ABORTING REALITY How surreal it is to hear the controversy involved in the simple statement that a fetus is an unborn child. Pro-abortion rhetoric is so fundamentally dishonest that a statement as self-evidently true as that stirs controversy. Gosh, where do unborn children come from, and what happens to the fetuses? Sorry folks, but asinine is asinine no matter what your position on abortion is.

But not all agree with me. For daring to say that the fetus is an unborn child, I hear that Tommy Thompson has "just ignored any rule of law -- and has unilaterally declared that the US Supreme court is irrelevant." I hadn't suspected that dictionaries and biology books were so subversive.

The post goes on to say The president's team wants abortion outlawed -- no matter what. They obviously don't respect women." I imagine the First Lady and his mother will set W. straight if he ever fails to respect women, but really, the quote is a total non-sequitur. Is it possible that opposition to abortion arises because some of us do have respect - for unborn children?

But it's not over yet - "They are among the 17% of the US who don't care if a woman will die of the pregnancy... they just want abortion illegal". Wow. No appreciable number of people has been opposing health-based exceptions to abortion restrictions, except to note that those proposed to date have been so vague that about anything this side of a hangnail would serve as an excuse. Meanwhile, contrast that with the nearly 100% fatality rate for the unborn children (abortion does not attract the best of our physicians - why do you suppose?).

I can understand how this issue is intensely personal, especially when the writer says that a pregnancy could be fatal to her. But then we hear "You on the religious right would sentence me to possible death if I were raped and did not immediately miscarry." is still far over the top. (Just wait until she sees the burqas...) Now really, how many states have ever had bans on abortion in the case of rape? More importantly, how many have enforced these laws?

Several women I know or have known have had abortions. Some of those predate Roe v. Wade, by as much as 40+ years. Whether it makes me a realist or a coward, my conviction is that if Mom wants the kid dead, it'll die - it's just a question of whether we have the medical technology available to make the execution antiseptic and invisible. So while I personally abhor abortion, when it comes to banning it I lack the heart if not the stones.

But I object to the trivialization of it, and the dishonesty that makes the statement "a fetus is an unborn child" controversial. We can't have the Supreme Court making stuff up as it goes as they did with Roe v. Wade. And the whole issue is none of the federal govt's business anyway. If abortion is as popular as its backers say, there won't be any problem with getting laws passed at the state level permitting it, or in getting corresponding court decisions, so why not do it right?