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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SecularBull who wrote (206981)	12/4/2001 4:38:29 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

This time you make strong arguments that must be respected. I may disagree with you on conclusions, interpretations, policies, etc., but your arguments are worth considering. I, like you apparently, believe that the legal principle cited by the Supremes in their Roe v. Wade decision was in error. (I happen to believe that a reasonable right to privacy and non-interference from the government can be inferred from our Constitution... but that's a different discussion). Like you I have noticed that Roe v. Wade's emphasis upon the medical certification of 'viability' (roughly dividing into traunches the period of pregnancy, and assigning different legal restrictions - or prohibition of restrictions - to each traunche) means that as medical knowledge advances... and that ill defined period of 'viability' pushes ever earlier... that eventually the Roe v. Wade restrictions against governmental interference in the medical decisions of the mother during the first 'trimester' will be erased altogether. Medical knowledge will inevitably march forward, and with it the ability to nurture life earlier and earlier before it's natural term. Eventually, it will be possible to create new individual life totally outside of the human body (whether through parthogenesis - utilizing an egg cell deprived of it's nucleus to 'revitalize' genetic material donated from male somatic cells.... Or whether it's through what are today relatively commonplace methods such as invitro fertilization), and possible to grow and mature it totally outside the human womb. At that point, the Roe v. Wade strictures are released. Now as to the larger question you raise, (if I may be permitted to paraphrase): "When is a new human life (fertilized egg, zygote, fetus, etc.) to be accorded Constitution protection as a unique human individual?" I admit that I don't have any magic answer to that question, and I'm open to discussions on the point. I believe though that constitutional protections are likely to lie along a continuum... and not be accorded all in one fell-swoop. Like you however, I also believe that a fertilized egg should have no constitutional protections at all - until it is at least implanted into the mother's womb. As has been pointed out by others, more naturally fertilized eggs normally pass out of the woman's body than ever become successfully implanted in the uterine lining. We certainly can't have the government charging women with crimes every period if they fail to 'implant', or don't get enough sleep, etc. Beyond implantation, and up to natural birth, I'm open to discussions as to what should be the correct balance of rights between the potential new individual, and the woman already accorded with full rights of citizenship. Ethical questions like this frequently turn to religious dogma for answers. And in religious terms, the question before us is "when does the potential new individual get imparted with a soul?" Various religions have had different answers to this question (indeed, many have altered their views on this issue throughout historical periods), and they still do. For roughly 80% of it's entire history, for example, the Catholic church's official opinion was that the soul was imparted to the new individual at birth... and not before. Many so-called 'pagan' religions also believe this. It is not so difficult to find religions within historical times which believed that the soul (and full adult citizenship rights) was imparted to the child only at puberty... or upon some feat of adulthood, some rite of passage. So, I feel comfortable thinking for myself here, and seeking to strike my own balance in the name of freedom and individual rights for adult humans and the as-yet-unborn. I'm open to listen to all other's opinions, but I don't look to others for the answer. As Mark Twain once famously commented: "There's a least a hundred thousand different religions in the world, each claiming that they - and they alone - have the one true way to Heaven. They can't all be correct."