The Obama Project@WindonWater.net

Here’s an excerpt of Steve Waldman’s blog post:

…consider this statistical couplet. According to a 2007 survey commissioned by a progressive think tank called Third Way, 69 percent of Americans believe abortion is the “taking of a human life,” but 72 percent believe it should be legal.

Let that soak in. Most people think abortion is taking a human life and yet favor the procedure being legal. How grotesque! Are we Americans utterly immoral?

Actually, what the data proclaim is something that politicians and activists can’t: Most Americans believe there are gradations of life. Some living things are more alive than others, and so the later in the pregnancy it gets, the more uncomfortable people become with the idea of ending it. But in reality they believe both that a life stirs very early on and that a one-week-old embryo is more “killable” than a nine-month-old fetus. For them, determining whether “life” begins at conception really doesn’t determine anything.

Right. I said something similar back in January:

Disclaimer: I’m choosing the words “anti-abortion” as opposed to the false dichotomy of pro-life and pro-choice. Who isn’t pro-life? Who is pro-abortion? And – is it a honest-to-God fact that every instance of abortion is really a choice? I think reasonable minds can come to a different place on this issue – especially if we stop talking about it in ways that define us as against each other. Most of us don’t think animals have the same rights as humans – but we also agree that we don’t have a right to be cruel to animals. that’s not a choice we get to exercise. There’s a reasonable place where we all can meet – I’d like to see us get there.

Given that Roe v Wade already makes the trimester distinction, it seems reasonable that that’s a line we can pursue, safely, without jeopardizing the sanctity of established law.

QT

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