Yet, it was  discovered in 1973,

Well, if you’re going to get all real-world about it, I’ll remind you that the “right to privacy that extends to a woman’s reproductive organs” has been upheld by the court several times since.

You’re quite right that the words “abortion” and “privacy” do not appear in the Constitution or its amendments. However, the general principle of restraining governmental interference with individual liberties is asserted in several places, including the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth amendments.

It would be quite a stretch to argue that the framers did not envision a freedom from governmental interference or intrusion as a fundamental right of citizens.

If it is agreed that a life has begun then I don t see how that life began, no matter how horriffic, as relevant. I know that is a rather hard-lined position but I don t see how it can be reasonably reconciled.

Well, then I have to give you credit for logical consistency.

Now we can go back to your first point: somewhere between conception and delivery, there’s a moment at which something called “life” begins. Those who pretend to know with certainty when that moment happens can’t provide scientific or medical evidence as proof.

As I said before, law can’t be vague. How would you write such an idea into law?

But so what?

There are two other issues here:

1) Something like 35 or 37 State laws that forbad abortion were swept away on the day of the Roe v Wade decision. Interestingly, that’s about the same number of states it would take to ratify a Constitutional Amendment. This, despite a specific Amendment that says that no power not specifically defined in the Constitution, and assigned to the Federal Government, can be assigned to the Federal Government. (Amendment X)

2) Abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, nor is there a “right to privacy” that extends to a women’s reproductive organs. Yet, it was “discovered” in 1973, just lying around on the floor, I guess, or maybe it came in from Europe by DHL.

“When life begins” has nothing to with either of those issues.

I would allow an exception if, and only if, the health of the mother was at stake such that the baby would have to be aborted, rather than delivered, in orcer for the mother to survive. If there were truly equally competing health decisions, then I would side with the interests of the mother.

I would support a law that prohibits abortions after that point in all cases.

Rape? Incest? Health or life of the mother?

And re: Carter. Careful. You’re about to mess up the whole “Pro-lifers aren’t welcome in the Democratic Party” myth.

Carter condemns abortion culture
By Ralph Z. Hallow
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 4, 2005

Former President Jimmy Carter yesterday condemned all abortions and chastised his party for its intolerance of candidates and nominees who oppose abortion.
“I never have felt that any abortion should be committed — I think each abortion is the result of a series of errors,” he told reporters over breakfast at the Ritz-CarltonHotel, while across town Senate Democrats deliberated whether to filibuster the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. because he may share President Bush and Mr. Carter’s abhorrence of abortion.
“These things impact other issues on which [Mr. Bush] and I basically agree,” the Georgia Democrat said. “I’ve never been convinced, if you let me inject my Christianity into it, that Jesus Christ would approve abortion.”
Mr. Carter said his party’s congressional leadership only hurts Democrats by making a rigid pro-abortion rights stand the criterion for assessing judicial nominees.
“I have always thought it was not in the mainstream of the American public to be extremely liberal on many issues,” Mr. Carter said. “I think our party’s leaders — some of them — are overemphasizing the abortion issue.”
While Mr. Carter has previously expressed ambivalence about abortion, his statements yesterday were “astonishing,” said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute at Concerned Women for America.
“He has long professed to be an evangelical Christian and yet he had embraced virtually all the liberal political agenda,” said Mr. Knight. “Maybe with Jimmy Carter saying things he never uttered before, more liberals will rethink their worship of abortion as the high holy sacrament of liberalism.”
Running for president in 1976 — just three years after the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision — Mr. Carter took a moderate stance.
“I think abortion is wrong and that the government ought never do anything to encourage abortion,” he said during that campaign. “But I do not favor a constitutional amendment which would prohibit all abortions, nor one that would give states [a] local option to ban abortions.”
In Washington to promote his latest book, “Our Enduring Values,” Mr. Carter acknowledged he made mistakes in office.
“I can’t deny I’m a better ex-president than I was a president,” said Mr. Carter, who in recent years has traveled the globe with his wife Rosalyn, “trying to help hold 61 elections” in developing countries.
He has been outspoken in condemning Mr. Bush’s policy toward Iraq. “I think all Christians — and certainly all Baptists — are different,” Mr. Carter said yesterday. “I have a commitment to worship the Prince of Peace, not the Prince of Preemptive War.”
But he praised Mr. Bush’s policy toward war-torn Sudan, and declared that the best treatment he has received since leaving the Oval Office was from the first President Bush, and the second-best treatment he got was during the Reagan administration, especially from Secretary of State George P. Shultz. The worst treatment he’s received, the former president said, was from President Clinton.
Mr. Carter said his party lost the 2004 presidential elections and lost House and Senate seats because Democratic leaders failed “to demonstrate a compatibility with the deeply religious people in this country. I think that absence hurt a lot.”
Democrats must “let the deeply religious people and the moderates on social issues like abortion feel that the Democratic party cares about them and understands them,” he said, adding that many Democrats, like him, “have some concern about, say, late-term abortions, where you kill a baby as it’s emerging from its mother’s womb.”

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20051103-111740-7148r.htm

However, since that determination can’t be made Roe v. Wade is, for now, the best we have. The problem is that despite clinging to Roe, the pro-choice lobby is unwilling to accept its precepts that reasonable limitations on abortion can be imposed at certain periods.

We would all probably also agree that that realization of potential occurs at some point prior to birth.

As a matter of belief, it’s easy to accept that proposition. As a matter of law, it’s more difficult.

Law must not be vague. For law to define the point at which potential life becomes actual life, it must be precise.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that science and law can make that determination.

Would you then argue that the law should prohibit abortions beyond that point? In all cases?

I am guessing that most, if not all of us would agree that at the moment of conception life does not begin, but rather the potential for life. At some point that potential is realized. We would all probably also agree that that realization of potential occurs at some point prior to birth. And when it does occur, there are competing interests at stake which makes abortion wholly unique to any other medical procedure.

We don t need the government inserting itself in their bedrooms to make this decision for them, unless you re prepared to start telling people yay and nay for every medical procedure under the sun.

So I assume you would approve of an abortion when a woman is in the stirrups, the doctor sees the top of the child’s head, and the woman stops pushing and cries out, “Wait, wait, I changed my mind!”? It’s OK then, right? After all, this woman is choosing to have an abortion for her own goddamn personal reasons.

Extreme example? You bet. Many, if not most, people also think it’s an extreme position that any woman can have an abortion any time for her own goddamn personal reasons. According to your position above, a woman could do that, even with the attending doctor saying, “No! It’s moments from birth!” And then what, does he get sued if he doesn’t do it?

As Hedley pointed out, there are two unreasonable extremes in this issue. You have shown yourself to be on one of them.

Both sides take an unreasonable all or nothing posture out of fear of the slippery slope.

Many years ago, Jerry Falwell (yes, that Jerry Falwell) offered what he called the “70 per cent compromise”: “Let’s assume that 10% of women who want abortions are victims of rape or incest, let’s assume that 10% more are women whose pregnancies must be kept secret, and 10% are women whose pregnancies represent a true medical danger to the women involved,” he said.

“We will ‘give you’ those,” he said, “just let us stop the other 70 percent.”

From the feminist side came: No takers.

My guess is that most people, pro-life or otherwise, would agree that life does not begin at conception

That would be odd.

Why oppose all abortion, or emergency contraception, or stem cell research if life begins at some time other than conception?

Wouldn’t people who hold such a belief be willing to accept an abortion up to that point?

So while women should be able to have abortions, the notion that such abortions should be without limitation or reasonable restriction is assinine.

How ’bout a little fire for that strawman.

Who’s arguing the “without limitation or reasonable restriction” side of the argument? What supporters of choice argue is that reasonable limitations and restrictions on medical care are made by doctors, not theologians.

Spousal notification with exceptions? No.
Parental notification and/or consent? No.
Ban partial birth abortion procedure? No.
Ban third-trimester abortions except to save the life of the mother? No.

And on and on and on.

Just as you claim that equating pro-choice to abortion without limitation is a strawman, so too is claiming that the pro-life position is dependant on theologians and not doctors. My guess is that most people, pro-life or otherwise, would agree that life does not begin at conception but that it does begin sooner than birth. Maybe one day the pro-choicers can agree and this issue won’t be such a political distraction.

So while women should be able to have abortions, the notion that such abortions should be without limitation or reasonable restriction is assinine.

If all the women who thought abortions were OK for hypothetical other women also wanted to have abortions, that would turn out to be one hell of a lot of abortions.

I think, and I can’t prove it, because I’ve never seen a survey that asked the question, “Under what conditions would you feel comfortable having an abortion?”; but I believe that most women only “approve” of abortions in the abstract, i.e., :If you really have to have one, well, all right,” not “Women have some undeniable, incontestable ‘right to choose,’ a right to do whatever they want with their own bodies, a right, it seems, neither male teens nor adult men possess.”

For that matter, I’ve never heard the questions asked in any these surveys

I see.

Just for grins, I will tell you a little semi-off-topic story. A couple months ago, just when the Plame/Rove thing was really starting to get hot, I was driving in D.C. and saw a bunch of pink-clad ladies ahead of me at the curb, carrying protest signs and making noise at the people driving by. I read some of the signs: “Save Rove!” What? Save Rove?! He’s the last person I’d expect to see people out demonstrating for, least of all ladies in pink.

I pulled up a little closer, wondering what the heck was going on. After watching them for a bit, one of the signs finally registered properly on my addled brain: “Save Roe!”

And once again all was right with the world.