Word: fetus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When liberals and conservatives disagree over welfare, compromise is possible because no fundamental principle is at stake. Abortion is different. Is a fetus a human life? If you believe it isn't, a world of social policy possibilities opens up before you. If you believe it is and you don't scoff at the sanctity of human life, you are in a quandary...
Though decidedly pro-choice myself, I have always understood hard-core pro-lifers. My beliefs tell me that the fetus is more than a heap of placental tissue but by no means a full human life. Therefore, I have the luxury of supporting mothers' "reproductive freedom" and a woman's right to choose...
...PREGNANT WOMEN should avoid tobacco smoke--their own and other people's. The fumes can pass toxic compounds to the fetus, which may ultimately trigger childhood leukemia or other cancers...
Perhaps you believe, as do many pro-choicers, that the fetus should be relegated to sub-human status because he is very different from the rest of us. You might claim, for example, that since he is much smaller than we are and his physical features are still underdeveloped, he is not human. Yet by that logic neither is a six-month old baby. Or maybe you maintain that because she does not take in food and oxygen through her mouth, she is not human. Yet if that is the case then a hospitalized person who takes in food intravenously...
...many pro-choicers concede that the fetus is a human being and argue that some people should simply be put out of their prospective misery, like a horse with a broken leg. You seem to espouse this view: "What if the fetus is retarded or plagued with the Epstein-Barr Syndrome--should the child be forced to live an unpleasant life?" Your concern for the future happiness of the fetus is most touching. However, your position flagrantly violates the principle of individual liberty. Nobody--not the chancellor of one's Reichstag, nor the general secretary of one's Supreme Soviet...