My old home state of SD continues to be in the national forefront. Isn't there a rule that small states are to accept the federal money and shut their pie holes?

It will be a hard stuggle, but winnable, nonetheless. What we must do is craft laws which protect the unborn angaist the claims that "I must kill my child or I'll go crazy," and "If I can't kill my child, I'll hurt myself."

The art is to attack on ground of our choosing, and to force the enemy to defend of ground of our choosing. The statutes must read as though maternal health is carefully protected while defining that health in way which exclude the euphemisms for baby-killings of convenience. Make the enemy defend the indefensible.

Those people will discern this, being evil, and not nececessarily stupid. They will argue this is the media, which is to our benefit, and in the courts, which will not avail them, for we have siezed the courts.

I think that the majority of voters want there to be allowances made for any abortion to protect the health of the mother. If that allowance is abused occasionally, then so be it. As long as the abuse isn't so flagrant as to warrant comtempt for the law most people will let it slide.

Recall the LA Times article last fall about "Dr." Tiller. They wrote about a woman who discovered late in her pregnancy that her child had Down's Syndrome, and since she couldn't imagine raising such a child, her mental health was at risk, justifying her abortion. Of course, when you kill a third-term baby through injecting directly into it whatever nasty things they use, the baby sort of freaks out. And this is sort of traumatic for a mother. So this poor woman essentially now has PTSD and her health is pretty much destroyed. But she probably would have been much worse raising a child with some sort of imperfection...(yes, I know that raising a profoundly handicapped child is Not Easy, but this woman had no idea what level of severity of Down's her baby had).

Paul Weyrich said this weekend that the rumor is that Stevens is so impressed by the quality of Roberts and Alito that he's told the WH he's retiring.

You rumor monger you.

Brandon: The health of the mother exception, if understood to include mental health, swallows the rule. It becomes the unhappiness of the carrier exception.

What an incredible link. I've noticed before biographical stories about relationships destroyed when men urge their partners to have abortions, even with women who are ultra-modern and claim to have wanted the abortion too. (John Mortimer was one). There seems to be something visceral and atavistic in women that causes them to to despise men who urge them to abort, even when they think that is what they themselves want too. I simply can't imagine why.

Because women know instinctively that it isn't merely a clump of cells but a real baby they are killing.

"There seems to be something visceral and atavistic in women that causes them to to despise men who urge them to abort, even when they think that is what they themselves want too. I simply can't imagine why"
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That's nice, and I agree with you, but for every poignant anecdote about emotional torment, there are a dozen cases of women scarcely giving it aecond thought, and a dozen more of women who regretted being in the situation, but aren't emotionally devastated as a result. Argument by anecdote may gather kudos in the blogosphere, but it isn't a majoritarian argument.

The problem with Roe, IMHO, isn't it's moral turpitude, it is its Constitutional recklessness. This ought to be a state-by-state matter, just like capital punishment, just like right-to-die, just like medicinal marijuana and other drug-related issues. Put it back in the hands of the states, and let the federal officials deal with, well, federal issues.