, and who is or isn't pro life at that level would become very important.

Also, other issues on the national stage will just come more to the forefront.  And it wouldn't even pull me from the GOP at this point, given that the dems are just as bad on other issues important to me (vouchers, fiscal conservatism-granted the GOP isn't so hot on this one right now either, but I still trust them more than the dems etc).

If the dems think that all the pro lifers just go home and stop playing once Roe is off the table, they are living in la la land.  

bloodpressure.  At all.  His Senate tenure does.

If McCain is the '08 candidate I simply will refrain from voting for either major party for POTUS.  Maybe I'll write in Ross.

The key distinction is killing somebody that would survive if you had nothing to do with them, vs. letting somebody die because you refuse to lend any assistance.

The baby is already in the mother. Abortion is not passive; it's an action that results in the death of the baby. No different then pulling somebody off life support, which considering that the patient "wouldn't survive without it", should allow us to remove it when we so choose were we to adopt your line of thinking.

I think it's more analagous to a situation where you are handed a baby without being asked. You could not just drop the baby with the excuse that the responsibility was forced on you.

but because of our society's respect for individual autonomy, most of us recoil from the idea of imposing a legal requirement to come to the assistance of a stranger.

The reason we don't force people to help others is because it isn't practical. There's no end to such scenarios and would lead to utter chaos if people had to give everything they had to every needy situation that arose. That being said, if we had a crisis with babies lying in the street, Americans would readily support laws forcing anybody that sees one to take it home and care for it. The case could be made that abortion is akin to that, even if you consider it passive somehow.

As an aside, I'm curious to know if you offer someone a ride and force him out in middle of nowhere where he is sure to die, if you could not be charged with something even though you never undertook to take him to his destination. I'm not a lawyer so I don't know, but I'd like to think that if it were a common occurrence there would be a law against it.

 

John O'Neil from the Swift Boat vets. That would get McCain's goat ;-)!

Bush had a 55-44-1 Republican majority in the Senate. Reagan did not.

Also, remember Bush picked Harriet Meyers before Sam Alito. Likewise, Reagan picked Robert Bork and Doug Ginsburg before Anthony Kennedy.

One of the great myths of the left is that Right-to-Lifers are single issue voters.

To use an analogy, its like poker, in that abortion is a Royal Flush and it will beat 4 of a kind, but don't kid yourself, if RvW was returned to the states (where I believe it is best resolved) then the RtL'ers will simply focus on their 4 of a kind or full house, ie... the next most important issue... and granted, that issue may dovetail for many... iow, some will move to a marriage amendment, others to the GWOT, others to less easily pegged issues.

If not, I will not vote for him.

I would remind you, if McCain is the Republican nominee, there will still be a Democrat on that ballot!

Think before you decide NOT to vote!

No different then pulling somebody off life support, which considering that the patient "wouldn't survive without it", should allow us to remove it when we so choose were we to adopt your line of thinking.

It's very different. A more accurate analogy for forcing a rape-victim to donate the use of her body for 9 months is like:

One day you wake up and find somebody attached a helpless and blameless stranger with IV lines hooked up to you. That person is dependent on receiving your blood (an amount you can spare) and won't recover to survive without it for 9 months. You call 911 and ask them to find an alternative transfusion source for the patient and detach him from you. They say (for some true reason) they are unable to provide whatever blood will help him survive, and he will die if you detach yourself from him.

Do you think government should have the power to punish you for detaching yourself from this innocent stranger, if he will die without being hooked up to your body? My answer is very emphatically No, but it would be different if you did some voluntary act that assumes responsibility for that person.

That being said, if we had a crisis with babies lying in the street, Americans would readily support laws forcing anybody that sees one to take it home and care for it.

We might support requiring emergency action until the authorities can take custody of the child, but very few would support requiring you to house and feed that baby you stumbled upon for the next 9 months. In fact the government would pick up the child pretty soon in America, but there can be circumstances (e.g. some poverty stricken and/or war-torn countries) where the government and charities just don't have the resources to take care of every orphan baby. In such circumstances, your view of individual autonomy is that a person who finds an abandoned baby shouldn't have the freedom to refuse to spend the next nine months housing and feeding that stranger?

I'm curious to know if you offer someone a ride and force him out in middle of nowhere where he is sure to die, if you could not be charged with something even though you never undertook to take him to his destination.

Offering somebody a ride might be construed as voluntarily assuming some responsibility. Let's make it clearly involuntary, say you inadvertantly left your car door unlocked, then later driving in the middle of nowhere you notice a homeless man sleeping in the back seat. I don't know what the law is, but something reasonable would be you can throw him out immediately but you have to call 911 with his location; or maybe if you don't have reason to fear for your safety, you have to at least drive him to a safe location before throwing him out. But the legal obligation you want to impose on a woman when she's impregnated by rape, is more like saying if you find a helpless retarded homeless man sleeping in your back seat, you're legally obligated to house and feed him for the next 9 months.

McCain is well liked, but it's not necessarily because he takes politically popular positions.  After all, as support for Iraq has dropped, he has become one of the most vocal supporters of it.  As it quickly became clear that the Dubai deal was highly unpopular, he was about the only prominent Republican outside the Bush administration to defend it.  

I think McCain is more likely than some other candidates to pick somebody based on their judicial philosophy rather than political considerations like if this judge will make the 5th anti-Roe vote.

"In most places the law regards having voluntary sex as a legally binding assumption of responsibility for the welfare of any child born as the result of that sex, even if the pregnancy was unintended."

While your argument is an interesting one, it leaves a large hole in the area of determining the definition of 'voluntary.'  Is a mentally-ill, substance-abusing woman able to make a voluntary decision?  Is a woman in a relationship where she is expected to submit to a man's will able to make a voluntary decision?  (and yes, there are cultures where this view is still dominant)  Are all 17-year-old girls able to make voluntary decisions?  

I think the mistake you are making is, as I discussed in another thread recently, to bring the behavior of the mother into it.  I understand the political expediency of this, but intellectually, it is wrong.  It is also wrong on another level, b/c to say that a woman must carry a pregnancy to term as her 'punishment' for engaging in sex is a possible risk to the child (how well does anyone follow through on a punishment task?) and is a message that is not likely to bring others to your point of view.  

is all it would take to get me to vote for McCain.

Do you think government should have the power to punish you for detaching yourself from this innocent stranger, if he will die without being hooked up to your body?

That's an interesting scenario, but I guess I would say that you can be prevented from detaching yourself if it will cause death to another person. It's no different then the example I gave where a baby is dumped in your hand. You can't just decide to put your hand in your pocket and let the baby drop.  

In such circumstances, your view of individual autonomy is that a person who finds an abandoned baby shouldn't have the freedom to refuse to spend the next nine months housing and feeding that stranger?

So if we were nuked and there were babies lying in the street, you would have a problem with the government forcing people to take them in and feed them for nine months? I wouldn't. Besides, you now seem to be focusing on the length of time involved. If your argument is correct, then we shouldn't be forced to take in a child for even one minute. If you support emergency action until the authorities arrive, then so do I. I support the baby remaining in the womb until the authorities arrive i.e. it's born. Or we can remove the child as soon as it's viable and keep it alive artificially, but that would defeat the point of abortion, which is not to have the child at all.

driving in the middle of nowhere you notice a homeless man sleeping in the back seat. I don't know what the law is, but something reasonable would be you can throw him out immediately but you have to call 911 with his location

Sounds like you're intruding on my individual autonomy here. Why should I have to call 911? I didn't accept any responsibility, it was forced on me!

or maybe if you don't have reason to fear for your safety, you have to at least drive him to a safe location before throwing him out.

There goes my individual autonomy again.Out the window.

But the legal obligation you want to impose on a woman when she's impregnated by rape, is more like saying if you find a helpless retarded homeless man sleeping in your back seat, you're legally obligated to house and feed him for the next 9 months.

Again the length of time. Why should I have to spend even a minute with a homeless person if I don't want to? If you believe in not forcing people into responsibilities they didn't willingly accept, there's no difference between 9 months and 1 hour.

Listen, I understand the revulsion of having to carry such a child, and that child won't have it easy either, but a life is a life. We are not the arbiters of who get's to live or not. It's time we started seeing past our own selfish desires and start realizing the preciousness of life.

While your argument is an interesting one, it leaves a large hole in the area of determining the definition of 'voluntary.'

If we insist every law has nothing but bright line definitions with no borderline cases, e.g. "reasonable fear for one's own life" in self-defense homicide, that would lead to more incoherence not less.

I understand the political expediency of this [rape exception for abortion], but intellectually, it is wrong.

It may well be morally wrong in your view, and you're free to pursue that moral view in legislation you support, but there's no intellectual inconsistency in being pro-life but allowing a rape exception.

There are two separate moral questions, which supporters of differing moral views will try to enact into law.

1) Does a fetus have some moral status that entitles it to legal protections like a baby after birth?

If your answer is No, then you would oppose abortion restrictions and there's nothing more to consider (assuming you're not interested in telling people what to do with their bodies when there's no third party's rights to protect).

If your answer is Yes, a fetus is entitled to legal protection, that leaves open the question how far you're willing to go imposing obligations on other people in pursuit of the fetus' welfare, even survival. One of the questions, the one I discussed is:

2) Should a woman be forced donate the use of her body for 9 months to enable a fetus to survive, even if she never volunteered to do anything that might result in pregnancy?

There's no moral or intellectual inconsistency in answering either Yes or No. How you answer depends on on you weight the relative importance of liberty vs. life.  Most of us like both, but will want to preserve certain liberties even when some lives would be saved by giving up that liberty.

Pro-lifers who oppose the abortion exception think saving the fetus' life is important enough to forcibly expropriate the use of a rape victim's body for 9 months. Pro-lifers who support the rape exception value protecting a fetus' life, but think the the freedom of a rape victim to refuse having her body hijacked for the next 9 months is more important than saving the fetus' life.

to say that a woman must carry a pregnancy to term as her 'punishment' ...

I frequently hear militant pro-choicers attribute that postion to pro-lifers, but nothing I said remotely resembles that.

It's a pretty tough burden when a father is forced to pay child support for the next two decades because of an unwanted pregnancy resulting from his voluntary sex act. However that is not a punishment, that's just requiring him to assume responsibility for the forseeable (even if unintended & unlikely) consequences of his voluntary actions.

If instead some woman kidnapped a man, forcibly extracted some semen and used it to impregnate herself, I don't think the biological father should have any legal responsibility for the child's support, except as a taxpayer like everybody else.

A final note: My main point is not whether a rape exception is desirable or not. I only refute the claim that there's some logical inconsistency in generally outlawing abortion but allowing a rape exception. The question of a rape exception depends on the relative importance of life vs. liberty, not on the pro-life principle that a fetus is morally entitled to legal protection.

If you believe in not forcing people into responsibilities they didn't willingly accept, there's no difference between 9 months and 1 hour.

That's the kind of distinction societies make all the time. If you find it unacceptable for laws to make a distinction between restricting somebody's freedom for 1 hour vs 9 months, you're free to try to elect politicians to enact that absolutism into law, and there's nothing inherently illogical for you to hold that view. However most people see a very major distinction between imposing for 1 hour vs. 9 months, and expect their laws to reflect that distinction (on various issues, not just abortion).

The other points I see as the differences over the relative importance of liberty vs. life, in my reply to momof3 which I won't repeat here, except to paste the conclusion:

My main point is not whether a rape exception is desirable or not. I only refute the claim that there's some logical inconsistency in generally outlawing abortion but allowing a rape exception. The question of a rape exception depends on the relative importance of life vs. liberty, not on the pro-life principle that a fetus is morally entitled to legal protection.

say Hillary?

GOD would get you for that!

Roe has served its purpose.  Its time for this matter to move on to the next stage.  At this point all it is doing is creating a more divisive society in which people are further demonizing other Americans based on flawed impressions of their views.

Of course the pro-choice people don't want to hear that because they have the upper-hand currently.  And sadly instead of reading the tea leaves and realizing that they need to change course before Roe is completely overturned and the Federal government tries outlaw all abortion, they will fight to the death over Roe.

Then again that is my biggest problem with most people that call themselves Liberals today.  They aren't.  They are Conservatives defending the Status Quo that came into effect because true Liberals caused change to occur 30-40 years ago.  Instead of looking at Affirmative Action and figuring how to make it better they fight to defend an outdated system that no longer serves the original purpose.  Instead of looking to improve education they try to defend the current teacher controlled system.  

Liberals should always be looking to IMPROVE society not defend the achievements of their parents.  

One proLife SD state senator, I believe it was, made the observation that, in its present state, on reaching the Supreme Court the SD Abortion Law will be turned away on grounds of Roe v Wade precedence and not even be heard. The result is that it will reinforce that precedence and thus make it more difficult for the Court to accept future cases challenging the same precedence. Even if it were to be accepted for rehearing, the present balance on the Court would uphold Roe v Wade, thus digging a deeper hole for promise of any new law to challenge legal precedence.

But I've never been one to fault people for failing when they attempt to do the right thing.

But I would propose that any rape exception be limited to the first day or two after a rape, and that the woman be required to make a full report to the police and be willing to prosecute the rapist.  Otherwise, it would be too easy for a woman to cry "rape" after finding out she was pregnant, whether she was or not.

1)If you concede that rather then being passive, abortion is an act of terminating a life, then it is murder. It makes as much sense to murder a baby who is an undue and involuntary burden on the mother as it does to euthanize elderly people who are an undue and involuntary burden on society.

2)The question of a rape exception depends on the relative importance of life vs. liberty.                                        

This argument effectively undercuts the entire pro-life position. If liberty ever trumps life, then you are opening the door to abortion on demand. Who are pro-lifers to decide that an involuntary imposition of pregnancy is too great a restriction on liberty of the mother, while forcing her to keep the baby after a voluntary decision is not. It is well within the right of a woman to claim that it is a restriction of her liberty to force her to carry a baby to term and care for it for 18 years just because she had voluntary sex.

The pro-life position is predicated on the assumption that nothing trumps life. If liberty does, then you cannot assume to be the arbiter of what is considered liberty or not.

3)  In a case where a women is unable to have an abortion right after the rape i.e. she was held captive, I assume that you'd support partial birth abortion as well. After all, if you cannot force a woman to involuntarily lend her body, even if the result of her refusal is the death of the baby, then you cannot force her at any stage of her pregnancy. As a matter of fact, even after the child is born she should be able to at least walk away from it. She did not ask for this child so she has no responsibility for it. Is that your position?

Bottom line, The tenets of the pro-life position are that abortion terminates a life, and nothing has precedence over life. Based on that, I don't see any way to make an exception in the case of rape and incest.

But I've changed my mind.  Until the past week or so, I would have argued that the better course of action would have been to move gradually to challenge Roe.  If I had been a SD legislator, I would have preferred passing a ban that would have provided not only an exception for life of the mother, but also for rape and incest, and perhaps also a VERY limited exception for serious physical injury to the mother (under tightly controlled circumstances).  My rationale was that such a law could be upheld, but would severely cut down on the number of abortions.

But as I said, I have changed my mind.  Now, I hope that as many states as possible will pass very similar legislation as in SD.  Let the SCOTUS know that the people do not support Roe.  And shift the discussion away from support/non-support of Roe to the question of what limited exceptions should be approved.

The idea is that if the question is framed as "what exceptions to an abortion ban would you support?" most Americans will support only a very few exceptions (even if it's more than serious pro-lifers would desire).  

Once this becomes the question, eventually SCOTUS will have to overturn Roe, since it is a quitessentially political question.

Bottom line, instead of aiming for the compromise position, aim for the philosophically consistent position (i.e. only life of the mother exception), but be willing to settle, politically, for a compromise (at least in some/many states) for other, limited exceptions.  I have come to believe that this is the best hope for eliminating the largest number of abortions in this country.

If it's McCain v. Hillary I won't vote for either.

Honestly, I think McCain is more dangerous to freedom than Hillary could ever be.  McCain would be facing a Congress that he has cowed on any occasion he's seen fit, from McC/Feingold to the Torture Amendment.  Hillary will face an openly hostile Congress that will limit her ability to get anything done.  McCain is a "politician" more in the mold of Bill (not close, but closer) while Hillary is just nasty.  McCain will be perceived as a "centerist", Hillary will show her "liberal" side in short order.  Neither will make judicial nominees I will like, so I consider that a toss up.

Its time for this matter to move on to the next stage.  

What is that stage? Abortion is legal only during the first trimester? If I were a pro-choicer I could never agree to that for a simple reason. For years pro-choicers have supported abortions in the second trimester. To admit now that they were wrong would make them complicit in millions of murders. Unintentional, mistaken, but still complicit. The least amount of penance required would be to put a moratorium on all abortions. After all, who says we won't discover in the future, based on science, that life begins at conception? If pro-choicers were so wrong with such disastrous consequences, how do they have the nerve to be so sure they're right now?

Most people wouldn't support the death penalty at all if it were proven that innocent people were executed. Same with abortion. So to agree with Saledan's premise would be the end of the pro-choice movement.

rather than vote for McCain?

I'm not a huge McCain fan (despite his #2 slot on my presidential list), but I would never willingly skip a POTUS vote even if it were (let's see who is my least favorite GOPer) -- Arnold and let a Dem win.

Oh well, guess that puts me in the Pragmatist wing of the Republican party.

Obviously there are plenty of conservatives who are quite conservative AND oppose abortion.  Those people aren't single-issue-voters.

However I personally know a man and his wife who don't like anything about GW Bush other than he seems to stand against abortion and because of that they voted for him.  They truly are single-issue voters.  Their sole reason for voting republican last election was because of that issue.  It is people like THEM that I'm referring to.

All antiabortion-single-issue-voters vote republican.  That doesn't mean that all republican voters are single-issue-voters.

for electing Hillary if the party is willing to nominate McCain.  And, I'd rather see Hillary than McCain.

It would mean a changing of the debate.

Pro-choice people don't need to stand up and say "well I think that 2nd trimester abortions are wrong NOW!"  It's a matter of picking your battles.  Simply acquiescing to someone else's position doesn't mean that you agree with it, particularly when you come to that agreement using different reasons.

The Pro-Choice movement needs to realize that the political reality today is different than 1973, as Saletan correctly points out.  Anti-abortion people may not like it but first-trimester abortions are soon going to be a moot issue.  Medical advances will soon make first term abortions non-surgical.  When that happens the genie is out of the bottle.  The only question is who will be able to get access to the pills, everyone or simply the wealthy and desperate.

the values of their grand parents.

Your argument may well be a valid argument, but with out some form of a poll or survey or statistic to back it up, its only point is anecdotal. It would be worth something to know how many "pro-lifers" are single issue "Republicans." It could be that rendering the RvW issue hors'de combat at the national level would swing the pendelum towards the democrats there... but conversely... if even 10 or 15 percent of the evangelicals who currently vote Republican swung around and started participating in the Democratic party processes, that would have a very unsettling effect on that party's agenda and direction...

But without some meaningful way to measure the % of single issue voters on RvW, its difficult, if not impossible, to assess what impact returning RvW back to the states would have.

My biggest complaint about some of my political brethren is the insistance on bitter defense of archaic programs or even philosophies.  We've managed to turn every change into a do-or-die stand for progress versus darkness, which has helped lead us to the current ludicrous Kulturkampf.

Pharmaceutical abortion will certainly defuse quite a bit of the hoopla and uproar.

Simply acquiescing to someone else's position doesn't mean that you agree with it, particularly when you come to that agreement using different reasons.

What other reasons would there be? The only reason for pro-choicers to give up on the second trimester is that it's been proven that the baby is alive. If not, then why not let a women "choose" what's being done with her body? Generally, you can lose a battle and win the war, but not in this case, IMO.

Anti-abortion people may not like it but first-trimester abortions are soon going to be a moot issue.  Medical advances will soon make first term abortions non-surgical.  

I'm not an expert on this pharmaceutical stuff, but I don't see pro-lifers giving up because abortion is now done with pills instead of surgery. Murder is still murder, and as science progresses and we continue to discover more signs of life in the first trimester, it'll be no different then what's going on today regarding the second and third trimesters.

1)If you concede that rather then being passive, abortion is an act of terminating a life, then it is murder. It makes as much sense to murder a baby who is an undue and involuntary burden on the mother as it does to euthanize elderly people who are an undue and involuntary burden on society.

That doesn't recognize the distinction of a rape-victim, who never consented to something that might lead to pregnancy, where she could be considered personally responsible for the consequences of her choices. As a society, we provide aid enabling needy elderly to survive, but we don't say if you happen to be the next door neighbor of an elderly person who loses the ability to take care of himself, that makes you legally responsible for that person's survival for the next 9 months. Most of us have voluntarily helped out a neighbor in need, some taking on much bigger burdens than others, but imposing a legal requirement is a different story.

As I said in my original post, a rape victim's right to reclaim her own body doesn't imply a right to prevent society from saving the fetus' life without her body. If somebody, or society through government, is willing to expend the money to do a fetal transplant to an adoptive mother, then the rape victim reclaiming her body doesn't harm the fetus.

There are fetal transplants now - I think it's stable technology, but if not it will get there soon. So if saving the fetus' life if worth expropriating the body of a woman who didn't consent to an act that could result in her preganancy, why must it be the rape victim who's body is expropriated? Why shouldn't some other woman, who isn't already traumatized by the horror of rape, take responsibility for nurturing the fetus to term in her own body?

If there aren't enough women who will voluntarily accept transplants of rape victims' unwanted fetuses, would you favor something like a draft of healthy young women to adopt rape victims' fetuses for the pregnancy? To me this idea sounds ludicrous, but if you take the position it's ok to expropriate a rape victim's body for 9 months to save the life of the innocent rape-conceived fetus, isn't it better to impose that involunary 9-month use of her body on some other random woman who doesn't bear the added burden of recovering from her rape?

The pro-life position is predicated on the assumption that nothing trumps life.

I think if you reflect you'll recognize that even you don't believe that nothing trumps life. All over America there are highway interchanges built to our accepted standards of safety, but still have fatal accidents that kill innocent children. In your county or mine, the government could upgrade some interchange for a few million dollars which would result in one less innocent child getting killed every few years. But we've decided that saving a few lives is less important than the impact on other programs like street cleaning or libraries that would be cut to pay for the interchange upgrade. We've also decided saving those lives isn't worth imposing a pocket-change increase on each of our tax bills, because we'd rather spend our own money on beer or movies.

Or how about imposing a national 20-mph speed limit? Assuming that would save some lives, does life trump our interest in getting we're going sooner?

Even on a more limited version of your claim, "The pro-life position is predicated on the assumption that a rape victim's right to reclaim her body is less important than the fetus' life," the majority of people who consider themselves pro-life reject your definition of pro-life, e.g. in a recent poll (pdf link at bottom with details), 49% think abortion should be illegal for "unwanted pregnancy" but less than half of that 49% pro-life group would outlaw abortion for rape or incest victims.

In the case of rape, I believe a Zygote-pregnancy termination MAY be viable.  A respected priest I know supported this position but I would like to know more about the biology of the "zygote" before deciding my position one way or the other.  The priest told me that during this phase the Egg and the Sperm had not yet mixed and started to split, therefore, in a rape case, when the victim is given a morning-after-pill it is morally acceptable.  He told me that it is only morally acceptable in the case of rape (NOT if a condom breaks and your girlfriend/wife is not on birth controll.)

I would also include a restriction on how long she has to make the decision to have an abortion.

Rape exceptions for the first 6-10 weeks I can see, but by the time you are hitting 12 weeks, you have pretty much subconscious committed to carrying the baby to term.

I see absolutely no need for a rape exception for later term pregnancies.

*just a note, I am still not keen on a rape exception, but as I said, I would take a law outlawing all elective abortion with a rape exception, if that was the only way to get elective abortion to end.

You make several interesting points, but I am not convinced.  I understand that everything cannot have a "bright line definition," but it seems to me that once you start by saying that a rape victim's repugnance of her pregnancy--a result of her lack of choice--trumps the rights of the fetus, you are headed toward that dreaded slippery slope.  What about women in abusive marriages?  Mentally retarded women? I think it's just too loose a rationale.

You have not answered why we couldn't euthanize elderly patients who impose an involuntary and undue burden on society. You also haven't indicated if you'd support partial birth abortion in rape cases, which you should according to the line of thinking you've put forth.

I have no problem with fetal transplants if they work. Having said that if no one is willing to adopt the fetus then it must remain in the mother simply because to take it out would be murder. And yes a draft is silly, but it is currently inside the mother, and if she wishes to take it out, she'd better have a safe and secure place where to put it. As bad as I feel for her, life truly is not fair (ask Thomas if you don't believe me).

Your argument about highways and the like is a non-sequitur. Nothing trumps life, and if you can't hear a distinction between something that directly affects life and something as indirect as highway safety, then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

As for the poll, I'm talking about what is right, not what people agree to, so a poll is irrelevant.

You have not answered why we couldn't euthanize elderly patients who impose an involuntary and undue burden on society.

As I said in my first post in this thread:

The key distinction is killing somebody that would survive if you had nothing to do with them, vs. letting somebody die because you refuse to lend any assistance. ... Generally we're under no legal obligation to save anybody's life unless we've done something [like risk pregnancy by choosing to have sex] to assume responsibility for that person's welfare.

And as I said in the post that the your comment above is replying to:

As a society, we provide aid enabling needy elderly to survive, but we don't say if you happen to be the next door neighbor of an elderly person who loses the ability to take care of himself, that makes you legally responsible for that person's survival for the next 9 months. Most of us have voluntarily helped out a neighbor in need, some taking on much bigger burdens than others, but imposing a legal requirement is a different story.

You also haven't indicated if you'd support partial birth abortion in rape cases, which you should according to the line of thinking you've put forth.

You're attributing to me your own absolutism. I've already told you otherwise, that in deciding the appropriate trade off between life and liberty, the severity of infringement is part of the judgement whether it's an acceptable cost. It's you not I who argues that if it's ok to require you to call 911 with the location of a stranger who would otherwise freeze to death, you think it must be equally ok to make you legally responsible for personally feeding and housing that stranger for the next 9 months. In your hypothetical of a kidnapped rape victim freed in her 8th month of pregnancy, the involuntary expropriation of the rape victim's body is a few more weeks rather than 9 months, and abortion probably imposes serious pain on the fetus. With the costs and benefits significantly changed from the normal rape-exception question of 9-months expropriation of a rape victim's body, that can lead to a different answer for non-absolutists. I would vote to not allow the rape-exception in this case, but reasonable people who place a higher value on individual autonomy than I do would vote against me.

And yes a draft is silly, but it is currently inside the mother, and if she wishes to take it out, she'd better have a safe and secure place where to put it.

Why is forcibly expropriating a rape-victim's body for nurturing the rape conceived fetus any less silly than imposing that burden on some other woman? What did the rape victim do to make her "more deserving" of being drafted by society to save the fetus, instead of drafting some other woman to save the fetus? If society doesn't think saving rape-conceived fetuses is worth stepping up for by drafting healthy young women to accept a fetal transplant, why should the rape victim be singled out to bear that burden?

As bad as I feel for her, life truly is not fair

Society can't fix all the agony unfairly inflicted by rape, but you want to society to go further and actively impose an additional unfair burden on a rape victim, by legally expropriating her body for 9 months to save the rape-conceived fetus. Assuming saving the fetus is your concern, why do you prefer imposing this involunary burden on rape victims, instead of imposing it on healthy young women who aren't already traumitized?

Emotional distress of the mother is bad for a fetus' health, so why would you increase the fetus' risk by imposing the 9 months involuntary pregnancy on a distraught rape victim, instead of imposing it on some other woman in better emotional/physical condition to nurture the fetus to a healthy birth?

Your argument about highways and the like is a non-sequitur. Nothing trumps life, and if you can't hear a distinction between something that directly affects life and something as indirect as highway safety, then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

You suggest a curious ethical framework, where the value we place on saving a stranger's life should depend on whether we can identify in advance which stranger we save.  Saving the lives of 100 children who would otherwise die in highway accidents should be less important to society than saving say 10 rape-conceived fetuses?  We understand enough about traffic to identify places where spending more money will definitely save lives, but often decide the cost($)/benefit(lives) ratio is too high to make it worth doing; calling predicatable car accidents "indirect" doesn't make the dead children any less dead.

As for the poll, I'm talking about what is right, not what people agree to, so a poll is irrelevant.

I agree, polls are irrelevant to the issue of what's right. The only reason I cited the poll was in response to your claim that "The pro-life position is predicated on the assumption that nothing trumps life." I was pointing out that most people we consider pro-life reject your principle that nothing trumps life, by supporting the rape exception; your characterization of the pro-life postion was incorrect.  You're free to believe that most pro-lifers are morally wrong, and try to change their minds, but the minority position can't claim to speak for pro-life voters as a group.

I think you're right that any exception will be improperly used by some people. I suspect most supporters of the rape-exception are aware of that, but consider some abuse a lesser evil than extending the rape's imposition on the victim for another 9 months, before she can try to live her life (to whatever extent possible) without the rape being the central foundation of her current situation.

What other reasons would there be? The only reason for pro-choicers to give up on the second trimester is that it's been proven that the baby is alive. If not, then why not let a women "choose" what's being done with her body? Generally, you can lose a battle and win the war, but not in this case, IMO.

trimesters are a legal construct created by the 1973 Supreme Court.  I don't think that pro-choice people feel that most pro-choice people feel particularly strongly about it being THE dividing point.  Let's remember that the vast majority of pro-choice people   are very uncomfortable with abortion and generally detest them.  However they view the rights of the woman above the rights of a fetus.

This argument is self-serving for the anti-abortion side.  By saying that the pro-choice side would be hypocrites if they changed the legal date to the first trimester that means that they were willingly killing people for 30 years is a moral judgement that the anti-abortion side already has and the pro-choice side does not.  We all agree that AT SOME POINT a fetus becomes a baby.  Now you may think it's at the point of intercourse or you may think it's the moment of birth but we ALL have a line of separation.  I don't think that it is hypocritical for the pro-choice side to accept that we will change the line of separation to the end of the first trimester just as I don't think it would be hypocritical for the anti-abortion side to say that the day after pills are acceptable.  

I'm not an expert on this pharmaceutical stuff, but I don't see pro-lifers giving up because abortion is now done with pills instead of surgery. Murder is still murder, and as science progresses and we continue to discover more signs of life in the first trimester, it'll be no different then what's going on today regarding the second and third trimesters.

The anti-aboriton side may never give up but it will be a quixotic battle once it becomes a matter of pharmaceutical abortions because it will be almost impossible to stop.  People will make the drugs.  If not here, then in Europe or Canada.  Women will get the drugs.  And if the anti-abortion side continues to fight the fight they will lose it because, just as in the War on Drugs, you can't stop people from doing something if they really want to.

I've always felt that the way that the anti-abortion side wins this battle is by changings the hearts and minds of all Americans.  I think they have done a good job of slowly convincing Americans that abortion is horrible.  However each time they bring out the fire and brimstone and start excoriating the pro-choice side they damage their cause.

we're "losing" the War on Drugs doesn't mean we're not locking up a crapload of sellers/users.

If we are able to bring the abortion issue to this state, were we lock are able up some number of sellers and users of "Plan B" or whatever, I'd be willing to settle for both the "quixotic battle" and the "loss."

Of course the problem here is that this won't be a drug pushed on a street corner.  

And unless a Federal ban is implemented on these types of drugs it will be almost impossible to enforce any ban on them.

HHS and DOJ have the joint authority to add drugs to the Controlled Substances schedule. So what would be the barrier to creating a federal ban on these drugs?

the classification of drugs?  

I will readily admit that I am unfamiliar with the classification process but I suspect that there is more to it than simply decreeing that a drug should be outright banned.  For a drug to be placed into a banned substance category doesn't it need to be shown that it serves no medicinal value?

"Pro-choice people don't need to stand up and say "well I think that 2nd trimester abortions are wrong NOW!"  It's a matter of picking your battles."

I live in a blue town in a blue county in a blue state.  I am a prochoice Democrat and this reflects what most of us are thinking--of course, it is not just political expediency, but changing medical technology that has altered our views (in addition to growing older and having our own children).  But the point is that most of us would be willing to give up second trimester abortions (with exceptions for the physical health of the mother) and settle for legal first trimester ones along with relatively easy-to-obtain pharmaceuticals.  

to nationally ban abortion pills.  States may make it illegal to use the pills in the state, and possession of such pills to be illegal, but that will make it a state enforcement issue.  Plus, if surgical abortion is outlawed in the states that desire such a thing, the core of the anti-abortion movement may soldier on, but probably to ever lessening returns.  I think it may represent the end-stage of this particular cultural battle.

A conservative administation could ban abortion pills after a 90-day comment period on listing them as controlled drugs. The decision could be make exclusively by presidential appointees. It would be easier to do this federally than rely on state actors which really have limited authority to ban drugs.

As a society, we provide aid enabling needy elderly to survive, but we don't say if you happen to be the next door neighbor of an elderly person who loses the ability to take care of himself, that makes you legally responsible for that person's survival for the next 9 months.

I'm afraid, my friend, that you are ducking the question. I'm not talking about going over to your neighbor's house to help him, I'm talking about not pulling the plug on his respirator. You keep on referring to abortion as a passive act of not sustaining the child. It's not. You are removing the child from the womb leading directly to it's death, hence the analogy to euthanasia. If the mother would like to starve thereby killing the baby, that might be different. But that's not what goes on during an abortion.

You're attributing to me your own absolutism.

It's called consistency.

I've already told you otherwise, that in deciding the appropriate trade off between life and liberty, the severity of infringement is part of the judgement whether it's an acceptable cost.

Here's where the pro-life position goes down the tubes. Pro-choicers will tell you that to subject a woman to 9 months of pregnancy and years of child-rearing because they decided to have fun one night is "too severe an infringement" on their personal liberties. They should have the liberty to have fun without a lifetime of payment for it. Who are you to say it's not? This is not absolutism, this is a slippery slope, and you're heading right down it.

in your hypothetical of a kidnapped rape victim freed in her 8th month of pregnancy, the involuntary expropriation of the rape victim's body is a few more weeks rather than 9 months, and abortion probably imposes serious pain on the fetus. With the costs and benefits significantly changed from the normal rape-exception question of 9-months expropriation of a rape victim's body, that can lead to a different answer for non-absolutists.

So now were going to be the arbiters of what does and doesn't constitute a burden on the mother. For you, one month is no big deal, but what about those who will claim that the birth experience alone is overwhelmingly painful (which it is) and should be the deciding factor? Or if the mother was freed from captivity after 5 or 6 months of pregnancy. What then? When do we draw the line, and who draws it? This is a slippery slope if I ever saw one.

BTW, I disagree with the whole "individual autonomy" concept as you apply it, see here .

If society doesn't think saving rape-conceived fetuses is worth stepping up for by drafting healthy young women to accept a fetal transplant, why should the rape victim be singled out to bear that burden?

You're missing the point, IMHO. Those who favor the rape exception is not because they want to spare the mother a distasteful pregnancy, rather they want to spare her from having a distasteful child. So you're point about not "expropriating" the mother's body is moot. Even if we were to transplant the baby at conception, it would not satisfy those who want the rape exception. They do not want such a child to exist. I could be wrong on this, but that's what it seems to me.

Assuming saving the fetus is your concern, why do you prefer imposing this involunary burden on rape victims, instead of imposing it on healthy young women who aren't already traumitized?

Like I said, it's silly but in theory I could agree with you. Maybe we should draft others, but until then you cannot kill the child under the guise that "why does the mother have to bear it more then anybody else therefore we're going to kill it".

Saving the lives of 100 children who would otherwise die in highway accidents should be less important to society than saving say 10 rape-conceived fetuses?

Using that logic, building hospitals and better road signs are equally important. Well, to me there not. The difference is self-explanatory.

You're free to believe that most pro-lifers are morally wrong, and try to change their minds, but the minority position can't claim to speak for pro-life voters as a group.

Never claimed to be. I'm just saying it's inconsistent. I must say I'm enjoying the discussion, but I haven't seen any reason to modify my position.