Another excellent example of why I usually don’t get involved in these conversations: almost no one is willing to accept the genuinely uncertain, when their own moral certainty is so strong. That’s entirely all right, and I apologize if I’ve troubled you in any way. Go well, and if at any point you might wish to…

If you believe in souls, I’m not sure that justifies terminating that soul’s vehicle: otherwise, we’d just be allowing murder of anyone. And the existence of souls is most definitely a belief, and not a scientific fact. The very problem I face is that I only embrace scientific fact, and science doesn’t hand out…

I can’t quite do either of those things (and that could well be a flaw of mine and not of the universe itself). I can’t accept “commonly accepted” things: I have to have the proof, or at least a very strong amount of logical support. And how would I choose amongst the various basic principles upon which I could derive…

And it’s not that I don’t get your point, but I think when I’m in that situation might be the worst possible time for me to make that moral judgement. Decisions made on the basis of emotion, in my experience, aren’t always the most ethical decisions I make.

As regards the robbing issue, I mention elsewhere - you’d have no reason to have seen it - that I think IUD failure rates are low enough that it’s difficult to use that as legal “assumption of risk,” so I think we agree as far as that goes.

Personally, I think I could make a pretty compelling argument that they should have to.

Okay, I see what’s happened, and if you’d please allow me the chance to explain, I think we could clear this up. The statement you’ve quoted is a conditional statement: “if...human life begins at...conception,” is the conditional part, the part I don’t know, the part I don’t think any of us really know, because we…

Well, I haven’t been pregnant yet, but I’m reasonably familiar with the biological processes involved, and none of those you’ve described do anything to clarify, for me, what a human life actually is, when it begins, when it ends, when the government has the responsibility to protect it, and so on. You see EXTREMELY…

Could you do me a big favor, and point out where I said abortion was murder?

I can say that because I’m not only addressing the article - although someone could argue that IUD failure rates are such that one could reasonably be said to be assuming risk for the pregnancy, I would argue that’s probably a case where it would be reasonable to feel pretty damned safe you weren’t going to get…

That’s something I think about a lot: I typically don’t think governments should legislate morality, so this bridge between ethics and laws is a difficult one for me. For example, I think government should get entirely out of the “who can get married” issue, and step back to do nothing but enforce the legal contract…

I think I’d be unable to logically speculate on the ethical comprehension level of every human woman who has ever gotten an abortion, but my tendency would be to say that any conclusion this broad is statistically unlikely to be true.

Ah! An excellent point. (Although I would rush to point out that I think there should never need to be a law legalizing gay marriage, because there should never have been any question about it being legal in the first place, for exactly the reasons you’re stating: two consenting adults should be able to make that…

(Caveat, again: I’m undecided, merely representing one possible point.) IF abortion is killing a human (again, VERY BIG IF), then it’s as much everyone else’s business as any other killing. What you’d be saying, in that case, is “Don’t agree killing is wrong? Then don’t kill people.”

So you don’t see any uncertainty, any moral questions here at all? You know what life is, what humans are, which ones should be legally protected, all of it? THAT. IS. AWESOME. Please, shove some of that certainty my way! If you could explain to me, with logic and reason, why abortion is okay (and when), I would value…

Essentially, you have to restrict the definition to such a point that the only real dividing line is one that you arbitrarily set.

I agree with basically everything you said, and I don’t really understand why you think I wouldn’t. My guess is that you’ve read into what I’ve written and think I’m some kind of person I’m not, but if you read just what I wrote - not your interpretation of what else I might think, but the words on the screen…

Let me say again, up front: I am uncertain of my beliefs on this issue! Please don’t feel I’ve got this all decided out. Also, let me point out that at no point did I try to impose my beliefs (remember, I don’t have certain ones, so I couldn’t) on anyone else. Lastly, I don’t have “theological laws,” because I’m not…

Oh, my word, yes! That kind of hypocrisy is exactly why I think this issue should be examined more closely, more rationally, more scientifically. Like, I get the people who believe any interference with pregnancy is defiance of their god’s will (but would still disagree with them), but for the rest, the argument seems…

It’s not even a little bit that simple. IF fertilized eggs are human beings, and IF we have a legal responsibility to protect the lives of all humans beings - both very big ifs! - then what you’re saying above is like saying, “hey, bro, if you don’t agree with murder, just don’t kill anyone, but force the rest of us…