It's been a couple of days, but I do owe The Snail a reply.(yesterday was just too broken up to allow me to sit and compose properly...and there were other posts which referred to both MY posts and his.

The issue seems to be my contention that, in the case of abortion...since no absolute authority & proof of "God's Will" can be established, the law should allow individual preferences to be the deciding factor.

The Snail said:
"The anti-abortionists sincerely believe that a zygote is a human being. From that point of view they have every right, even a duty, to intervene.You can try to persuade them that they are mistaken but you can't tell them to mind their own business."

I really DO see what you are getting at, but I am going to pick on the phrasing. Indeed *I* have no standing to officially tell them "to mind their own business", although *I* can try to persuade them otherwise. But, since you are correct that they DO see themselves as obligated to "intervene", there needs to be some mechanism to decide whether they can or not, and what should be done when they attempt this.
There are many, many issues in which groups with moral absolutes feel obligated to press their point, even when their point is not supported in law. One obvious example is PETA.
There are various things to consider in deciding HOW the efforts of special interest groups like this should be treated...especially when they are angling to get their position embedded in the law of the land. Right now, the 'basic' law on abortion, Roe V. Wade, does say that the wishes of the immediate parties concerned are paramount.....(in other words, the 'implicit' answer is that others SHOULD "mind their own business")

Now...the 'others' wish to make the issue a matter of just getting more conservative judges on the courts and thus making a subjective, religiously based, moral position the law of the land.

Is this accurate so far?

To me, this should not BE an issue that can swing back & forth every few decades, depending on who can muster the most emotionally charged votes and political clout....which is why I referred to the notion of stare decisis. It makes no sense to allow anyone...even a minority, to have their personal beliefs controlled by the inner workings of a basically religious doctrine. I am advocating a law...even a Constitutional amendment...that removes certain issues from being batted back & forth like a shuttlecock...and makes 'personal' issues like sexual orientation--(not all 'behavior'...just orientation) and like the control of the destiny of a fetus, immune from oversight by other parties whose ultimate justification is the varied interpretation of unproven claims about the presumed wishes of some ambiguous Supreme Being. (wow...you have to begin talking like a lawyer in order to MAKE some points)


And, to answer the claim that practitioners of genocide could ALSO claim that they were acting in good faith because they "considered members of group B to be sub-human.."....I can only shake my head at the stretching of definitions that lets anyone even suggest that the status of a fetus is comparable to that of a group of living humans who can talk, argue and be objectively shown to have as much 'humanity' as their oppressors.

I could go off on tangents showing how Aristotle, Kant and others have argued that 'some' moral principles can be defended by logic alone...but that is really too complex to get into here, except to say that we DO use some of those philosophic principles everyday to do things like tell the kids, "don't hit Johnny...how would you like it if he did that to you?"....The point being, no one tells someone opposed to abortion that they must have one..(and if there are cases of this, I'm am opposed to it!)...so no one should make a general law that those who view abortion as sad, but sometimes the best course, cannot ever utilize it.


I HOPE I answered the relevant points of what was asked of me.