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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (88160)	11/6/2004 10:00:37 PM
From: Sidney Reilly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

You said Sidney, but E was the one who wrote that line you responded to.

To: Grainne who wrote (88160)	11/7/2004 1:32:17 PM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

////"Oh yes, and many of them support Bush specifically because he believes in mandatory gestation of zygotes to term." Now see, Sidney, [you mean't E!] I know you mean well in this post, but this kind of statement is what I think gets liberals in trouble sometimes by polarizing things needlessly.///// I think we've talked about this in the past. I'm was in fact addressing specifically those who really and truly, literally, believe not that late term abortion is infanticide (I have since my earliest post on the subject agreed with them), but those who believe the "morning after pill" -- is murder, and believe, literally, in what I said -- manadatory gestation of zygotes to term for American citizens. Really, they do! I don't recall you believing that a fertilized egg was a "baby," as opposed to a blueprint for a person, and I've argued the point frequently enough on SI so that I'll just tell you that my usual responses are to point out that the word "potential" has a meaning: a blueprint isn't a house, a scrambled egg isn't a roast chicken, a fertilized cell, or a cluster of undifferentiated cells, have to do more than "grow" to become a baby. They have to change in kind to become one. I think most people know this intuitively, because when they learn that close to half the eggs that are fertilized just slough out naturally, they don't think if it as mass baby-deaths and mourn, and as far as I know, nobody is proposing a study to stop these nightmarish baby-deaths that occur with menstruation. If you lose a very early pregnancy, and you very much hoped for a baby, you feel very bad when that blood clot with some fatty or gristly tissue in it is expelled. I know this from experience. But I never for a moment equated my experience with that of parents whose stillborn child is placed unbreathing in their arms. Maybe this is terminology. I suspect it is, since you defend the right of a woman not to be forced to carry a zygote to term or be called a murderer. I've been called a murderer on SI a number of times because I advocate the right of a woman to choose abortion. The 26 weeks of Roe v Wade was a huge moral mistake. Drawing lines is hard, of course. A person may die in the electric chair or the front lines of battle because his birthday wasn't a day later than it was. We humans should do the best we can to draw the lines in a humane way, because we have only ourselves to make the world a kinder place. The uncomfortable fact is that there are individuals who advocate making mandatory the gestation by American women of zygotes and embryos. IMO, pointing that out is right, not wrong. We have a U.S. Senator now who doesn't believe in abortion under any circumstances, don't we? And who advocates capital punishment for doctors? I saw Chris Matthews interview a man associated with the right-to-life movement, and he asked the man why the doctor should be prosecuted, iho, and not the woman. His answer was first to dance around about counseling the woman, then, pushed, to admit his position was that you start where you can. I regret it if anyone who does not advocate mandatory gestation of zygotes to term thought I was using that description for them. I wasn't. I was using it only for those who do! Personally, I think there is an argument to be made for abortion in the first trimester, because if a woman does not want a baby it is more likely to be neglected and abused, and that is hideous psychic pain that a child never really fully recovers from. I used to work at the St. _____ Home for Dependent and Neglected Children. I could tell you stories of abuse and neglect and exploitation of children that would make you feel faint. And 7 or 8 damaged, so badly damaged, children of the same family would pass through. I would add to your argument for early abortion that the proscription of abortion was only ever, in the real world, for those women who couldn't afford to go elsewhere for one, or to pay a doctor, if they could find one nearby. The legislators sent their wives, daughters, girlfriends, to where they could get safe legal abortions. And then of course there were the deaths from illegal or self-induced ones. So proscription would again only be for the poor. It's inevitable.