Excellent and throughtprovoking post from you, as ever. It makes me think, but even so I have disagreements.

re: #164 Kenneth

In fact there is a very small minority of people, extremists for sure. who are pro-abortion. No, they are not representative of the pro-choice camp, but they do exist.

Who? In the US? ? ?
I’ve volunteered for a bunch of places in the US that support a woman’s right to choose. I haven’t met anyone who is “pro-abortion”.

Abortion is a painful, morally fraught, difficult decision to make, no matter how pro-choice a woman may be.

I am all for that. Hillary Clinton stated her position on abortion as “ideally it should be legal, medically safe, a woman’s choice, and extremely rare.”

Frankly I think that captures the pro-choice position.

As you point out, the anti-abortion side tends to be anti-contraception. However, the pro-choice side ignores the fact that about 70% of abortions are performed for reasons of birth control.

Whoa whoa whoa. Define “reasons of birth control”. Do you just mean ‘elective abortion’, as in, ‘the condom broke and I’m not ready to have a baby?’

If the right would like to reduce surgical abortions performed at 6 weeks and up for THAT reason— they should make emergency contraception/ the morning after pill available in the US to everyone at every drugstore, without a prescription, the way it has been in Europe for YEARS.

That’s a concrete way to reduce elective abortion. So why has the right been so persistent in blocking it?

And that issue Obama so artlessly dodged in the election campaing? It’s a medical fact, human life does indeed begin at conception.

1) it is not a medical fact that life begins at conception. Define ‘life’, define ‘conception’, and then we’ll really get going.

2) Obama was artful, modest, and selfdeprecating in asserting that the question of when life begins is “above his pay grade”.
He was saying that it’s a question for ethicists, philosophers, theologians, and ultimately God (if one believes in God).
he was asserting a fundamental American principle, actually— it’s not the job of the state to issue moral or religious pronouncments, nor to interfere in the personal or private lives of citizens.

Well, my opinions anyway, Have at it!
Always a pleasure—
cheers
iceweasel