jayeff

Life yes. Life that is human, with a soul, consciousness or whatever, no. There isn't a person out there arguing the point of view that life begins at conception who is being entirely honest.

If someone sincerely believes that a newly fertilized egg represents life in actuality (as opposed to as a matter of faith) then by what logic can they support the killing of so much as a plant? In scientific terms a protozoan is closer to vegetable than human.

Or is it that the fertilized egg has the potential for human life? But in that case, why draw an arbitrary line at the fertilized egg? Why not feel as passionately about an unfertilized egg or about unused sperm for that matter? Surprize, surprize, many pro-lifers don't approve of birth control either, but let's take it one step at a time huh?

If life is so damn precious in its own right, let's see the pro-lifers out protesting war or famine, or doing something about our 4 million homeless. It won't happen because abortion didn't become an issue capable of influencing elections due to large enough numbers of people really caring about any lives except their own. It acheived that status because of the cynical manipulation of their congregations by many so-called religious leaders.

Such people grabbed at an emotive issue as a route to personal power and a way to get a religious law, any law, passed. Oh and anti-abortion laws are a wonderful way to chip away some more of our privacy, because how can they be policed effectively without every woman who suffers a spontaneous abortion facing the prospect of the police arriving on her doorstep to investigate the circumstances of her termination?

We cannot afford to sneer at religious fundamentalism in other parts of the world, yet allow it to build strength here. And stripped of all the rhetoric, when anti-abortionism moves from personal choice to law, it is about nothing but religious fundamentalism attempting to get a foothold in all our lives.