[MHGinTN]

"McCain as a leader ... is wholly incapable of consistency on this issue, because he does not understand it." Perhaps John McCain understands not only the issue of when an individual life begins (as he said, at conception), but also has a grasp on the complexity of conflicting rights which many refuse to apprehend. When our technology reaches the point that a newly conceived human can be carefully removed from a womb and placed in another surrogate womb, THEN the issue of right to live will be paramount.

Because of the right to not be forced into surrogacy which increases mortality risk, coupled with the inability to immediately transplant a living being from a womb without killing the newly conceived, we are at a point which requires the principle of self-defense to play a role in the issue.

After decades in the Congress, John McCain has probably had occasion to think on these things and to think upon the actual difficulties in changing the perspectives and the policies.

[outlawcam]

I really have no desire, as I said, to abandon common ground with those who agree with me on 98% of the abortions performed. However, as the matter is pressed, I have no choice but to defend the plain truth of the right to life and John McCain's rejection of it.

John McCain has taken two irreconcilable positions.

1. That life begins at conception, and
2. That the right to life is subject to the discretion of man or his institutions, who determine that the circumstances surrounding the creation of that life are too unpleasant.

Either the right to life is a matter of human choice or it isn't. If it is, as McCain's position suggests, then its sole claim to protection is positive law -- not natural law.

If this is true, then there is no objective standard by which the degree of misfortune can be consistently judged -- giving credence to the notion that the right to life ought to be subject to the choice of the mother, and not the government, and certainly not God.