So when a fetus CAN live outside the womb, is it alive?  My little grandson, born several weeks early and weighing in at a stout four pounds, is a robust four year old now who weighs a ton.  At what point does he figure into your calculations.  Even just 30 years ago (Roe v Wade time frame) he would have never survived.  The point of "viability" recedes every year.

This has been a fun read.  There are some FACTS that should be recognized for fact and not opinion, though.  Whether you agree or disagree...don't matter.

- Transporting women to medical facilities for treatment that cannot be received in their place of incarceration (sp?) has been upheld as a requirement (yes, abortions included).  And this at taxpayers expense.  Is it right?  Doesn't matter, it is UPHELD. (Because abortions are illegal in many European countries, female military members who desired abortions were routinely transported - at government expense, including medical TDY- to military hospitals in the USA for those procedures).

-Jailers are NOT allowed to do whatever they please with their prisoners.  Prisoners do have rights and they must be recognized.  Sheriff Joe is a master at stretching the envelope, has been challenged many times and usually comes out on top.  In this case he may have overstepped, but you can be assured it wasn't blindly.  He has an amazing legal staff backing him up.

Roe v Wade was about privacy rights (never once mentioned in the Constitution) not abortion rights.  However, later supplemental decisions have established rights that were never intended in the Constitution...same as separation of Church  and state.

- For the record, I am against abortion as a convience, some legitimate MEDICAL reasons may cause it to be necessary.. to protect the life of the mother, for example.  There are limits to what we have a right to do to our bodies, or the unborn bodies.  The argument that a fetus is not a child is patently stupid.  If left to grow to term, almost all fetuses (feti?) will be born a human child.  Some will sponteanously abort, some will die before birth, but those who make it will certainly not be a puppy or a giraffe...they will be children.

- Aside from the damage done to the fetus, abortion is a heavy burden to carry for the wouldabeen mother.  We have heard poignant testimony of such from a dear lady who haunts these pages...I will leave it to her to share again or not as she chooses.

- As for activist judges and their rulings:  the only answer is to elect officials with the stones to impeach lifetime judges who rip up the constitution in an effort to form social reform.  They can't do it in congress so they continue to work through the courts.  In the meantime, whining about it is unworthy. 

- oh yeah, the other thing about prisoners' rights...they do not have all the rights guaranteed outside the wall.  In most states, Felons cannot vote, own guns, property, and in some cases, get a business license.  Prisoners are not free to walk out the door, change cells if they don't like the neighborhood, drive down to the 7-11 for smokes or a robbery, most prisons now do not allow smoking, unhealthy foods, etc.  To pretend that prisoners do not give up certain rights is silly.  They do.  Hell, even members of the military give up some of their civil rights. 

- You have all done a pretty reasonable job of defending your views, some things got me to reconsider my own views (not necessarily CHANGE them, though ) These are inflamatory topics.  But the common mistake (one I have been very guilty of) is confusing opinion with fact.  Just cause we don't like it, don't make it go away.

Right, and how much does a kid on welfare for his lifetime cost us all ??? And all you born-agains, evangelists and other such (lazy types that let someone else do your thinking for you)... You are entitled to live any way you please, BUT... YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY NOT entitled to shove that stuff on ANYONE ELSE ! I'll go you one better: provide abortion services AND require permanent sterility (removal of either uterus or ovaries) AND when the father is found and identified, make him pay for the proceedures AND have his plumbing altered. In case you haven't heard, your pope in Vatican City has stated that we (humans) are destroying the planet by over consumption. This from a person and an organization dedicated to INCREASING human population (religious adherents?) to consume even more of this planet's resources, by any means possible ! His hypocracy is of monumental and historic proportion. It rises to the level of evil arrogance. Which, BTW, by the basic tenents of his own religion guarantees him a place in the lowest depths of the hell his religion says exists, and where ALL religious proselitizers and terrorists belong and all I can hope for is that indeed such a hell exists! Belief in God is NOT a religion, until you con(vince) someone else to belive that same way.

Who talks about putting him on welfare for his entire life? He could grow up to be the next brilliant genius. There's nothing about him being incapable to live. How are you so bigotted that you believe that anyone who is born into a rough situation can't live nonetheless? How do I let other people do the thinking for me? I write theological articles myself, and even lay members like your precious Obama do thinking for themselves, do they not? Your "need others to think for you" accusation doesn't work. Second, excuse me, but the "don't shove stuff on others" opinion is getting shoved on me way too often. You are an example of how the left cannot fight an arguement, but instead resorts to slander campaigns by suggesting things that the mere idea of is offensive to us who actually believe. Also, you seem to have, at best, a mediocre, insufficient grasp of the religious hierarchy. Why do you blame the pope for everything, when nobody who is a Catholic (As far as I know) has posted here yet? You are nothing more than a spreader of hatred of religion. Spreading a religion and terrorism are not the same, and I can see now how people can be so stupid to set up states like those of Communist Russia and early Communist China. Your accusations are just plain insanity, and you cannot even stay on topic. Why do you spread hate in a debate, if you make such a bigotted atempt at an attack again, you are tempting fate.

See, even you find that too overkill and amoral.

Exactly.

the LAST thing I want to do is pay (through my taxes) for all the medical expenses, rearing expenses (they aren't going to raise the child in prison), and criminal prosecution expenses (when that child grows up to be a criminal) of a person in jail.

If anything prisoners should be FORCED to have abortions. You don't get the right to breed on taxpayer money while in the slammer for a crime.

Although frankly that is too harsh as well. Cause people should still retain their human rights in prison. Speaking of which, the whole prison system is a "volunteer rape brigade" (with the prisoners themselves being the volunteer rapists of each other), the punishment isn't incarciration, the punishment is prison rape. That in of itself is a pretty major rights violation.