Monday, February 19, 2007

Here we go again...

The General depicts two quotes from John McCain.








Is there a better illustration of McCain as a political whore?


I have continually taken the position that the United States Supreme Court decision known as Roe v. Wade is an example of the highest order of judicial wisdom. Would that all the court's work be of that Solomonic caliber.

People who rant about abortion killing babies forget, or intentionally overlook, one important detail of the abortion debate. We do not agree upon the moment when a human life begins.

This is a really really big deal!

The answer tends to come from religious views rather than any scientific analysis. And yes, I do place a Scientific determination above religious dogma. Most sane people do.

To recap what I have said previously, there are two main viewpoints on the moment of humanity, conception and birth, but there are also many more perfectly valid concepts of that moment upon which a human sperm, egg, zygote, blastocyst, fetus, baby, becomes a human. varying all the way from Primitive tribes who refused to recognize arrival until adulthood, and what I think of as the "catholic" position, which holds the egg and sperm to be holy life, regardless of the millions of both that are wasted in the normal human reproductive lifespan.

Societies in which infant mortallity is high cannot invest the emotion into the loss of an infant that they would invest in the death of a young adult. Similarly, in modern societies, the loss of an early pregnancy is treated with far less emotion than the loss of a fetus at near full term. This was the sound basis for the Roe v Wade decision.

We simply do not know the instant in time when a fetus has progressed far enough through the biologocal processess to become a human. We do know that it is sometime after the instant of conception and before the instant of birth, Although, in fact, neither conception nor birth has a definable instant.

The Supreme Court owned up to this great division in American thought, though I personally believe that one side of this debate does not think very deeply, nor does it consider the other side's right to its contradictory position. Understanding that, ultimately, the Court has the duty to protect the life of a citizen, but must also protect the citizen from the unwarranted intrusion of other citizen's religious views.

Therefore the Supreme Court issued the decree that they would divide pregnancy into three trimesters and that during the first trimester, the government had no business intruding upon what must be a personal decision because the fetus is not viable outside of its mother's womb. With each passing day during the second trimester, the fetus approaches viabilty so there are some restrictions on abortion involving the decision of a doctor, and in the last three months, since the fetus becomes viable outside its mother at some point during this period, there will be stringent restrictions involving the health of the mother, who, as a citizen with acknowleged fulll rights dictated by the Constitution, would be awarded precedence in the decision as to whose life and health takes precedence in the case of a decision being required in a medical either or situation.

John McCain knows he cannot win the presidency without the votes of the religious right. He is looking for a way to build a coalition of the corporatists, the war hawks, homophobes, the racially predjudiced, and those who would force their own personal religious beliefs on others.

I hope he fails miserably.

Peace,

Steve

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous7:57 PM

    I'd also like to add that, with current cloning technology, "conception" is inherent in every cell of the human body. So every time a preacher scratches his nose or showers, hundreds of potentially viable human lives are being destroyed, thereby making that individual a "baby killer" in the eyes of his/her God.

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