Fresh Worms: Oh, golly. I don't wish this to turn into the Abortion Discussion, which we may have to have at some point (though not today -- I leave for vacation in 5 hours). I have deep sympathy on both sides. First, to say that life does not begin at conception is to be willfully obtuse and anti-scientific. Years from now the "when does life begin" debate will, rightly, I think, be seen as an example of empty hairsplitting for moral justification.

Meanwhile, I think it sets an awful precedent for the government to get into reproductive matters (for god's sake, they're already crotch-deep in marriage!), and my position will stand on that, regardless of how barbaric the action is. The same is true for parents who, for religious reasons, don't give their sick kids medicine. It's an awful thing that these kids suffer and, occasionally, die for want of treatment, but the primacy of the parental relationship and the protected status of religious belief compel me to defend, if not the practice, the freedom that gives rise to it.

That said, Radley does have a point. The pro-choice lobby is pro-abortion. I don't think he means that every pro-choice person is pro-abortion, but that the rhetoric of the activists is. (Just a the rhetoric of the activist pro-life crowd is not actually pro-life -- people in favor of "life" wouldn't condone the murder of abortion doctors.) As for Radley's example regarding the sex, or sexuality, of a child being a factor in abortion, I think the dissonance he's attempting to set up is one of competing protection. If there were a way to accurately forecast (genetically or otherwise) likely sexual preference, and if that became a basis for abortion, what would the pro-choice activists say? Would they advocate such a practice? At that point we re-enter the territory of the original pro-choice movement: the eugenics ideals of Margaret Sanger and her ilk: racist stuff based on a misapprehension of Darwin, all of it explicitly advocating limited reproductive rights. Not to say that the reasons for abortion are anyone else's business, and I don't think that's what Radley means, but the reasons can affect the morality of the choice itself. As I've written before, morality is not always a firm grounding for law. But it can be pretty firm ground for morality. And abortion, while legal, may in fact be immoral.