Mary Elizabeth Williams recently wrote at Salon that
when we try to act like a pregnancy doesn’t involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term, dancing around the issue trying to decide if there’s a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you’re born? Only when you’re viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb? … It seems absurd to suggest that the only thing that makes us fully human is the short ride out of some lady’s vagina. That distinction may apply neatly legally, but philosophically, surely we can do better.
If you are cheering on Ms. Williams as an articulate pro-life apologist, you would be mistaken. She is a card-carrying member in the pro-abortion cause. What makes her rather unique among her peers is that she admits “life begins at conception,” and yet also fully supports a woman’s right to kill that human being because “all life is not equal.”
Thinking to Believe 