For the Ayers ad. I don’t mind an ad reminding the public about Obama’s former association with a guy who did some nasty, violent stuff. Obama has disassociated himself from Ayers, but so what? He’s been dissing a lot of people since the presidential campaign began. One more bit of luggage overboard isn’t all that surprising. But back to the Ayers ad, which was produced by the American Issues Project (headed by a former fundraiser for McCain). In its dramatic build-up to Ayer’s sins, the ad says that on 9-11, flight 93 never made it to the Capitol (but Ayers did, setting off some explosives there with the Weather Underground, back in the late 60’s when Obama was still a child). Now that’s hitting way below the belt — politicizing 9-11. McCain doesn’t seem to be making any effort to disassociate himself from this. And for that failing, I must give Senator McCain many demerit points.<\/p>\n
BOO TO OBAMA: For not announcing his VP today, and leaving all of us political junkies in limbo tonight. It’s the Obama tease once more; the guy really is quite haughty, quite impressed with himself. So, demerits for Senator Obama also.<\/p>\n
ABORTION AND THE START OF HUMAN LIFE: NOT ABOVE MY PAY GRADE. At the Saddleback Church interview last Sunday, Barack Obama refused to set a definition as to when human life begins. He said that such a responsibility was “above my pay grade”. As to McCain, he basically said the same thing when asked to set a definition as to when being rich begins. But he had a pat answer about the start of life: at the moment of conception.<\/p>\n
When I was young, I was a rather devout Roman Catholic, and I honestly agreed with the moment of conception argument. Being a techie and an Asperger’s candidate, I devised a techie way of looking at the issue. I set up the following thought experiment: imagine that instead of building jet airplanes in a factory on the ground, they built them under the wings of other flying aircraft. Yep, they put together new jet planes way up there in the blue sky. Imagine the process as follows: on one plane, the “mother ship”, workers would somehow assemble a frame for the new plane, with wings and metal skin. But another plane would have to meet up with the mother plane, way above the earth, and bring the jet engine that was to power the new contraption. <\/p>\n
Well, up until that point, the hollow frame being built under the wings couldn’t really be said to be an airplane. But once the engine was inserted, then the thing had a lot more substance. Even if more work was yet to be done before it could fly off on its own, it was now essentially an airplane. To me, that seemed pretty close in nature to the meeting of the sperm and egg in a woman’s uterus. So: problem solved. Human life beings at conception.<\/p>\n
But now I see it differently. Back to that klutzy thought experiment: the new airframe and jet engine riding under the wing of that big mother ship (maybe an old B-52) would be worthless until they install the cockpit and all the controls. Until then, no one could fly it, even if it did have everything else hooked up. So, what is the comparison here? <\/p>\n
Well, over the first four months of fetal development, a rudimentary brain forms and at some point starts doing something; somewhere around the 6th week, a faint brain wave can be detected (somewhat akin to a sea slug’s brainwave). Even then, much more brain development is yet to come. However, by the end of the 90th day– i.e., the end of the first trimester — the brain in the new fetus has some connectivity and some initial capacity to process data. The corpus callosum linking the two halves of the brain has just been formed; the brain at that point starts acting as a whole. It may not yet be capable of supporting conscious self-awareness; the thinking part of the brain, the neo-cortex, still has a lot of work left to be done. But it certainly is pretty far down the road by that point. The thing now has its basic controls installed.<\/p>\n
SO — I would say that for legal and moral purposes, the best we can say is that life begins at the end of the first trimester. Before that, abortion is more a question of manipulating the mother’s body. After that, you’re messing with something with a very high potential for consciousness and self-awareness. Sure, there is no bright line; it’s all pretty fuzzy. But we have to draw a line somewhere, and for me, the first trimester is the best place to do it. Yes, it would be difficult for a doctor to determine just when a fetus is over the time line. But the same dilemma exists today, given that the end of the second trimester is the usual limit for legal abortion under Row v. Wade. <\/p>\n
So that’s my final answer. I.e., split the difference between the pro-choice forces (at the end of the second trimester) and the pro-life forces (at conception). This would reduce the number of abortions, but would not eliminate their availability. (I believe that over 50% of abortions occur within the first trimester at present.) Under such a compromise, I would also rule out the “slow downs” that the pro-life people have written into the law over the past 10 years or so, including waiting periods, pre-counciling on adoption options, and parental consent. Choice should be true choice, so long as it is justifiable.<\/p>\n
Well, it’s a good thing that I’m not running for office. Neither the pro-lifers and the pro-choice people seem interested in compromise, even if it is based upon reason and science. Obviously, the Democrats and Republicans would both be mad at me for such a position!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the Ayers ad. I don’t mind an ad reminding the public about Obama’s former association with a guy who did some nasty, violent stuff. Obama has disassociated himself from Ayers, but so what? He’s been dissing a lot of people since the presidential campaign began. One more bit of luggage overboard isn’t all that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,11,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4758,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions\/4758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}