"I'd like to take your views on abortion, your goofy flag, and your evil Christian god and cram 'em up your stupid, intolerant ass." -
Tony H. McLendon (tmclendo@concentric.net)

Tony, a sensitive lad, demonstrates the tact he shows for others of differing viewpoints. Word on the street is that Tony H. works with war vets. No kidding.

I am not - yet - a Christian. I am not close minded to the views of Christianity, in fact I'm exploring it's teachings, but I wouldn't call myself a Christian. I'm even wobbly when it comes to the existence of God, but unlike Ken and Tony, and many other atheist wannabes, I don't believe that being a Christian is a bad thing. (a quick aside - why do atheists feel the desperate need to a) organize, and b) prove God doesn't exist?)

I'm pro-life. With the exception of very limited reasons, I don't believe that stop-and-drop abortions should be easily had. And I won't believe for a moment that one-and-a-half million annual abortions are young teenagers, or rape and incest victims. It's a response to failing to act responsibly, a convenience. While I realize that many people act very responsibly, and still end up with an unexpected pregnancy, removing those numbers from the grand total of annual abortions doesn't cause the statistics to drop significantly. If it did, there would be a class action suit against condom manufacturers for making unsafe safes.

The old, "would you force a 14-year old girl to have a baby?" begs two questions: What's a girl that young doing having sex? And, how can we be so gung-ho on preventing kids smoking and doing drugs, but sex at a young age is "Okay"? And none of that "they 're going to do it anyway" routine. That's a cop-out, from someone who isn't willing to impose rules on their kids. Why try to teach them right from wrong? Why teach them anything? Afraid of alienating them? Considering the alternative, that's a small and likely temporary penalty to pay, if it means your kid will be graduated from high school without pushing a pram to commencement.

Notice how I have yet to use the words "God", "Christ", "Bible", or "morals". Go ahead - tell me I'm wrong, but make sure you tell me why I'm wrong. Since I removed some of the weaponry from the pro-abortion arsenal, it won't be that easy. Without being able to attack Christianity and its "evils", there's not much to whine about.

I don't think I will ever understand how a society which spends millions of dollars for research in pre-natal care, and fetal surgery, can also be a society in which those same foetuses are not even seen as human. As I've asked before, why spend all that money to save something the pro-abortion movement would have us believe is nothing but a bundle of cells? Wouldn't that money be better spent elsewhere?

And how can we, in seeing the ever-more remarkable video footage of a child developing in its mother, not consider that little tiny object anything less than a human being? Finger, toes, eyes, arms, nose - all so obviously human. I know that in the embryonic state, humans share many similarities with birds and fish. The difference is women are neither birds or fish. Weird, isn't it? That narrows down the number of species we might actually be looking at on those PBS and Learning Channel programs, and increases the odds that this little beating heart might be a human.

At which point does a foetus become a human? Or, in the terms of the pro-abortion crowd, when does "it" cease to be "part of a woman's body? Does being fed via an umbilical cord mean that the foetus is part of the woman? Does having a gas nozzle in your c ar mean Exxon owns your vehicle? Am I being juvenile with this reasoning? The umbilical cord is the only means by which the child can be fed, in the same way a gas station is the only way I can get my car filled. But this relationship, the supply of sustenance for the foetus or for my car, doesn't mean ownership of the child's "self" or of me and my car has been given up.

Thus, to me, the foetus is never part of a woman's body. She is the provider of life, and the vessel in which a tiny human is created and from which that human is ultimately delivered. It is an awesome, and awe-inspiring responsibility, the burden of which I do not envy. But it is that, a responsibility, to the foetus within, not to the people without. It is that tiny creature to which a woman owes her time and energy, before birth in the same way as she does after delivery.

I'm not being sexist - I can't have children. I can't carry the child, I can't breastfeed the baby, or develop the same intimate relationship that comes with carrying a child for nine months. And it that relationship from which the responsibility is borne. And it is that responsibility that must be considered when people - male and female - take on the responsibilities of adulthood, and become sexually active.