Why are you addressing the posters instead of the subject. Katz is very intelligent and your credentials to put her down are what? Please stop using the personal tactics and try to contribute. Please.

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Admin:

I apologize for the infraction.

End of Discussion? You sound pretty definite about that, but I object to your presumption.

My point of view is also scientific as well as religious. I also think it is scientifically apparent that the baby in the womb is a live human being. I say that from MY "humanist" viewpoint.

Being Christian myself, I've been focusing in illustrating the religious, to attempt to get Christians who are pro-choice to try to visualize themselves as also being pro-murder in the eyes of their avowed faith. No "Christian" has, in fact, responded to this part of my discussion directly. Believe me, I know why, and they know who else also knows why.

You say politicians, but you really mean legislators. It is legislators who make the laws in this society. Except of course in the case of "abortion rights" where the law was improperly made by activist judges, when The Supreme Court invented the right to privacy and applied it to the case of Roe v. Wade.

I understand that. And without getting into the volatile details, there's a long debate about when and how to protect "life" whenever it's "deemed" to have (for lack of a better term) "full governmental protection".

That's one reason I'm more in favor of programs designed to stop unwanted pregnancies before they happen. As I've often said, abortion is the symptom, not the disease. Cure the disease and the symptom goes away.

djplong~ Play along for a few minutes...Say that you demolish buildings and I hire you to demolish one for me. You arrive to demolish it but ask me is there is anyone in that building. I say there might be one person, but I doubt it. I then tell you to just go ahead and do it. Are ya gonna do it?

Straw man argument. Many false preconceptions where the metaphor falls apart.

Nobody has an abortion without knowing they're pregnant (barring something really out of the ordinary like an accident victim in a coma who can't sustain a pregnancy or something like that)

In your metaphor, if you ask me to demolish the building, I'll be checking for myself to see if anyone's in there.

Your argument boils down to "when does life begin", but it's more complex than that. What it REALLY boils down to is "When does constitutionally-protected life begin?"

If you're passing civil laws to control that, then it's all about the Constitution and the law books. If you're talking religion, then that's between you and whichever deity you believe in. And, no, I'm not ignoring the influence that religion has had on civil law. That's the very basis of many of the arguments that go back and forth on this subject.

I don't mean to be sarcastic with this, so I apologize if it sounds that way. But the religious argument is based on a myth that nobody can prove - or, for that matter, disprove in many cases.

Our laws don't stop any religious organization from offering their services to promote adoption - and that's a Good Thing. But sometimes the numbers are overwhelming. The last time I checked, there were over 5,000 kids in the greater Boston area who needed parents. In New York, it was far worse with almost 50,000 (I grant you, this was several years ago). But those were mostly minority kids. The wait time for 'perfect white babies' stretches for years in some places. Heck, some countries had to put curbs on people coming from the US to adopt their orphans to slow it down.

Respectfully, I can't play your game. Your game is rigged for a particular outcome. And I don't mean that in a sarcastic tone - you're trying to use a metaphor to illustrate your side of the debate. I can respect that, and I hope you take this response in the manner I intended.

Kind of defeats the dialog of discussion if that becomes the rules.

If it's just nasty stuff I kind of can see that. But not directing a discussion towards a user is not a discussion at all.

I think Admin means that some people direct the conversation personally to someone without mentioning the subject. There are many posts that try to discredit, harass, belittle, make joke of another poster without discussing the subject matter.

I don't base my opinion on religion. You only assume that because you know me to be a Chrisitan. On this forum, I have addressed the issue of abortion from the scientific standpoint 99.9% of the time. I was a scientist long before a Christian...I base my opinion on scientific fact and definition of life. But that is OK. No offense taken.

Abortion is a tough, highly contested issue.

Here's a story I saw today that will break your heart... It's easy to take a stand with the words we type here, but here's an example of living with your convictions.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/449732.../#.TqBEY3GYlVc

WOW- I am impressed. You just articulated perfectly some things I was trying to say. You did it much better then I could. Thanks!

He has been doing that with class and clarity for years on this site and never partisan.

:super:

I beg to differ. We all have our prejudices.

You're kidding right? You're leaving it to a legislator to tell you when a life begins?; or to put it another way, when you have the right to your life?
This is a very scary argument, in my view.

I'm the one who's been addressing religion in this discussion. I think you've misunderstood the basis of my argument. I am addressing those who already consider themselves to be "children of God" and who profess to be Christian by accepting Christ as their savior.

Those who fit that description and who also support or advocate a "women's right to choose", or in other words a women's right to kill the life growing inside of her, have to accept the hypocrisy of this in light of their "faith" which prohibits this act under penalty of eternal damnation.

If religion is a "myth" to you, then I am not addressing this to you.