[A Navy Vet]

"It is our job as a society to decide when the prudent time to grant rights is."

Therein lies the reason you will never understand the fetus versus host (mother) issue. Societies nor governments of those societies GRANT rights. Rights are inherent in human beings...and the right to exist is probably the most germaine to this issue.

[donh]

Then why can't a 5 year old exercise his religeous freedom and attend the Church of Satan? Or leave home and become a prostitute in Holland? You are right. I completely don't understand how people can make arguments for fetal rights with a straight face. What makes a person a citizen is his or her ability to exercise moral judgement competently. And his rights improve as his ability to do so improves. This is obviously true by simple observation, in every other rhelm of the law, just as it obviously should be, and nobody raises a fuss about it, except in this venue, where some people want to substitute different criteria about what's "natural" or "biological" or "sacred". This is plainly a bad idea, and it continuously astonishes me that it has modern adherents.