Hardly-

You are ducking your own comment. Read your own quote-feel free to edit or clarify.

You said -"With the proviso that fetal and zygote Americans aren't Americans at all .... because, when last I checked, you had to be alive to be an American."

If it is not alive- it must be dead.

Freel free to roll your eyes- I am doing the same.

yes, you have to be alive to be an American. As Alex pointed out, Canadians are alive and dogs are alive, but neither are Americans. Being alive is not the only requirement.

The quote of mine you cherry-picked was a clarification of my earlier statement that - and I'll repeat this for your benefit, Neph - you must either be born in the United States or naturalized as a citizen to be an American.

Once more, then. Yes or No ... no Huckabees allowed ... is a fetus born or not?

Even if a fetus is alive (which, of course, we can argue about till the cows jump over the moon), can a fetus be an American?




.

My version of those answers: yes and yes. To expand, in my view a fetus is alive but does not yet possess the same legal protections of other levels of human development. And yes, a fetus can be an American if we were to decide so but as things currently stand they are not.

And now no Huckabeeing from you: Yes or no, are only American lives deserving of legal protection?

If no, then the second half of your question (can fetuses be citizens) is thoroughly irrelevant and we're back to arguing simply when life attaches legal protection (which is a moral question and regardless of how answered forces one morality on the dissenters). If yes, then I want to be able to kill Canadians.

Strangler Lewis, as you say, the government can change its determination on ESA laws or whatever at its will. However, it is increasingly common to see due process claims trying to stop any effort to loosen them (the claim is not that a tree has a due process right but that there is some sort societal due process that wasn't performed). I don't know that they've been particularly successful with this course but I didn't say they were, just that it was a widening avenue of approach and that it has implications on the abortion debate as it becomes more successful.

Also, the Supreme Court could decide tomorrow to repeal its legislation that fetuses are deserving of no legal protection and there's nothing the pro-choice crowd could do about it, in fact even less than if tomorrow Congress decided to exterminate all non-human mammals larger than ferrets.

No a fetus is not born.

Yes it is alive- which is not arguable. In every way it is clearly alive- otherwise abortion would be a non-issue. To pretend it is not alive is a logical and mental fallacy that takes super human feat to complete- scientifically it is clearly alive. DNA would show it's human- the REAL issue is that you and others like you think the will of the mother trumps all- and she can decide to TERMINATE (which you don't need to do if it is not alive) that life whenever she feels like it- for any reason.

It's not life at issue- it's personhood. Something I think some of you only bestow on people once they breathe air and vote democrat.

:p

(and I don't have a frelling clue who Huckabee is- and I don't care)

Mike Huckabee is the Governor of Arkansas. He is pro-life and recently announced his intention to run for the presidency in 2008.

What Roe and subsequent cases recognized correctly as a matter of common sense (if not necessarily constitutional law) is that the stakes change as the fetus becomes viable. The "icky" factor to abortion increases. Early on, the icky factor will be less in part because the woman's body is just as likely to terminate the pregnancy on its own and in part because the fetus, little miniatures notwithstanding, looks more like a parasite than a real baby.

Later on, when the fetus/baby approaches viability, the "icky" factor increases, both because the baby is more like a baby and because this is a delicate area where we expect the decision makers (i.e., women) to act quickly and responsibly.

Law school exam question: in a world where abortion was illegal and women who had them were viewed as babykillers, would a woman who willed her body to deliver a non-viable baby because she wanted to hold it and take care of it 15 weeks sooner be guilty of a crime? We'll even call her a Christian Scientist or some other religious fanatic who believed that God would keep her baby alive.

The reason iSm invoked him as he did (and I responded in kind) is Steve's feeling that Huckabee clumsily evaded very direct questions about his views while making appearances on the Sunday gabfests yesterday.

And so, to non-Huckabeeably answer Alex's earlier question ... No, Americans are not the only persons deserving legal protections in America.

Sorry if I've thwarted your Canadian killing spree.



And now ... I challenge someone to come up with some presidential candidate issue that's neither abortion or Iraq (I'm a little tired of both subjects).

I just like saying 'Barack Obama'. I really don't care what his stance is on these issues, so long as he doesn't change his name. I mean, can you imagine- after 200 plus years of Johnson, Jacksons and Bushes......an Obama?

That will really piss off the good ol' boys.:D

I like the way the first names sound as well:
Richard
Gerald
Jimmy
Ronald
George
Bill
George
Barack