>I just
>don't go with that tabula rasa stuff, in other words - seems to me there
>must be a *biological* moment when a foetus/baby becomes able to accord
>meaning (the currency of human communication), and I don't see why that
>moment should necessarily be post-birth, never mind a month down the track.
"Biology" in itself doesn't define any moment. "Being human" in the social sense (personhood) has been defined historically. That's why, for instance, infanticide used to be a normal and socially accepted practice in many societies, whereas it is not today.
>For society to wrest
>this moral authority (a positive freedom) from the woman is tenable only on
>the premises that murder is *definitely* being done and that all society
>has an equal interest and concomitant sovereign right in the prevention of
>murder.
The decisive question, I think, is if women are treated & thought of as second-class persons, whose existence must be defined by our reproductive capacity, unlike men who are not so defined. When women cease to become second-class persons, we won't be discussing the morality of abortion at all, for then it won't occur to anyone to question it.
Yoshie