I've heard it enough

I've finally heard it one too many times, and I have to write about it and vent my frustrations. For several years I've shied away from discussing the abortion issue, because of its divisiveness. If I do discuss it, it is usually in private conversations, or I just don't take sides and I point out a few inconsistencies here and there in one argument or another. But I am officially tired of pro-choice democrats, constantly, habitually taking for granted that an unborn baby is not human. I mean what kind of world have we come to, when large portions of the population not only doubt the humanity of a growing creature inside its mother's womb, but take it for GRANTED that the creature cannot be qualified with homo0sapiens. It boggles my mind. It is an all-out assumption with no scientific evidence whatsoever and absolutely no compelling philosophical reasoning that I've ever heard of.

Here's where the dilemma lies: we have yet to conclusively define what it is to be truly "human." It's something a scientist cannot tell us, because all they can give us is their own biological classifications (all of which, I believe, are blaringly present in an unborn child). They can tell us how many chromosomes are in human DNA, what the composition of human cells and tissues are like, and how many eyeballs we should normally have, but that doesn't really get us any closer to the question of what is human? So pro-choicers have sidestepped biology and have gone to strictly philosophical ideas. But the only philosophical idea I've ever heard them land on is "a woman's right to choose."

Double-take.

Head-cocked.

What happened to the humanity question? Is an unborn child human or not? What is it that makes us human? Don't all humans have unalienable rights?

So let's say that to be human is... to be capable of rational thought? Unborn babies are not capable of rational thought, therefore they are not human. Of course, it would strictly follow that newborn babies would suffer the same classification, along with several mentally handicapped individuals, comatose patients and maybe those with Alzheimers and other mental diseases.

Okay, let's try again...

To be human is... to have a soul? And everyone knows that humans don't receive their souls until the baby is ready to be born... uh...

Okay, one more...

To be human is... to be self-aware? (See comments on the "rational thought" hypothesis)

Maybe someone has some ideas somewhere, but I would badly, desperately like to hear those ideas before skipping ahead to the women's rights issue. Because I will support women's rights wholeheartedly, but human rights trumps it. If unborn babies are human (again, a question pro-choicers seem unwilling to explain, debate or consider), then according to the Bill of Rights of the United States of America, they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, including, but not limited to, the right to life. It makes me angry that so many americans are willing to ignore these questions, and it drives me nuts that a democrat could dare to hold their pro-choiceness over anyone.

I heard this lady on tv, scornfully saying that John McCain was against a woman's right to choose, as if everyone knows that a woman has a right to kill a creature that is living inside her body if she wants to, regardless of whether that creature is human or just some tissue that will later become human upon emerging from said body, because that question isn't really important...

Double-take.

Cocked-head.

What?

Debate

I'm watching this debate with the democratic candidates and they're on the subject of health care. I must confess that I don't really understand. Because Clinton and Edwards were talking about their plans and representing them as "universal health care" plans. They vaunt their position with nice phrases like "leaving no one out" and "Everybody will be covered." But the way they were talking about it, when they mentioned the specifics, it sounded to me like it wasn't so much universal health care as universal health insurance. Meaning: everybody will be covered, because heatlh insurance will be mandatory. Obviously, this would require making said insurance affordable. I guess I'm just confused, but that seems to me like it's a little more friendly with the insurance companies, and I don't like the long-term implications. It seems like muddling together government policy and insurance could be scary, and could have even worse consequence than those we're facing already in leiu of the incredible monetary power the insurance and drug companies already hold in Washington. Obama, made a little more sense about it, but his opponents jumped down his throat about his plan not being "universal."

Maybe I'm just clueless about policy issues like this, and maybe I'm especially clueless about how people really get things done in Washington, if such a thing is actually possible. Making real changes: it's something every candidate claims he/she will do, but I don't trust a one of them. Everyone bragging about their record and then picking apart that of their opponents: it all just gets tiring. It's uncomfortable watching the candidates rip each other apart for little details that they think exemplify the entire character of their opponents or theirselves.