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/* Hi, Philip II */
My own difficulty with the argument you're making at the moment is that the State draws distinctions between things all the time. ''This much'' is larceny, ''that much'' is theft. ''This much'' marijuana is trafficking and illegal, ''that much'' is personal use and ok. ''This'' is murder, ''that'' is vehicular manslaughter, and ''that other one'' is negligent homicide and barely a crime. So no, I don't think it's logically inevitable that since a fetus ''could'' be a baby, it ''must'' be treated like a baby, and therefore since the State prohibits murder it must prohibit abortion. The State doesn't treat all crimes equally, and in fact it can look at two events that, boiled down to their essences, are identical and still make a distinction between the two. [[User:Aziraphale|Aziraphale]] 14:00, 27 September 2008 (EDT) ''<-using up my italics quota for the month...''
: I don't believe that I've said that a government is not able to define a cut-off point. Rather, I've said (or implied) that there is no obvious cut-off point that stands up to scrutiny, and that any cut-off point the government decides on is de-facto approval of abortions before that cut-off point. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 00:54, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
::Well, no, you didn't explicitly say that... and now I feel like we're getting down to the inevitable hair-splitting phase of any abortion discussion... but what I did take your argument to mean was that you didn't feel there was any meaningful way to determine where the cutoff should be and, therefore, a cutoff cannot be reasonably established and, double therefore (although you don't strike me as a "double therefore" kinda guy), abortion should illegal from conception.
::My response to what I think you're saying is (unfortunately repetitively) that I don't intuitively accept that a fetus is a baby from conception, but I don't know when it *is* one, and one reason I'm not in politics or law is precisely because I don't think I should be called upon to rule on when a fetus is a baby. The fact that it's hard to imagine most politicians making that sort of judgment merely buttresses my despair of politics in this day and age.
::One specific point, regarding "standing up to scrutiny": that's one of the key reasons I think the abortion question will never be settled. Whose scrutiny? [[User:Aziraphale|Aziraphale]] 13:30, 29 September 2008 (EDT)
==Drugs==
