Now, don't you agree that limits on abortion are not a matter for medical science?

No. There can be legitimate medical reasons for abortion, but only medical.

For all the wrong reasons, there is a point here. Abortion defies the "reason" and deductive logic of both sides. If you say abortion is murder at any stage, you instantly put yourself outside, not only the mainstream American view, but the attitudes of civilization from the year dot. Buckley wrote a terrific piece on this in the 70's where he mused about Catholic prelates from New York railing against abortion as murder and then happily raising a glass with their political opponents at social funcions. The point was that murder is not a technical issue and we don't break bread with people we truly see as murderers.

The fact is that very few see early abortion as murder or ever have, or are even comfortable seeing it as a public issue. Frankly, most see first trimester abortion as best left to the womenfolk--as long as they don't talk about it

But if you say abortion is just a matter of choice, then ... well, this is brothersjudd and I don't think I need go on.

I would suggest using accepted medical criteria: anyone with a heartbeat and brain waves is presumed alive, since their absence is conclusive medical evidence of death.

The heartbeat can be detected ultrasonicly at 5 weeks, and audibly at from 9-12 weeks. Detectable brainwaves occur in the 9th or 10th week. Thus, this legal definition would prohibit abortion after late in the first trimester.

Not all killings are murder. No one considers killing a person in self defense to be murder. One can make a strong case that in instances of rape, incest and true mortal risk to the mother, an abortion isn't a murder, but something less than murder.

It seems to me that this is the position of the vast majority of the American people and it is also the right view of the issue.

AML:
IIRC, rape, incest, and mortal danger to the mother account for a **very** small number of abortions (something like 1-2%). This means that you would eliminate almost all abortions -- a position supported by a majority, perhaps, but not the 'vast' majority.

The phrase is "justifiable homicide". What is unique about abortion is that in all other cases, there is judicial review either before (executions) or after (self-defense). Considering how judges are on their way to running all aspects of our lives, perhaps the goal should be to make sure that abortion be included.

Medical science has nothing of import to say about abortion policy, or what it should be. Science cannot answer what makes us human or when we become human. Logic pushes us to say that life begins at conception. The policy question then becomes under what circumstances should we allow that human life to be ended. There is no medical reason to terminate pregnancies following rape or incest, nor is it science that would lead us to prefer the mother's life to the child's. There is a line to be drawn here, and it should be drawn by the people, acting through the legislature.

The focus on medical science comes from Roe, in which Justice Blackmun outsourced his decision to the Mayo Clinic. Blackmun was, surprise, wrong about that.

David:

That's just silly. A pregnancy that's likely to end in death or catastrophic damage to both mother and child should obviously be dealt with differently than a normal pregnancy.

I'm not saying it shouldn't. I'm saying that we can't outsource that policy decision to doctors. Roes treats the people as imbeciles who need expert guardians; the fight is to take back the right and duty to make the hard decisions.

But isn't the medical consequence of carrying the fetus to term a necessary component of any policy decision?

No, it is a necessary part of implementation.

David:

"Roes treats the people as imbeciles who need expert guardians; the fight is to take back the right and duty to make the hard decisions."

So how does that not argue for leaving the choice with individual women?

Jeff:

If law were strictly about power, your question would have meaning. But law is about more than power.

Jeff:

It does, in so far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far. There are two seperate questions that get collapsed in the abortion debate: what should the policy be, and who should decide. At the moment, I think the second question is more important, as our current answer is bad theory, contemptuous of democracy and incompatible with our written constitution -- and we can't even begin to discuss the first question until we change the answer to the second question.

Conservatives and libertarians would mostly agree that, if possible, decisions affecting citizens should be left to the citizen or to that level of government closest and most responsive to the citizen. Where libertarians and conservatives differ is in what "possible" means, with libertarians generally understanding it to mean "conceivable" and conservatives meaning "consonent with maintaining a decent society."

So, should citizens be able to decide, with their doctors, to have medical procedures? Yes, and generally speaking the state has no business butting in. But when the procedure effects (that is, ends) another human life and particularly where that human life is unable to choose for itself, the state must get involved. (Though, moving to the question of what the policy should be, it does strike me as odd that we allow the abortion of healthy fetuses, where we might hesitate at the removal of a healthy kidney or the pulling of a healthy tooth.)

Because there is no interest in banning all abortions and a consensus against allowing all abortions, a line must be drawn. Line-drawing is the business of the political branches of government. In our federal system, the proper political branch to draw this line is the state legislature.

How likely, Orrin?

And who do you go to to find that out?

Your theologian?

The citizenry.

David:

Excellent response--thanks. Clearly I take the libertarian view on this, but the conservative position is not without merit.

I'm a citizen, and my opinion on the likelihood of the progress of a pregancy is worth exactly nothing.

"Medical science has nothing of import to say about abortion policy, or what it should be. Science cannot answer what makes us human or when we become human. Logic pushes us to say that life begins at conception. The policy question then becomes under what circumstances should we allow that human life to be ended."

I totally agree with David on this point. Introducing science as a decision criteria avoids the central issue that such a decision is a moral decision.

"Though, moving to the question of what the policy should be, it does strike me as odd that we allow the abortion of healthy fetuses, where we might hesitate at the removal of a healthy kidney or the pulling of a healthy tooth."

This is a good point, and it argues against the contention of choice advocates that it is a decision about what a woman does with her own body. Do women routinely have healthy parts of their own body removed?