[WikiEN-l] Following up -

Thu Oct 30 23:13:03 UTC 2003

At some point, I'm sure, Jimbo is going to insist 
that we take this to [[talk:abortion]] -- but, to 
answer Christopher's question,

"Why should the state have this much say in what 
goes on inside someone's body? Where do we draw 
the line?"

If it were legally established that inside *your* 
body was another living, breathing human being with 
"personhood" and a "right to life", then you would 
have a degree of responsibility to avoid killing 
it. On the other hand, you could not be forced 
endure a process with an unacceptably high risk 
of killing *you* either. 

It all hinges on whether a fetus is a "human being". 
Luckily for me, I have no axe to grind on this 
point. So I consider myself the ideal editor for 
a writing project aiming at creating a series of 
neutral (NPOV) articles on the topic. 

In fact, the only obstacle I can see is that I might 
(as the Cunctator suggests) have too high an opinion 
of my own "neutrality". But since more people come 
running to me for mediation than to any other 
contributor, I guess I'll have to do it :-)

Modestly,

Ed Poor