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As I have come to respect you.

As to the Homeland, I agree. Smacks of fer Fatherland.

On the moderate pro-lifer - I admit my dilemma. Emotionally, I would prefer to be a hard line prolifer.

Lacking the "luxury" of divine guidance, the best I can rely on is an intuitive understanding that life must begin awful darn early, but the mitigating circumstances of rape victims, incest victims, and the idea of my wife in a crisis pregnancy haunt me.

Further, given the extremely unique nature of pregnancy, I shudder at the police state tactics necessary to enforce a law against all abortions - pregnancy tests for all women vacationing outside the U.S., investigations of every miscarriage, govt access to medical records...

Please believe me when I say I have and do struggle with this issue mightily.

I hope you understand I have publicly admitted a true weakness that I struggle with and am trying to resolve. I count myself an ally to pro-lifers, but when it becomes such an obsession that it dominates every non-related issue, it drives me away.

Hope you can respect that.

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I do understand that your mental struggle derives from an instinctive reverence for liberty. Because I know you are a logical and systematic thinker, I hope you'll come to see that the rape and incest "carveouts" are bogus -- red herrings intended to appeal to atavistic revulsion, while drawing attention away from the central question: either human life has inalienable rights, or else it does not; either all of us enjoy this right, or else one does.

I have hopes for you because I'm pretty sure you're not interested in the "might makes right" arguments that we see all around us these days.

Best wishes.