I don't frequent the fray, so I don't really know how well I'll keep up with any responses here, but I had a few things that I really felt I had to say. I'll do my best to keep up with any following comments.

The first is about the South Dakota law. Everybody is so fixated on the term 'human being' that they gloss right over the 'whole, separate, unique' part. Granted, I am not my baby and my baby is not me, but for the first nine months we are inseparable. If the fetus truly is a whole and seperate human being, then what does it need to be in the womb so long for? A four-week-old embryo lacks a head, body, arms, legs, and internal organs. It is only alive because of the safe environment and nutrients provided by the mother's body. Yet this is supposedly a whole and separate human being?

Anybody should be able to see that this is rediculous. A baby is neither a whole nor a seperate human being until it is finished gestating. Until then, it has the potential to turn into a whole and seperate human being, much the same way that a bowl of cake batter has the potential to turn into a cake.

The other is about the unspoken assumption that all abortions are performed because the baby is unwanted, when so many times that is nowhere near the case. For a heartbreaking account of this, please read here: <link>

The sad truth is that if you outlaw abortion, even those women carrying a child that couldn't possibly survive outside the womb, or with a myriad of other health complications or problems, would be denied access to this procedure. Would you doom both babies with twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome to die, when an abortion could save the life of one of them? Or would you force a woman to carry to term and deliver a stillborn baby with anencephaly when she could have had an abortion at 12 weeks, when it was first discovered that the fetus had no brain?

Something to think about.