Reply #251: I think your definitions are FAR too subjective. Listen...

[msallied]

I think all of this twisting in the wind in terms of trying to make a fetus fit a specific set of criteria of whether or not is an actual "life" is more or less people trying to absolve themselves from the guilt of killing a fetus. As pro-choice as I may be (because I don't think the government has a place in this argument), I believe abortion is a very horrible and unfortunate thing. I do not believe a fetus has legal "personhood," but it is a life, and an abortion--quite literally--kills it. Now we can accept that this is what abortion is and then learn to deal with the emotional repercussions of extinguishing that life--however fledgling and rudimentary it may be after only a few months--in favor of our own, or we can continue to lie and change the facts to fit our world view that is somehow threatened by calling something what it truly is: human life.

I say this as someone who is both pro-choice and who has experienced an abortion. An elective abortion. A very emotionally-damaging, painful, guilt-inducing abortion that I will have to live with for the rest of my life, and that I am reminded of every time I look at the two children I did choose to carry. It's not an easy thing and I accept the responsibility for my actions. I paid for it out of my own pocket, even when I had little money to do it with and no medical insurance (hence the abortion), and I honestly wouldn't have had it any other way. Making the decision to rip my growing baby from my uterus was MY cross to bear. I stopped trying to rationalize my decision about two weeks in, when I found myself studying a baby book and looking at pictures of fetuses at varying stages of development and suddenly felt the world cave in, and the reality that I ended the life of someone who could have gone on to cure AIDS, for all I know. I don't even like killing spiders. How could I rationalize killing a fully-formed human being with a heart beat, even if it was only a few inches long?

I am saying all this because I think you're wasting time having this argument. You can deny the truth or shape it to your desired reality, but the truth usually comes home to roost about a week after you've laid on that table with your legs in the air listening to the sickening sound of regret that remarkably resembles that of a shop vac.