Smug

I've been smugly telling people that I voted already, having sent in my absentee ballot a while back.

Imagine my surprise when I came home and noticed the envelope sitting by the door.  Oops.  Need to drop that off tomorrow.

Love the season.  Both candidates want to kill babies, apparently.  Obama want to kill them in utero.  McCain wants to kill them in Iraq.  Bleh.  The closer the election, the more strident the rhetoric.

One thing that did resonate with me was something which hasn't been discussed much:  abortion.  On Monday's Fresh Air, Dave Davies interviewed former Washington Post journalist and current journalism professor at UC Berkeley, Cynthia Gorney: Parsing the Politics of Abortion.  The revelatory nature of the interview was the reality of the pro-life movement's "true believers."

OK, just to think it through, some people believe that human life unequivocally begins at the moment of conception.  Thus abortion is murder.  And that's a hard line.  An embryo is the same as a two-year-old.  Rape or incest?  Since one wouldn't kill a child of rape or incest, their abortion shouldn't be legal either.  It's logically consistant but not what the vast majority of citizens believe, I think.  This was brought up in this context because Sarah (with-an-h) Palin is a "true believer."  No exceptions for rape or incest.  Only if the life of the mother is physically threatened (not emotionally) is abortion justified.

It's an outlying viewpoint.  I think if this was the classic "life begins at conception" viewpoint, not many people would view themselves as pro-life.

I'm not 100% clear on exception when the mother's life is threatend.  Would you sanction killing a two-year-old boy to save his mother?

This is a complex ethical question.  I can't help but think that abortion is a highly personal matter.  And that as a society, we should do everything in our power to make it unnecessary.  But illegal?  Doesn't sit right with me.