The preamble makes definitions describing specific and rather ghastly details in order to elicit an emotional response and to create an environment in which opposition would be deplorable, but then loosens the definition once the prohibition (the law) is described.

The definition used in the prohibition can be applied to ANY vaginal abortion.

Any discussion that is to be taken seriously must address the prohibition as it is written. Anything else is fodder for headline surfers.

here

I know a LOT of folks hate Michael Moore, but didn’t he address this in a movie? Didn’t he read one from an ice cream truck? Granted, his tactic may have been goofy to his opponents, but the point was well taken. I thought.

I believe that the question about abortion is about preserving a woman’s right to safely obtain a medical procedure. I believe that legal abortions save lives. But damn, are we saying that one person’s convenience is worth more than the life she may carry? Is that life only as valuable as the carrier makes it?

I don’t want to start a firestorm here, but I have to say that since Kerry and I became parents, the abortion issue has not been the political litmus test for a candidate that it once had been for us. I’d sooner take a pro-environment political moderate who supports education but opposes abortion than a pro-choice libertarian who thinks that women should be free to make such choices, that we should have unfettered access to guns and recreational drugs, and we should let a free market handle our environmental issues.

I do not think that abortions should be performed in the 3rd trimester (unless for some reason the baby is very sick and is killing the mother.) The thing is, there are circumstances that are specific to each and every individual so it frightens me to think that they might pass a law saying there is no longer a choice whatsoever no matter what the circumstances.

People forget that not all abortions are done because some woman went out, got drunk one night, had unprotective sex and clumsily got knocked up. (Not that I’m passing judgment on that woman, either). Many abortions are deemed necessary both physically and mentally for the mother. People don’t think about that. I know one woman was pregnant with a baby boy and found out after 22 weeks that his heart hadn’t formed and that he had zero chances of living outside the womb. They terminated the pregnancy. Can you imagine having to go through an entire pregnancy when you know that the baby isn’t going to live? Physically, that’s trying, but mentally? I would never, ever recover.

Anyway, bottom line, me, personally, I would probably never have an abortion unless there were something wrong with my baby. I am a big advocate of safe sex. Period. But I do not think the government has any right to say that a woman can not make her own choice. It scares me knowing that they might do this. It scares me we might live in a world where women aren’t given options.