Obama: Now, even pro-choicier than you thought!

Pretty funny! Actually, your AIG example raises an interesting conundrum, Mariel: If Obama seeks to "abort" hardened Talibanis in the northwest of Pakistan, would James Dobson be happy or angry? I guess that's why only the pope is consistently pro-life.

It is what I always expect from Mr. Viguerie, in as much as he is an obsequious feeder at the Sun Myung Moon teat.

Ah David, your usual type of comment again--insulting and lacking in content. And you wonder why more people do not engage in your "debates." Hmmm.

Rob, bashing someone who would be happy to see terrorists eliminated (and that should be...uh... ALL thinking people)... is kind of a cheap shot.

And Mariel--it really isn't that hard to figure out his comments. Obama is on record as favoring laws that allowed "botched abortions" -- read live babies -- to be left to die (I guess because that was the original intention).

That's what Mr. Viguerie means. You can put your snark away now.

Diane - Why don't you search "Richard Viguerie/Sun Myung Moon" and see why he is held in such disdain by people with functioning brain cells. However, I think you won't see anything wrong with his association with the "Second incarnation of the Messiah" who wants to unite all religions and all political power under his rule, as the Republican Party is already a partially own subsidiary of his "Unification Cult".

Diane -- do you believe that a "botched" abortion should suddenly be rescued in a way that will improve our world? Seems like a longshot.

Good lord, Rob, another name for "botched abortion" is LIVE BABY. A baby that someone in this country would be happy to adopt. There are no orphanages in this nation with babies languishing away waiting to be adopted. But that is beside the point. The coarsening of our attitudes toward human life as a society are illustrated by your question. Who is to say who will or will not improve our world? Who made you (or me) God to decide that? A government that can't protect LIFE is no government not worth having at all.

Just think about it. It's a baby, breathing, crying, right there. Do you REALLY think it's okay to starve it to death?

Regardless of Mr. Viguerie's affiliations, this is a horrific viewpoint to take, and Obama took it, and he deserves every shot he gets for it.

Diane - You seem to think that there is something intangible that is infused into the fetus that merits it being given full rights of a human from the moment of conception and I have a friend, who after having two children, thinks that the allowable time to abort should be at a point where it can be used as a remedy for the terrible twos. I think both of those extremes are outside of the realm of being reasonable, unless you think a soul of some sort is involved, and then it becomes a question to be weighed against the Separation Clause of The Constitution, where the religious argument must lose.

I'm quite comfortable with the "slap on the butt and start sucking air on your own" point as the ideal between extremes, but will give some ground for a wanted fetus that has reached a high level of viability. Now, as far as I know, no one is holding a gun to the head of any one to force them to abort, but if that figurative gun is held to the head of women to force them to bear unwanted children to satisfy your narrow religious prejudices, you are going to be in a nasty fight, either in the courts, or in the dark of night when the angry women of America retaliate for your crime of religiously inspired forced breeding. The choice is yours and if you make the wrong one, you and those like you, will be held accountable for the misery you cause.

I'm no doctor. I don't know how viable a botched abortion/"live baby" is. All the info I've seen from pro-life forces indicate that the fetus faces a horrific cuisinart process. If that process is "botched," does that mean you can easily make it viable?

Beyond that, I don't buy the embryo = fetus = human argument. An embryo is a potential human, just like a book proposal is an embryo of a good book that can stand on its own in the marketplace. Can I submit such a proposal to a publisher and demand JK Rowling's pay scale? Wouldn't I be laughed at?

I'm going to hear an argument from Diane about how I know where I would draw the line. I'm willing to go with David's line about a wanted fetus that has reached a high level of viability. Everything else is between a pregnant woman and her maker.

As for the "coarsening of attitudes toward human life," I worry more about life once it's viable, not while it's just potential and just bait for arguments.

David. There is no "Separation Clause of The Constitution" as you mis-stated and mis-punctuated. But this is the level of accuracy I have come to expect from you.

Yeah, it does not exist. What DOES exist is language indicating that the Feds may not establish a state religion (some of the states at that time did indeed have one). And that you're free to worship as you like. That's what's in there. No "separation of church and state." Might be good if you dealt with reality in the future rather than just making up stuff that sounds good to you.

It's not a religious issue anyway, but an issue of science. It's either human or it's something else. What might that be? Eggplant?

And Rob, sorry to say, your analogy completely fails. Truth be told, even if the book publisher would laugh at YOU, he sure as hell would not laugh at J.K. Rowling, and would pay handsomely for a book merely at the embryo stage.

David. There is no "Separation Clause of The Constitution" as you mis-stated and mis-punctuated. But this is the level of accuracy I have come to expect from you.

Yeah, it does not exist. What DOES exist is language indicating that the Feds may not establish a state religion (some of the states at that time did indeed have one). And that you're free to worship as you like. That's what's in there. No "separation of church and state." Might be good if you dealt with reality in the future rather than just making up stuff that sounds good to you.

It's not a religious issue anyway, but an issue of science. It's either human or it's something else. What might that be? Eggplant?

And Rob, sorry to say, your analogy completely fails. Truth be told, even if the book publisher would laugh at YOU, he sure as hell would not laugh at J.K. Rowling, and would pay handsomely for a book merely at the embryo stage.

David. There is no "Separation Clause of The Constitution" as you mis-stated and mis-punctuated. But this is the level of accuracy I have come to expect from you.

Yeah, it does not exist. What DOES exist is language indicating that the Feds may not establish a state religion (some of the states at that time did indeed have one). And that you're free to worship as you like. That's what's in there. No "separation of church and state." Might be good if you dealt with reality in the future rather than just making up stuff that sounds good to you.

It's not a religious issue anyway, but an issue of science. It's either human or it's something else. What might that be? Eggplant?

And Rob, sorry to say, your analogy completely fails. Truth be told, even if the book publisher would laugh at YOU, he sure as hell would not laugh at J.K. Rowling, and would pay handsomely for a book merely at the embryo stage.

David. There is no "Separation Clause of The Constitution" as you mis-stated and mis-punctuated. But this is the level of accuracy I have come to expect from you.

Yeah, it does not exist. What DOES exist is language indicating that the Feds may not establish a state religion (some of the states at that time did indeed have one). And that you're free to worship as you like. That's what's in there. No "separation of church and state." Might be good if you dealt with reality in the future rather than just making up stuff that sounds good to you.

It's not a religious issue anyway, but an issue of science. It's either human or it's something else. What might that be? Eggplant?

And Rob, sorry to say, your analogy completely fails. Truth be told, even if the book publisher would laugh at YOU, he sure as hell would not laugh at J.K. Rowling, and would pay handsomely for a book merely at the embryo stage.

Diane - Despite your need to multiple enter your last post, Science does not mandate that a fertilized ovum be accorded the respect we give a person who is living and has been born. That you try to divorce the religious aspect from the discussion has as much relevance as the argument that "Creation Science" has nothing to do with religion. You cannot support your religious based argument in the face of the separation principle, so your effort to tarnish science by making it the villain that would allow you to force women to bear unwanted children, is beneath dignity, as well as being totally transparent.

Diane - I still have to ask, due to your fixation on the misplacement or overuse of a comma, or the odd word that spell check didn't recognize as the wrong "bare" or "bear", were you toilet trained as a child with a gun to your head? Such harsh training would explain a great deal about your fixation on always being right, even when there is a great deal of latitude in most questions. I'll bet you freak out when someone doesn't use a coaster under their drink.

Diane -- that's a nice burn on the JK Rowling analogy, I'll give you that. But your criticism of separation of church and state is meaningless. By keeping the government from establishing a religion, it was de facto separation, especially in light of what the founders were saying about church and state (eg Washington saying roughly, 'we are not a Christian nation and so we have no quarrel with Mahometan nations', Jefferson's comments, on and on).

Also, Diane, if we're going to play the "potential" game, as in how the embryo of a Rowling book is worth far more than the embryo of an Asghar book, then let's play this out fully: Most women who seriouslyl consider terminating their pregnancy are not carrying a future Einstein. They're carrying a probable delinquent. Wasn't it Freakonomics that laid that case out...? If those who believe in the sanctity of life actually show more ability to promote adoption, then maybe you'd win points. But you mainly want to force Bristol and Levi into an impossible situation, with predictable results.