A particularly well-worded post from DMC, I thought. This bit punches beautifully:
>Is it killing the potential life of an
>unborn child. Yes. Nonetheless, I think that
>legislating this issue is simply wrongheaded. This is
>a way to take away our freedom, hard won through
>political struggle, to make ethically responsible
>decisions.
The inescapable fact of the matter here is that we'll never get beyond the 'where does the executive power best lie'? As with all things, it best lies with those people most directly involved and most likely capable of ethical judgement. And that, it seems to me, is decisively and generally, the pregnant individual herself.
To legislate otherwise is effectively to deny rational beings the freedom to be ethical - for which one simply *must* have conscious agency.
Many on the left are always crapping on about rights (even 'absolute' ones) but often frame responsibilities as hegemonic impositions (I think Carrol's polemic against we 'anti-communist moralists' is of this variety).
The right always lectures us on our responsibilities but blithely legislates and sermonises our rights away.
Perhaps the very old-fashioned thought that rights and responsibilities are inextricably mutually constitutive, and therefore must ever reside together (a dialectical unity, if you like), must ever be invested in the same person, is the way to go.
It certainly ain't bad rhetoric either. I'd certainly hate the job of opposing this notion within the context of American common-sense.
Cheers, Rob.