And I know you know the difference between an embryo/fetus and a living child. You aren’t as clueless as you’re making yourself sound

Cows are killed and I get a steak.

One thing, though: there is a difference between the situation of a woman who wants her pregnancy and one who doesn’t. Your example of battery involves someone who wants her pregnancy.

It’s as if someone battered another and broke their beautiful table… the table being broken has value to the one being battered, so it definitely counts.

However, if the person who has a table in this previous example goes and throws this table to the curb because it has no value to her, that’s fine. An unwanted table is unwanted–same as an unwanted pregnancy. Yet the pregnancy carries far greater risk of complications.

And thus, it must be her choice. Anti-abortion laws make no room for choice, and that’s why they should be opposed.

While depraved, your position is consistent at least. If the unborn aren’t people, then abortion must be considered a basic freedom.

And yes, I bluntly declare the position you stated as depraved. By the measure you stated it would be perfectly acceptable to kill a baby in the last hours before birth and it would be only simple battery were someone to beat a late term pregnant woman and cause her to miscarry.

But perhaps you misspoke yourself.

The idea that a fetus is a child originated with a goal, just like every idea does. That goal was to place women as the means of reproduction, i.e., baby-making machines, in a society that would extend these reproductive responsibilities to rearing the child and socializing it for entry into society in a way that even schools cannot.

Modern capitalism’s “nuclear family” fetishized the “woman-as-child-rearer” and deprived her of basic rights, including rights over her own body. The mythology of the fetus being a child has always been a central focal point of that strategy. It’s time to toss this idea onto the trash-heap of history.

But, in any case, why do you believe it is women’s right to kill their unborn children for any or no reason at all?

Open-heart surgery, bone-marrow biopsies, and breast cancer mastectomies look awful, too.

If cows could vote, they would vote not to be slaughtered, too. What makes a human life more valuable than other animals’ lives?

Jane writes, “I pray that every child conceived is a wanted child. And…I pray that abortion remains a safe option for women in trouble.”

The campaigns against abortion rights are not based on whether the child is “wanted” or not or whether a woman is “in trouble” or not. Who determines that, anyway? Some judge who’s meeting this woman for the first time? Laws are stiff things. Even if you are on the fence about the issue…you are on the side of Roe vs. Wade, because anti-abortion laws ain’t gonna protect women one bit.

This is what a lot of younger women aren’t seeing, according to Nicki…am I right?

In 1973 you would have undergone essentially – modified for relative levels / advances of medical care – the same procedure to abort the child. There has never been a ban on truly medically necessary – defined as physical need – abortions. Nor is there any significant move today to change that.