Professor Reynolds:

All actions in life are choices. Some are good, and some are bad - and usually, the determination of that comes from the analysis of the act itself, not the motivations. Some choices out there are illegal - and when someone chooses to do them, intentions and circumstances may increase/decrease the penalty, but they don't change the basic fact that a crime was committed. No one is fundamentally opposed to the idea of choice as an exercise of free will - but some of us have very different ideas on what choices we will praise, excuse, or punish.

Abortion simply is not one of those issues where there is a middle ground - either it's objectively not a bad act at all, in which case only the US policy of on demand makes sense, or it's objectively a bad act, in which case, it should be illegal. While it might be possible to legislatively craft some sort of dividing line, it dodges the issue, setting up an arbitrary boundary line instead of asking the difficult question - what satisfies the criteria of personhood?

- Posted by in Society at 1:43 AM