Life is not only not "too vague" define scientifically, but a great many scientific and medical dictionaries and textbooks publish definitions of it — because biological life is a scientific concept, not a spiritual one. Yes, there are certainly edge cases, like viruses, but there's no controversy in the scientific…

Which of your sources explained the Catholic Church's stance on all this? Because there's some really major points that this article gets seriously wrong, from the contours of the "ensoulment" debate to the Church's teaching on the sinfulness of first-trimester abortifacients to both the origins of Church teaching of…

No, "beginning of life" is a very simple scientific concept. It's straight out of your ninth-grade life sciences textbook, chapter one: when a cell or collection of cells achieves independent metabolism, organization, growth, and homeostasis, it's a new life. Whether that new life is a new cat, a new virus, a new…

IUDs (copper IUDs in particular) *likely* cause the (choose one: death/destruction) of embryos after fertilization (the beginning of life) but before implantation (the beginning of pregnancy). Although this is not the primary mechanism by which IUDs operate, it is very probably a secondary mechanism.

Except on Tuesdays.

It's a statewide election. Gerrymandering ain't the blues' problem. Popularity is.

The speech was my favorite part of the SEASON.

Sorry, I should have said "elected" Democrats. There are a substantial minority of Democratic voters who are at least nominally pro-life. For whatever reason, they still choose to vote for the party whose official platform states, "The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's…

Amending the federal Constitution would require 2/3rds of the members of both houses of Congress to approve of overturning Roe/Casey. That means you need 67 pro-life senators, in an era when either party getting past 55 is a miracle (and only happens with help from some sort of "blue-dog"). THEN you would have to…

If you want a really detailed answer, I wrote a very long analysis of Personhood's potential impact on Wisconsin here: http://www.jamesjheaney.com/2012/07/30/per… Basically holds true for other states as well. (Warning: I am pro-Personhood, so, while my analysis answers your question using only neutral legal…

Merely interesting. We often comment and take note when, say, the three women on the SCOTUS write a pro-choice dissent. (This is often followed by calls for more women on the court, or insistence — as by Sen. Reid — that the courts reach the decisions they do because male judges fail to understand female issues.) …

Interesting fact: Judge Elrod, who wrote the decision, is a woman.

Argh, I'd really like to answer some of the questions springing up about this bill (and pose a few of my own), but the text isn't up on Congress.gov yet because the bill was just submitted today. GRAH. It should be illegal for legislators to give press conferences about bills they are proposing without giving a link…

Two different 5th Circuit panels have ruled differently on similar clinic regulations, so I expect it will go to En Banc review. Anything could happen!

You must be right. I've certainly never heard of a single report from a local news network missing relevant context or inaccurately reporting key facts.

But it is very, very rare to find a dead baby (which it may well have been) on the floor of the school bathroom. Police helicopters is *exactly* what I'd expect to see when you have a dead child on school grounds.

It's possible that (like me), she thinks that the abortion episodes of Maude, Scrubs, and Roseanne were failures. She may even think (like me) that sitcoms *always* fail when they try to do Very Special Episodes. None of the examples you give were funny or even entertaining half-hours for me, and (as a result) all…

If you have a fetus outside the womb that is no longer alive, what you have — under the law of the land — is a dead baby. Even in a state with a Freedom of Choice Act, police would be obliged to investigate the circumstances of the death and consider prosecuting the mother for negligence or murder. I suspect that,…

Legally speaking — this is federal law and always has been — a fetus who is born alive already <i>is</i> a living child. You don't gain legal personhood status by surviving for a certain amount of time outside the womb; you have it the instant you exit.

Wonderful to see the good folks of the Star Wars Players Committee get such a high-profile plug!