One of the reasons I was avoiding the word "murder," Beccy -- it has a connotation of wrongness that is derived from the situation and the point of view of people involved. "Killing" is an action, "murder" is an opinion.   

Paul is not my favorite, either. He's right up there with Augustine. Both were passionately anti-female; unfortunately both have had a bigger say on the way Christianity has been practiced through the ages than almost anyone else. Paul preached mutual respect, but not mutual submission -- men were to submit to God and women were to submit to men. It creates a heirarchy that places women at the bottom (well, above children.) My beef with organized Christianity overall has generally been that after about the year 27 AD, it ceased to bear any relation to the message of Jesus. Jesus was somewhat of a radical feminist for the time. (Much like Mohammed, but his followers tend to ignore him on that subject, too.)

I totally agree with your point of view on marriage, BTW. It's just not what the Fundies and literal interpretationists are preaching, and many women live under those circumstances.   Buffered, fortunately, by secular law in this country, and I personally think it's important to keep that distinction between law and voluntary custom.

"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. "\

But where to draw the line of protection and how? Vegans extend the concept of personhood to most animals and won't eat them or use them to create food. It's a degree of selection, because even vegans kill cockroaches, right? Whereever you draw the line of protection, you are making it based on your personal sense of rightness.

You're quite right in that the argument of reason is difficult when dealing with a human is essentially a mental vegetable. But when dealing with the opinion of "murder," you will find very few people who would advocate them as fair game. In this example, there is a general concensus of opinion that is is a wrong killing, and therefore murder. There is little or no controversy; society has included them as protected by general acclaim.

I suspect that neither one of us is going to budge on this subject. But, as Blackmun says, if so many theologians and philosphers and people cannot agree on the rightness or wrongness of an issue, is it the place of the government to assert an opinion and enforce it on everyone?