She is a person.  He is a person.  From conception.  Period.  That's where I start, and where I keep coming back to, when I try to think about abortion.  The fact that the conceived person really is a person doesn't necessarily change at all the pain that a woman may experience when she discovers that she is pregnant.  She may still face utter and unthinkable rejection from her friends and family because she has shattered their vision of her purity, or how her actions supposedly reflect on them.  Her pregnancy may create an apparent (or even real) life-and-death situation for herself, in which carrying her son or daughter to term will result in her own death.

But none of these facts changes the fact that her child is still a person.  And to kill a person is to murder.  Even when that murder is convenient for a large number of people involved, even if the person is physically incapable of feeling pain from that murder, even if no one feels any guilt or emotional pain from that murder, it's still murder.

Now, saying that is not intended to create a feeling of guilt within women who find abortion to be a freeing, more-than-just-convenient, option.  I point out the fact that killing a person is murder simply because it is true, however much we want to forget that it's true.  I want to "go to bat" for those persons who have no voice, to throw my voice out there in their defense.

I'm not so out of touch with reality to believe that it is or should be easy for women with "unconvenient" pregnancies to go through with them.  I don't want to minimize their pain or discomfort in any way.  And I don't believe that simply making abortion illegal will suddenly turn those woman with "unconvenient" pregnancies into women who are happy to go through with their pregnancies.  And I don't know that my foremost goal is to turn those women into jail-bound convicts.  I don't know that I have a specific, simple recipe for what I think should happen.

I guess I can say that my primary goal is that people should be treated with inherent value and respect from the day they are conceived, onward.  We are told that some people may find themselves in terrible situations with nothing but no-win choices in front of them, where (remember "Lifeboat," anyone?) someone will die no matter what they do.  I want a mother in a "crisis pregnancy" (as well as, perhaps even more importantly, her support system) to treat the decision to abort with the same seriousness they would have if she were deciding to kill a person she could "normally" see, touch, and talk with.

A friend of mine can't fathom how I can align myself with the Republican party (who I think she connects with pollution, corporate corruption, unjust war, and oppression of the poor) when she doesn't see their actions (especially during the G.W. Bush regime) as actively advancing the pro-life cause.  [pause to dig a bit...]  Well, I can't find the article I was looking for right now.  It's on First Things, and is a treatment of what Bush has and hasn't done for the pro-life cause. 

My first thought would be that he's been rather passive, and that the most I could say is that things haven't gotten worse, as far as laws, regulations, Supreme Court nominations and the like go, than things would have been under a Democratic administration.  But this article that I was looking for made the case, with details, that Bush hasn't been as passive on the issue as I or others may have thought. 

In the meantime, as a taste of the insight that I think First Things brings to the abortion debate, check out "How We Got to Where We Are," a very interesting narrative of how the Democrats went from being the "obvious" anti-abortion party to the staunch defender of pro-choice laws and candidates.

Or peruse the long list of articles that come up when you do a search for the word "abortion" there.

I'm sure that's not all I'll have to say on the subject, but maybe this will help some people understand where I come from when it comes to talking about abortion.