Astral, where's your analysis? I see a conclusion only. That won't get you out of HS sophomore English class unless it is a social promotion campus.

I guess the guy who might have spoken up against the Bay of Pigs operation was afraid that someone like yourself would think he was a jerk, so he just clammed up so as not to ruin the 'feeling.'

The old Norman Rockwell painting "Free Speech" is probably also pointless art in your gallery of great thoughts. Too middle class.

Where did I argue that criminalizing abortion is required to ban abortion? Nowhere. It's not my argument. Not all that is illegal is criminal.

Changing hearts and minds is paramount where a practice as cold, callous, evil and socially destructive as abortion is tolerated by civilized people.

I'd sooner criminalize proven fathers' intentional abandonment of pregnant mothers than the mothers. Better than that, make child support eligibility begin at conception to help pay for more FMLA time for her; better pre and post-natal health; future education; and other positive aims.

Your argument that the pro-life community should be humanitarian contains no data proving that many are not charitable in their own way. To have no measure of it yet speak as if you know makes your argument baseless.

Your premise that pro-life persons must become Democrats and buy Democrat Party ideology to be allowed into the ranks of the charitable is also baseless for the same reasons as the above. It is also one of the points that frustrates one of President Obama's positive messages in his campaign, that he wants to unify the nation.

You have mis-defined hypocrisy here. For those opposing abortion to be hypocrites, they must have had abortions themselves under difficult circumstances.

Bheartlib,

There's no privacy issue. It's a hypothetical ad speaking to the president's public position on a public policy issue. It uses an easily understood hypothetical to illustrate how the president's views might have affected his own survival if applied to his family situation. He and others have described their upbringings and lessons learned from family life in many a political stop. If they open that door with express rhetoric, not just having his family on the stage with him, is it still private? No serious argument that it is can prevail.

Bheartlib, you write: "It amazes me how these people think that they can dictate to others what they can do with their own bodies. Would you, Mr. Woodson, allow a congressman to make you shave your head? Or, to be more personal...make you get a vasectomy at some arbritary age chosen by the legislature? No, of course not."

You've set it up wrong. The right analogy would be to ask me whether I'd let my congressman legislate that I can cut the throat of someone else whose head I am shaving. Of course not, as you say.

You write: "But, you would make a woman give birth." With elective abortion, the first choice of the woman in question was to risk conceiving and inviting the child into the womb. The father too. The second choice that you and others like you fight so hard to protect is the right to arbitrarily kill another because they have come onto your property after you invited them, but you changed your mind. It is exactly what you argue, because you speak of the body as your own property. But you created another with your property, risked their finding refuge and nourishment there, and then chose to revoke all that you induced. You guys are reproductive Bernie Madoffs.

You write: "Exceptions? Rape, incest?"

Yes, with the proviso that the health of the unwilling mother requires that she must hear both sides of the complex issues regarding abortion of the also-innocent unborn before they may elect the procedure, so that they may be empowered to make a decision not out of the fear forced into them by their offender's existence and criminality, but by regaining power over their mind as well as body.

The unborn and the mother in a pregnancy by rape or incest situation (statistically very rare occurrences) share a very powerful innocence: they did not deserve their victimization and did not choose that their existence be intruded on by a criminal psychopath. Mothers in these situations must make a decision that takes every implication into account when they make their final decision.

Here is what I believe: if a rapist forces himself on a woman and she becomes pregnant and opts for abortion, the charge of rape should automatically become one for capital murder. Her choice in the situation is so coerced by the murderer's choice should she act on the fear of bearing his child, she cannot be said to have culpability. He can. Whatever the sentencing laws for capital crimes are in the jurisdiction in which the crime occurs would dictate. What those should be is a separate issue.

You write: "A medical condition of the mother, or the child?" Mother, if to save her life, her choice under the doctrine of self-defense. That's always been an exception. However, she gets a choice because she may wish to passively resist a lethal childbearing or birth and run her risk without endangering a child on the way. That's her choice. If her life isn't at stake, then her choice to kill another isn't a choice we allow outside the womb. Why inside?

You write: "And, if you do allow exceptions, how would these exceptions be documented..would the woman have to go before a board of 'judges', ( of course, they would all be men) and beg for the procedure?"

That is a procedure question that doesn't change the substantive cases. A procedure's fairness should be determined separately. I do believe a much fairer procedure can be found than the one you describe. What should it be? I can throw out some ideas, but that's another post.

You write: "I already know that there would be no 'poverty' exception. And therin lies the worst hypocracy. When you 'pro-life' people work to help the poor, educate teenagers about sex and make contraception available for everyone...when everyone has basic health-care, all children have a home and enough food to eat and a great education, then you can scream about abortions."

What you're assuming above is that pro-life people don't work to help the poor. They do, but many of them tend to do it differently than you might like. I say, they're free to be charitable in ways different from you. They can donate time and treasure through their churches to help people and they do. Not all, but many, many do. Nor do they have to prove this to you. You may prefer government programs. That is a means, not an ends, difference.

You write: "Instead, you push for 'abstinance-only' education, (ask Bristol Palin how well that works), you keep Plan B from being freely availalble, (and don't give me the righty talking point that Plan B is an abortion, because it is not), and make women pay for their birth-control pills, while letting insurance companies cover Viagra."

I haven't pushed for abstinence only education -- or contraceptive education. I've pushed for getting the government out of the teaching side of education and restricting its role to equipping and funding only. Teaching sources should compete privately (non-profit and for-profit) with an education funding scheme that equalizes resources across school districts (both tax funds and donated private funds). Premise: all districts and demographics benefit from educational excellence spread about ... however, nobody benefits from Big Brother teaching the kids how to think and which values they must accept to remain popular.

If popularity was the best measure because of government programming - manipulation of what's popular - then historical atrocities which were popular might have their educational counterparts.

You write: "You people behave like we just love getting abortions. Let me tell you, as a woman who has three children, I can only imagine the gut-wrenching torture the decision to have an abortion would be. From reading your posts, I feel that you have a very poor imagination."

If an abortion is a "gut-wrenching" and torturous decision, why is it? If it isn't the destruction of human life, why would it be so hard as you say it is? Why so "gut-wrenching"?

Prove what you just said with empirical data.