re: #595 Danny

I assumed that’s what you were thinking, Throbert, but your wording was off so I tried to clarify it.

Thanks to you (and Charles) for catching me on that — it was very sloppy of me, and all the worse because I had just scolded Charles over “sloppy language.”

And, Charles, getting back to that “just a few cells” phraseology — I don’t believe that an 8-week-old embryo has a soul or that abortion is murder. And I concede that in a loose, figurative way it’s reasonable to describe an 8-week-old embryo as being “just a few (billion) cells”, because it IS so far from being viable in the can-live-outside-the-uterus sense, and even farther from having even the rudiments of human consciousness.

The problem I have with your phrasing is: based on a lot of anecdotal evidence I’ve heard from health care professionals, there ARE some women who DON’T regard abortion as an agonizing, gut-wrenching decision, but who treat it as after-the-fact “contraception,” and end up being repeat customers for abortion providers. And if you make a habit of using rhetoric like “it’s only a clump of cells,” what is left to say to these women (and to the men who get them pregnant)? If it’s “only a few cells,” why NOT use abortion as a convenient back-up plan for each and every “whoopsie!”