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You wrote, "Let me state, to begin with, I'm a pro-choice liberal. But just in case it might matter, I'll also say that I don't like abortion or anything about it. I mean it when I sign onto the notion that it should be safe legal and rare. I strongly support the notion, from Roe, that after viability, the ability of the developing baby to sustain, even with assistance, meaningful life outside the womb, means it is one breath away from personhood, and no longer subject to the mother's choice save in extreme cases. I understand and oppose partial birth abortion at the same time I confirm the woman's right to choose abortion in the first trimester, with the waters muddy in the second and only rare and extraordinary justification in the last. Sachem"

Look at your assertions regarding the Roe 'trimester' framework. Would you still divide the baby as a thing a woman has a special right to hire killed if it were proven scientifically that even from first implantation she is pregnant with an individual human being, a fellow member already of the human race? ... I suspect you will immediately jump to denying that the pre-viability life is a human being, a full fellow member of the human race, for that is how liberals mollify conscience in order to grant the special right of hiring the killing done, the killing done mostly for expedience and convenience. Your words sound high and rational, but you've segmented the truth of the unborn in order to justify serial killing of individual human beings in our nation.

You individual human life began at your unique conception, whether in a petri dish or your mother's body. There is no validity to the specious claim that one human being is less than another based on age or location. The science of Embryology is the venue for truth regarding the preborn ... and the first axiom of that science is that lifetime begins at conception. If the embryo is conceived via human gametes (or in cloning a human gamete and human somatic cell nuclear transfer) the individual life is a human being from that point onward for the remainder of the lifetime so begun.

To all, it is gratifying to read the many responses and honest efforts to reply to my queries and to clarify conservative thought and attitudes on this important issue of judicial activism. I will try to respond to several posters and in a number of other cases I will do some homework you have assigned: read some cases and ponder some passages from books. I appreciate the many explanations as well as references offered.

In response to MHG, I offer a few thoughts. Roe is mostly interesting to me in this context as a case in point regarding judicial activism. Nonetheless, I will briefly address abortion itself and try to tie it to the topic at hand. You won't like what I have to say, I imagine. Please know that I'm not Solomon but I've thought about this issue a lot.

> Would you still divide the baby as a thing a woman has a special right to hire killed if it were proven scientifically that even from first implantation she is pregnant with an individual human being, a fellow member already of the human race?

With respect, because I know this is an issue that tears at the heart of many good people, and I don't take it lightly, I don't accept that medical science can help us very much in deciding what is a human being. You happened to catch me in an area I know something about. Among other related pursuits, I'm a medical scientist and I got A's in vertebrate embryology, both lecture and laboratory sections. Can you be more specific about how you believe science illuminates the issue of whether "hiring killed" (a deliberately dreadful but accurate phrasing) a developing baby in its first months of life is taking the life of a human being?

You know of course, that I don't accept your definition of what is human life. Many do, many don't. Why leave it to government to decide what pastors, professors, lawyers, scientists, sons, daughters and all manner of other ordinary people cannot agree on? Is it not better to teach and preach your message, to persuade others of its rightness and its righteousness and to govern themselves accordingly, instead of compelling them with the government's boot on their neck to accept a belief they do not share?

>I suspect you will immediately jump to denying that the pre-viability life is a human being, a full fellow member of the human race, for that is how liberals mollify conscience in order to grant the special right of hiring the killing done, the killing done mostly for expedience and convenience.

Mmm, you're right about my thinking pre-viability life is not the same as being a full fellow member of the human race. You're wrong about this view mollifying my consience, which is too private and personal to describe here.

>...killing done mostly for expedience and convenience.

I think the evidence shows you are partly right and mostly wrong on this point. There is great variability among people and I do not doubt for a second that abortions are sought for unimaginably trivial reasons. Fie on such people. However, in the great majority of cases I believe the woman takes her pregnancy very seriously, agonizingly considering the whole of her circumstances including her ability to succesfully raise a child and the consequences of choosing to end her pregnancy with abortion. There is no calamity, no crisis, the equal of an unwanted pregnancy, filled as it is with religious, moral, and practical consequences, both immediate and life-long. A woman in such straits needs love and understanding, compassion and help in making the best choice for herself and her unborn baby. What she does not need is someone else making this most intensely personal decision for her. IMO and experience. I am tolerant but not persuaded of other views. I think the American people are shown in polls over several decades to favor a woman's right to choose in early pregnancy but are sensitive to the need for such restrictions as parental notification in the case of minors and strict controls on late term abortions. Me too.

Your last paragraph is perhaps the clarification of your views I asked for above. I understand in perfect detail what it means. I entirely disagree with your conclusion.

Peace, MHG. Let us work to make abortion go away by responsible choices by couples. Surely we can agree on that much. And remember the old adage, it is not incumbent upon us to complete the work, but to carry it on.