God bless the Mudcat Cafe! Every time this topic came up at my favorite 'Net watering hole during the 90s, it could turn pretty acrimonious. Of course this was on a message sub-board entitled "Other Debates and Insults," so whaddaya expect? But 'Catters again prove what a high-class operation this is. Good, thoughtful words and feelings, one and all.

I agree that none of us are probably going to change each other's minds on this one, so I'm not going to join too much in the rest of the discussion that's been going on, except to note that I'm essentially pro-choice. Not of the "abortion is good, abortion should be seen as mundane birth control" sort, but more of the the "abortion needs to be safe and legal because the alternative is even worse" sort. My wife and I having gone through a miscarriage of an unexpected but very, very wanted baby four months ago, I find a cavalier attitude toward unborn life unsettling (and in reference to other threads, don't assume that it's because of any particular spiritual beliefs--I'd feel this way even when wearing my "atheist cap"). But I understand that there are circumstances where it's the only sane, humane choice. I've known far too many women where that's been the case to believe otherwise.

As recent miscarriage survivors (don't know of any other way to put it), I also have absolutely no interest in visiting an anti-abortion website with graphic abortion pictures. That hits far too close to home. Thanks for all the research effort, mjm, but no thanks.

What I do want to contribute is this: like it or not, I think the Supreme Court was quite right in striking down this particular law. It's a bad law--a badly-, vaguely- and poorly-written law. And I think that was deliberate. The Court struck it down becuase its language was so incredibly vague and most importantly, nonmedical and nontechnical, that it could easily be interpreted as banning not only D&X ("partial birth") abortions, but also the much more routine and earlier D&E abortions. I'm convinced that the vagueness of the language was deliberate. The framers of this law were not honest: they tried to present it as a partial-birth bill, when in fact their agenda, and the agenda of this law, is to ban all abortions, or as many as possible. This makes the Nebraska law unconstitutionally vague.

President Clinton has repeatedly stated that he would support and sign a partial-birth bill that banned only partial-birth procedures and included an out for life and health of the mother (the only circumstances under which I think a D&X should be allowed). And this is one instance where I believe that Mr. Too-Square-To-Inhale Dork Boy is actually telling the truth. But the authors of these laws don't want consensus, or any legal abortions at all, really. It's their way or the highway. And this intransigence (found on both sides of the abortion debate, really), only makes the whole tone of national discussion on abortion more angry and difficult, and leaves far too many people still suffering.

Chris