NicoleC,
Thanks for keeping it mellow. I hate being shouted at. As for St. Paul, no one ever said he had a winsome personality.

Aloise Buckley Heath once said, "St. Paul is not my favorite saint, and I can't think why God didn't either fell him to the ground a great deal harder than He did or else set him to preaching, not Christianity but Judaism, which would have driven absolute hordes of Jews into the arms of the Church."

Since we're on good old Paul, here... following the passage you quoted:

"Ephesians 5.22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing."
Paul continues in Ephesians 5:25 "Husbands, love your wies, as Christ also loved the Church..." Ephesians 5:28 So also ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. (29) He that loveth his wife loveth himself, for no man ever hateth his own flesh, but nourisheth it and cherisheth it. (31) For this cause shall a man cleave to his wife. Let everone of you love his wife as himself."

Granted, Paul was not a real charmer, and I don't recall ever reading anything about a Mrs. St. Paul (for good reason) but he did make an effort to explain a man's responsibility toward his wife. Mutual submission and respect(Read: putting each other first)echos the bilateral nature of healthy human relationships. Partnership is a profound mystery.

Paul (as I'm not Catholic, I don't normally refer to him as St. Paul) is a favorite of people who dislike Christianity 'cause of his not-so-gentle approach. However, I think it is important to take the comments into context along with Christ's message of equality (which any Christian will agree trumps good old Paul.)

Back to the abortion issue: You said that you would consider the war in Iraq a massive unnecessary killing. I say the same of abortion.

You also say, "It's a nebulous sense of "personhood." We think that's it's wrong to eat a cat, for example, because we have socially granted it a sense of personhood above and beyond the fact it is not human.

To me, an unborn baby is not a person. It does not reason (IMO). It does not act in ways which transcend instinctual need. Cats reason. Dolphins and whales reason. Elephants reason. In my sense of personhood, I include those species for the same reason I would exclude unborn babies."

Because of the very nebulous sense of personhood to which you attribute your support of legal abortion, I think it important to extend the protection that we would to someone who does reason to the being which cannot. I would no more end the life of someone who has become severly disabled than I would that of an unborn baby.

You also said:
"It's that point at which the notion that abortion is wrong merely because it is killing falls apart. There has to be some other distinction, in our society, of why this should be a "wrong" kind of killing."

To this, I say there is a difference between killing and murder. We go back to the sometimes unavoidable killing of another in self-defense. We agree that is not murder, right? Murder is done with premeditation, malice afore-thought or of passion. A crime of passion is a crime nonetheless. IMO, that puts abortion in the category of murder. Donc, we are left where we started. To paraphrase, if you already believe, there is no proof necessary. If you do not believe, there is no proof sufficient.

Thanks for discussin' Nicole. Your good wishes shall be passed along to Arfus.