Bill Clinton Snaps at Pro-Life Students

Thanks to Students for Life of America for making me aware of this video. A group of over 100 pro-life students attended a Clinton rally in Steubenville, OH last night. The above is what happened when one of them interrupted and asked about his support of abortion on demand.

“I gave you the answer. We disagree with you," Clinton said. "You wanna criminalize women and their doctors and we disagree... I reduced abortion… Tell the truth, tell the truth… If you were really pro-life, if you were really pro-life, you would want to put every doctor and every mother as an accessory to murder in prison. And you won’t say you wanna do that because you know that because you know that you wouldn't have a lick of political support. Now, the issue is who … the issue is, you can't name me anybody presently in politics that did more to introduce policies that reduce the number of real abortions instead of the hot air putting out to tear people up and make votes by dividing America."

“This is not your rally. I heard you. That's another thing you need is a president, somebody who will stick up for individual rights and not be pushed around, and she won't."

Technorati Tags: abortion pro-life pro-choice pro-abortion Bill Clinton Hillary Clinton

Infanticide by Any Other Name

Scott Klusendorf shares his strategic response to the charge that the pro-life description of partial birth abortion is misleading, extremist rhetoric:

When critics call our descriptions of partial-birth abortion extreme, I first ask them to describe the procedure:


"Obviously, you must be an expert on partial-birth abortion to call my description medically inaccurate and extreme. So here is your chance to set the record straight. Why don’t you explain the procedure so those listening can hear for themselves where my description is extreme?"

Once the question is put like that, the game is up. Without exception, my critic either 1) doesn't know the specifics of the procedure, or 2) knows full well the specifics, but tries to dodge the question.

Read the whole thing to find out how he develops his argument.

Pro-Life Training from STR: Making Abortion Unthinkable

Minutes ago I received an email from a woman in our church who volunteers at a crisis pregnancy center inviting our pastoral staff to tour the facility. In my reply I alerted her to the following offer from my friends at Stand to Reason (though I'm embarrassed it took her email to make me think of it) so I thought I'd let others who may not have heard about it know as well.

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Cutting Through A Teen's Moral Fog

It's been a while since I've posted a log from my archive of online exchanges. Here's one from a young person (whose screen name I've changed) who used to frequent an atheist chat room. It was obvious from interacting with her over time that she was confused about what she believed about life and was hoping that being a regular in the atheist chat would help her figure things out.

I wonder how many thousands of American teens she represents - both outside and within the church. Concerning the latter, I wonder if much has changed since Francis Schaeffer penned the following assessment of the evangelical church over thirty years ago in The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century:

We already are, of course, losing many of our young people, losing them on every side. It would be impossible to say how many have come to L'Abri from Christian backgrounds. And these young people have said, "You are our last hope." Why? Because they are smart enough to know that they have been given no answers. They have simply been told to believe. Doctrines have been given them without relating them to the hard, hard problems which these young people are facing. Those who come to us and say something of the nature that we are their last hope usually then speak of two things which discouraged them. First, they have not been given reasonable answers to reasonable questions. Second, they have not seen beauty in the Christian group they were in. The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, Vol. 4, pp. 69-70.

YMIHere: Did you ever read any Carl Sagan?

KP: Yes, only a little. I've heard and seen him on television too.

YMIHere: He was in the Catholic newspaper my parents get, it was an argument whether he claimed God existed or not before he died. I don't like the newspaper, it's not the most tolerant paper I've read. It tells you what movies you should be allowed to watch! I think that's sort of weird.

KP: I doubt that that newspaper tells you what movies you should be allowed to watch. It probably reviews movies based on their moral content and makes recommendations based on that. And speaking of tolerance..you don't sound very tolerant of that paper and its views. ;-)

YMIHere: Well, it's really weird. It has these lists of movies and says which ones are ok for Catholics. I mean, they gave the movie "Clueless" a bad grade or whatever. They said it was indecent. It was a pg-13 movie for kids! lol, I am tolerant, i just don't agree with what they say. I try to have tolerance for the Catholic religion, but I think it's not really good for people. I was taught the strangest things in Catholic school.

KP: Why is it that if you don't agree with what they say and how they think, it's just a disagreement but if they don't agree with the contents of particular movies they're intolerant? What kind of strange things were you taught in Catholic school?

YMIHere: I don't know, that paper just makes me angry and I don't know why. Christian sexual education was taught, and I never agreed with any of it. Also, the pro-life stand that Catholics take on abortion.

KP: And why is that strange?

Tulipstem: Like a religion should tell women they don't have a right to choose to have a baby or not. That's just strange. And I never understood why people would want to do that. And Christian sexuality was against sex before marriage which was very confusing. I think it just confuses kids.

KP: The real issue isn't one of women's rights at all. The real issue is whether or not one can take the life of another innocent being. To make women's right the focal point is mistaken. Christians believe that sex is to be reserved for a monogamous, life-long marital commitment. What's so confusing about that?

YMIHere: What do you mean? She's the mother. It 's her right to take the life (if you think it is a life at all).

KP: Oh, so her being the mother gives her the right to take the life? On those grounds, then your mother has the right to kill you anytime she wants, right? After all, she IS your mother.

YMIHere: No. People who recognize that the baby is not life until a certain period of time believe in the right to abort a child. This, I guess, has to do with when the law recognizes a baby as being officially life. I haven't decided when I think this is but I have no problem with abortion being legal. My mother can't legally take my life. There's the whole legal difference.

KP: So whatever is legal is morally right?

YMIHere: No. It's acceptable.

KP: Well, the abortion debate isn't over what is acceptable, is it? I thought it was over what is morally right. In some South American countries it is both legal and acceptable for men to beat their wives. A few hundred years ago it was both legal and acceptable to own slaves and to treat them as property.

YMIHere: I don't know. I don't spend much time debating abortion. Yes. It's also legal in Peru for women to be forced to marry men who raped them and the men won't be charged with the crime. Sick, but it's how some cultures live. Things changed for the better, didn't they?

KP: In Hitler's Germany it was both legal and acceptable to kill Jews.

YMIHere: Yes. And things changed. It makes you think "what a screwed up" world.

KP: Is all you care about what is acceptable in the eyes of the majority? If morals are relative as you say they are, then one can't say that things changed for the "better." One can only say that things changed. "Better" implies some fixed and objective standard of what is good or right. Of course, you can say that things changed for the better in a very subjective sense - meaning that they changed to suit your personal preference.

YMIHere: Yes, if I lived in a society, I would live by the accepted rules. If it was Nazi Germany and I didn't agree with their society, what am I supposed to do? The Germans went by Hitler's society, as messed up as it was, because they had no choice. It's really depressing, but that's the way it is sometimes. I have to live by America's society and so do you.

KP: Well, I'm glad that not all had your compliant attitude. Otherwise, we might still be enslaving Blacks in this country.

YMIHere: And who changed things? The society itself?

KP: People within the society who were convinced that the law was wrong. The Abolitionists, for example, in the case of slavery. But according to what you're saying, one should never oppose the prevailing idea of what is "acceptable" and therefore social reform becomes impossible.

YMIHere: I don't agree. Societies can change what is acceptable in a society. Look at America, that's what politics is about. Sometimes the country goes through conservative periods (the Reagan era) but things change and the majority of people just go along with it.

KP: Furthermore, according to what you've said, there can never be such a thing as an unjust law since what is legal is all that matters. Since you do not hold to any moral order above human legislation, you have nothing to appeal to in order to make a judgment that a law is just or immoral.

YMIHere: I have a question. Do morals matter that much? What happens when there are no morals? What happens to people and society?

KP: Of course morals matter. Without them, chaos results.

YMIHere: how do you know this? Can I have an example?

KP: If there is no moral authority and therefore no accountability to anyone other than the person or group with the most power, then all sorts of atrocities can take place such as Hitler's Germany, Stalin and Lenin, and the late Romanian leader whose name I can't spell.

YMIHere: Hitler had no morals? No morals whatsoever? He wanted a society without morals?

KP: No, that's not what I meant. Of course no one is devoid of a moral system or a system of values. The real issue is what that system is based on. For example, it could be that my moral system is that anything that deprives me of pleasure is wrong and anything that gives me pleasure is right. If everyone operated accordingly, what would the shape of society be?

YMIHere: So what moral system should everything be based on?

KP: Our moral system should reflect the revealed character of God. He is the transcendent and absolute measure of what is objectively good and evil.

YMIHere: ok.

KP: I'd love to continue this but I have to get going. If you'd like, we can pick this back up when next we're on.

YMIHere: OK. I'd like to continue too. Bye.

What's the Difference Between Breast Reduction and Abortion?

Melinda Penner asks, illustrating the illogic of "pro-choice" reasoning.

A Very Brief Chat About the Nature of Rights and Humans

Reject the idea of transcendent, knowable moral truth and you must conclude that all moral judgments are simply expressions of personal or group preference. If the latter, then laws are merely codifications of the majority's tastes. Whatever is legal, according to this line of thinking, is right. Many abortion rights proponents, for example, quickly appeal to the legality of abortion as though that settles any dispute about the rightness or wrongness of the act.

Regardless of how vociferously one might espouse such a view, he or she is bound to betray it at some point. Inconsistency will rear its head somewhere if you patiently wait and attentively watch for it. The relativist will express disdain for laws he or she deems unjust or, as in the following brief exchange, will appeal to rights that exist independently of the law which naturally raises the question of their origin.

KP: Hello, PT. Mind if I ask a question?

PT: It depends on the nature of the question, but.... go ahead

KP: OK, thanks. Here's the question. Do you think that homosexuals have the right to same-sex marriages along with all of the benefits of marriage?

PT: I certainly do. I see no reason to deny them that.

KP: So you believe that some people have rights that the law doesn't acknowledge?

PT: Key word there: PEOPLE. I know JUST where you're going with this, and i don't acknowledge that a zef is a person.

KP: Fine. But as to my question, is your answer yes or no?

PT: in the context of MY definition of people, yes. I think the law does not acknowledge the rights of certain groups of people.

KP: So rights are not necessarily dependent upon legislation?

PT: Rights of PEOPLE shouldn't be, no.

KP: And if there are certain human rights that are not acknowledged by the law, do you think it's at all possible that there are certain human beings whose humanity the law doesn't acknowledge? What I'm asking is, does one's being a person/human being depend upon the law's recognizing him as such?

PT: The law recognizes homosexuals as people, it simply doesn't recognize their right to marry becuse of their sexual preferences.

KP: That's not an answer to my question though.

PT: It's the answer I'm giving you. It may not be the answer YOU want, but it IS my answer.

KP: If certain rights are not dependent upon legislation for their existence, why would anyone think that whether or not one is a human being is dependent upon the law?

Barack Obama on Religion and Politics

Illinois State Senator Barack Obama (D) recently delivered the keynote address at a conference sponsored by Call to Renewal, a faith-based movement to overcome poverty in America. He candidly expressed his wrestling with the relationship between his politics and his professed Christian faith, including internal turmoil stirred by Alan Keyes's claim toward the end of his 2004 campaign that Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama:

Now, I was urged by some of my liberal supporters not to take this statement seriously, to essentially ignore it. To them, Mr. Keyes was an extremist, and his arguments not worth entertaining. And since at the time, I was up 40 points in the polls, it probably wasn't a bad piece of strategic advice.

But what they didn't understand, however, was that I had to take Mr. Keyes seriously, for he claimed to speak for my religion, and my God. He claimed knowledge of certain truths.

Mr. Obama says he's a Christian, he was saying, and yet he supports a lifestyle that the Bible calls an abomination.

Mr. Obama says he's a Christian, but supports the destruction of innocent and sacred life.

And so what would my supporters have me say? How should I respond? Should I say that a literalist reading of the Bible was folly? Should I say that Mr. Keyes, who is a Roman Catholic, should ignore the teachings of the Pope?

Unwilling to go there, I answered with what has come to be the typically liberal response in such debates - namely, I said that we live in a pluralistic society, that I can't impose my own religious views on another, that I was running to be the U.S. Senator of Illinois and not the Minister of Illinois.

But Mr. Keyes's implicit accusation that I was not a true Christian nagged at me, and I was also aware that my answer did not adequately address the role my faith has in guiding my own values and my own beliefs.

From his address, it seems that Senator Obama's is relativistic when it comes to religious claims. All are valuable and valid to the extent that they offer their adherents community, meaning, and moral guidance. I'm pretty sure that the senator would be quick to add "for me" to any assertion he made about Christianity being true. Nevertheless, his address raises critical issues about how we engage in moral discourse in a pluralistic society and why the demand that religious beliefs be excluded from those conversations is historically unprecedented and practically impossible:

But what I am suggesting is this - secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Senator Obama has always struck me as a reflective, intelligent, and judicious man. I'm glad he's thinking and talking about these matters and hope he will continue to do so.

UPDATE 6/30/06: Al Mohler identifies an internal contradiction in Senator Obama's position in his post Secularism With A Smile.

Poli Psych

Glenn (Instapundit.com) and Dr. Helen Reynolds recently talked to Dr. Nicholas Cummings about the politicization of psychology (HT: Stones Cry Out). Here's their summary:

Is psychology over-politicized? We interview Dr. Nicholas Cummings, a past President of the American Psychological Association, and coauthor of Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well-Intentioned Path to Harm, about the injection of politics into mental health in general, and the American Psychological Association in particular. Plus, why men are disappearing from the psychological profession.
You can listen to the podcast directly (no iPod needed!) by clicking right here, or you can get it via iTunes right here.

I blogged about the book here and here. Tom Gilson at Thinking Christian has also written about how a liberal political ideology, rather than sound research, appears to be driving the APA's stance on abortion and homosexual marriage.

Planned Parenthood's Pro-Choice Bible Study

Planned Parenthood posted an article by one of the members of its Clergy Advisory Board about the Bible's silence on abortion. Rabbi Dennis Ross, director of Concerned Clergy for Choice maintains that since neither the Hebrew Scriptures nor the New Testament makes explicit reference to the procedure, a biblical case cannot be made against it:

People who want to make abortion illegal may attempt to use the Bible to justify their arguments. However, nothing in the Hebrew Scriptures and nothing in the New Testament supports their attempts, regardless of the passages they cite or how hard they argue. Scripture does not consider the fetus to be a human being. The Bible does not consider the destruction of a fetus to be the equivalent of murder. If the Bible thought abortion was a sin, it would have named it a sin. Instead, when it comes to abortion, the Bible says not a word.

He notes that while the first five books of the Hebrew Bible have much to say about sexuality and reproduction, they are "totally silent about abortion."

Rabbi Ross's argument assumes that only those actions specifically mentioned and identified as sin by the biblical texts are divinely prohibited. But applying this principle consistently leads to conclusions that I doubt Rabbi Ross would be willing to adopt or endorse. For example, to the best of my knowledge there are no prohibitions against having sex with infants or toddlers. From this are we to conclude that God is indifferent toward such violence and that whether or not to practice such is a matter of choice? I see no other alternative if we are to adopt the rabbi's line of reasoning. If sexually abusing children were a sin, the Bible would have explicitly named it so, right?

The weight of Rabbi Ross's argument is given to denying the humanity of the unborn child. For biblical support he turns to Exodus 21: 22-25 (not Exodus 22 as appears in the article). This passage legislates what was to happen to a man who struck a pregnant woman while fighting with another male. The Hebrew text says that if the woman's children "come out" and there is no harm, the offending party should pay a fine as determined by her husband. In the event that there is harm, the law of retaliation is to take effect. The man responsible for the injury or death is to receive as his penalty the same degree of harm that he has inflicted.

Without offering any detailed exegesis of this greatly disputed passage, Rabbi Ross offers the following interpretation:

If the woman is injured, the inadvertent assailant gets punished, receiving the very same wound he caused the woman: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If the woman dies, then it is a life for a life and the man who caused the injury dies. But if the woman miscarries, then the assailant just pays a fine.

From this he concludes:

So, an injury caused to the woman is one thing. The injury to her fetus is not viewed the same way. This same biblical passage does not say that the fetus is a human being like the injured women or like you or me. If the fetus were considered human, the punishment for injuring the fetus would be the same
punishment as that for injuring the pregnant woman.

Rather than simply restating it here, I urge you to read Greg Koukl's excellent commentary, "What Exodus 21:22 Says About Abortion" in which he provides persuasive textual evidence for understanding the "coming out" of the children as a reference to premature birth rather than to miscarriage. If the children were born prematurely and neither they nor the mother suffered harm, a fine was the extent of penalization. However, if injury or death was suffered by either mother or offspring, the same was to be done to the party responsible for the injury.
Greg suggests asking the following three questions of anyone who points to this verse in support of abortion:

• Why presume that the child is dead?
• What in the context implies the death of the child?
• Ancient Hebrew had a specific word for miscarriage. It was used in other passages. Why not here?

I wonder how Rabbi Ross would answer. Perhaps there would be a different kind of silence.
UPDATE: For another thorough refutation of the interpretation offered by Rabbi, see this article by John Piper (HT: Prone to Wander).

Greg Koukl on BAM

OK, I think this is my final media announcement for the day. This from Melinda at STR's Blog:

Scott Klusendorf is sick, so Greg will pinch hit for him on The Bible Answer Man today and tomorrow discussing abortion and Roe v. Wade. You can also catch it on-line at OnePlace.com. Greg and Scott provide excellent pro-life training in STR's resource "Making Abortion Unthinkable: The Art of Pro-life Persuaion."

We've used "Making Abortion Unthinkable" at our church and I can attest to its excellence.

Al Franken the Originalist?

I woke up from dozing in my living room chair just long enough to catch Al Franken on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night. When Leno asked his thoughts about Supreme Court Justice nominee Samuel Alito, Franken replied that he has some "scary" ideas like that of a woman having to inform her husband before having an abortion. He also said that Alito believes in "the right to bear machine guns," adding that he doubts the framers of the Constitution ever envisioned anything like that. I wonder what he thinks they envisioned about a mother having the state-protected right to kill her unborn child.

Bad Press for Planned Parenthood

Peggy Jo Connor allegedly beat her pregnant friend and neighbor with a baseball bat, led her into a wooded area, and sliced her abdomen open in an attempt to steal her unborn child. When I learned of this grizzly crime on this morning's Good Morning America, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the text at the bottom of the screen read something along the lines of "Woman Tries to Steal Unborn Baby" (emphasis mine). I've come to expect network coverage of such stories to refer to the unborn as a fetus so as to avoid personalizing and humanizing him or her but that wasn't the case here and I was glad.

Curious, I decided to search Google's news engine for the accused's name to see how other news sources were describing the crime. I was further surprised to find that most of them also referred to the life in the mother's womb as either a baby or a child.  Just for the heck of it I decided to search for the phrase "unborn baby" at Planned Parenthood's site. The sole result was a letter from Planned Parenthood to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt objecting to the content of a HHS website including its allegedly "anti-choice" language. Among PP's complaints:

In its definition of menstruation, the website states that "if the egg is fertilized, this lining will nourish and protect the unborn child." "Unborn child" is not medically correct language; embryo or fetus would be accurate.

The website defines abortion as "ending a pregnancy before a live birth occurs by removing the fetus or unborn baby from the uterus." Again, there is an agenda inherent in the language used.

Understand that Planned Parenthood is simply seeking to be neutral and unbiased in their insistence upon the use "medically correct language." Planned Parenthood would have us believe that "unborn child" and "fetus" are mutually exclusive categories which is as inane as claiming that it's incorrect to refer to an octogenarian as an adult. I wonder if Planned Parenthood would object to calling unborn humans "offspring." That is, after all, the meaning of the Latin word from which the English word "fetus" is derived.

Good Question

From Opinion Journal's "Best of the Web":

It seems songstress Britney Spears is pregnant. Well, hooray for her. We just have one question: How come news reports refer to her baby, whereas if she were Jane Doe it would be her fetus?

Relativism, Rights, and Roe - Oh, My!

One of the fortunate outcomes of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's election as Pope is the airtime that the subject of moral relativism is receiving. His comments about our moving toward "a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires" set off a firestorm of media conversation about, of all things, philosophy. Shortly after the announcement that Cardinal Ratzinger had been selected as John Paul II's successor, Chris Wallace of Fox News, referring to the cardinal's pre-conclave homily noted that relativism isn't a topic that's discussed much in the news and then asked one of his guests, a Roman Catholic priest, what relativism is.

As expected, a lot of the talk about the new Pope's deep convictions about the reality of objective moral truths has to do with the impact this is likely to have on American politics, especially the debates over life issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and embryonic stem cell research.

Adherents to moral relativism like to present themselves as objective and neutral, free from the rigidity that afflicts absolutists. However, relativists are in actuality ardent absolutists who at some point inevitably undermine their profession that all beliefs about what is right and wrong are either personally or socially constructed. This is inconsistent, however, with the belief that individuals have rights that should not be infringed upon by others. To get around this difficulty, many pro-choicers will try to ground a woman's "right" to abort in the fact that it is legal. But press harder and you'll find that they don't really believe that this alleged right is conferred by the state. Ask if Roe v. Wade were overturned whether they would consider that a violation of a woman's rights and honest proponents will answer affirmatively. The problem for them is that such a response reveals that they believe in some objective standard that transcends the law of the land, a belief completely incompatible with a relativistic worldview. William Watkins makes this point in his book The New Absolutes:

Human rights belong to the world of absolutists, not relativists (although absolutists would readily grant that even relativists have human rights whether they believed in them or not). True relativists cannot appeal to human rights. At best, they must try to ground their rights beliefs in culture or the individual, but even then the best they can do is say rights are conventional - we simply decide what we will consider a right, then agree to act accordingly. If we change our mind about that right being a right, then it will not be a right any longer. (p. 41)

What follows is an online dialogue with an abortion rights activist whom I've chosen to call PC (for either Pro-Choice or Politically Correct) that illustrates some of the problems mentioned above. My initial question was in response to the frequently heard claim that abortions are justified in order to prevent unwanted children.

KP: Do you think we should exterminate other unwanted human life as well?

PC: First, abortion, according to the law of the land, is not murder.

KP: You didn't really answer my question. If someone's being unwanted is justification for ending his life, then why should this just be the case with preborn human life?

PC: Because after they are born it's murder. And need I remind you that most people in prison, and ALL the mass murderers were unwanted and/or unloved children?

KP: You seem to be assuming that whatever is legislated is morally right. Am I correct?

PC: Not always. But to approach this from a different angle...are you saying that women are not smart enough to make the right decision on this topic?

KP: I'm saying nothing of the sort. I'm saying that the taking of innocent human life is wrong and should not be allowed in the name of allowing an individual to exercise choice.

PC: That is your opinion and your perception. That is fine. I honor that. Why can't you honor a difference of opinion? Outlawing this would be invoking your opinion on millions of women.

KP: And legalizing it is invoking death on millions of human lives. And let's be honest. You don't really "honor" my opinion. You think it's wrong just as I think yours is. Do you think that we should make taking all life legal and justify it by saying "Well, people are smart enough to make their own decision about these things?"

PC: No, you are wrong. I believe that you do have the right to your opinion. Personally, I disagree, but, I don't think it is wrong. By having a choice though, you can exercise your rights. If your choice becomes the law of the land, though, people lose those choices

KP: Do we have the right to choose to do whatever we want regardless of its impact on others? (And how, exactly, does one disagree with a position and not think it's wrong?)

PC: No..absolutely not

KP: So the right to choose should only be protected in cases where choice does not infringe on the life and welfare of others?

PC: Infringing on whom? Are you gonna take all those kids? Probably not. But you, as a taxpaying member of society, will pay for the results.

KP: You didn't answer my previous question. How would you feel about our making the taking of all life legal on the grounds that we believe that people are smart enough to make the right decisions concerning which lives to take? And are you suggesting that anyone that I'm not willing to care for can be killed?

PC: I believe I did answer it. And don't we already do that with the death penalty?

KP: You see, whether or not I'm willing to take all the kids is really immaterial to the issue of whether killing them is morally justified. How would you feel about our making the taking of all life legal on the grounds that we believe that people are smart enough to make the right decisions concerning which lives to take?

PC: No, it isn't immaterial. You outlaw abortions, you have to find something to do with those children unwanted by the birth mother. And adoption is not an option in many cases...especially non-whites

KP: So again we're back to saying that what determines whether a life should be protected is whether or not it's wanted by someone else? What if I should cease wanting my own born children? Can I kill them?

PC: I would not be in favor of it. That would be murder. But, once again, it has been determined that the aborted fetus is not a life.

KP: What's the difference between a preborn and a born human life? Are you denying that the fetus has a distinct genetic identity and is alive?

PC: I am neither a Supreme Court judge nor an attorney in the Roe v. Wade decision.

KP: So you don't know whether the fetus has a unique genetic code, distinct from that of its mother and whether it is alive? If it is not a human being, what kind of being do you say it is?

PC: Look...you have your right to do what you can within the law to change the law. I have to right to oppose you. But you don't see any pro choice people bombing Right to Life rallies, do you?

KP: I don't advocate such violence. Immaterial to the topic at hand. Now, if the fetus is not a human being, what kind of being is it? And no, you haven't advocated violence. It's just a shame so many in your cause have.

PC: No, it is material. What we are talking about here is rescinding someone's right to make a decision concerning their body.

KP: Oh, but they're not just making a decision about their body. They're making a decision to terminate the life of a body not their own. So, if the fetus is not a human being, what kind of being do you suggest it is?

PC: If it cannot survive independent of that body, than it IS their body. I don't make that leap.

KP: You're wrong. The fetus does not have the same genetic constitution as the mother. He or she has a unique genetic identity.

PC: Being an arts and humanities graduate, I avoid the science aspect of it. Ok, so does a cancer, cyst and mole.

KP: You avoid the science aspect of it? How can you say that it is permissible to kill something without dealing with what it is? And, BTW, a mole does not have a distinct genetic identity from the rest of one's bodily cells.

PC: Do you really think you will make a convert of me?

KP: No. It's obvious that you don't really care about the facts. I was just hoping that you'd be honest with the weakness of your position.

PC: Try on this fact: it is currently legal. Try this one: the majority of Americans want the right to choose. Another fact: it is within your rights to try to change it. And it is within my rights to try to stop you.

KP: Are you saying that whatever is legal OUGHT to be?

PC: You discount any contrary opinion as "not being honest"

KP: No, I don't. I find it odd that one would admit that he doesn't involve himself in the scientific question of what the fetus is before condoning its killing.

PC: There are laws I disagree with. I have the right to try to change them. This is not one of them

KP: But does the fact that something is legal mean that it is necessarily right?

PC: At that point, it becomes an issue of personal opinion..i.e. prohibition

KP: So the fact that abortion is legal doesn't necessarily mean that it is morally justified, does it?

PC: By it being a legal option it becomes a personal decision. It is an individual moral choice.

KP: So, when slavery was legal, for example, it was simply a matter of personal choice?

PC: Outlawing it would impose one groups definition of "moral choice" on the entire nation.

KP: And legalizing it is also to impose someone's morality on an entire nation by saying that it is justified to take innocent human life. All legislation imposes someone's moral views.

PC: As a matter of fact, it was a matter of personal choice for those that could own slaves...just like it is for those that are pregnant.

KP: But was it wrong?

PC: You just don't get it. IT IS NOT CONSIDERED A HUMAN LIFE!!!!

KP: What is it?

PC: It is considered a fetus.

KP: To say that it is a fetus is just to speak of one stage in human development. That doesn't mean that it is not a human life. Is the fetus a member of the human species, having the genetic composition essential to humanness?

PC: Can it live independent of the mother?

KP: Answer my question first and I'll answer yours. Is the fetus a member of the human species, having the genetic composition essential to humanness?

PC: Not according to law.

KP: LOL...the law denies that the fetus has human DNA. Please refer me to the books for that one. If it doesn't have the DNA of a human, what species DOES it belong to?

PC: Ok...here's one for you...why does it matter? I assume you make your opinion made known at the ballot box. So do I.

KP: It matters because if it IS a member of the human species and it IS alive (as opposed to dead) then you are defending the right to take its life in the name of choice. Why can't you just answer the question? Do members of the human species procreate and conceive other members of the human species?

PC: I have answered your question..as have the courts. That is why abortions are not allowed after a certain time frame. See you in the ballot box.

KP: No, you haven't answered the question. If you are saying that the fetus is not a HUMAN life, what kind of life is it? Gorilla? Starfish? Border Collie?

PC: Thank you. You have expressed your opinion. That's fine. I have expressed mine. I respect your right to yours, unfortunately, it doesn't appear that you are willing to show any for the other opinion. I suggest you do what you feel you need to do to change the law. I will legally resist you and your closed-minded cohorts. Good night.