I have blogged about abortion before.

My fellow bloggers have mocked me roundly in the past for trying to find the reasoned middle ground.

But there is no middle ground on abortion.

Either you believe that life begins at conception, or you don’t.

If you believe that life begins at conception, then abortion is, QED, MURDER.

And yet we have people who are willing to water down their pro-life position by allowing exceptions for rape and incest. So the human being will die becuase of what her father did or because her existence will impose psychological suffering to her mother.

Think about following that logic for a while. I’ll wait.

This is what Kerry said in the last debate: (Bold = Smallholder’s fisk)

SARAH DEGENHART: Senator Kerry, suppose you are speaking with a voter who believed abortion is murder and the voter asked for reassurance that his or her tax dollars would not go to support abortion, what would you say to that person?
KERRY: I would say to that person exactly what I will say to you right now.
First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins. I’m a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, leads me today.

Dear God ! Will some DNC staffer PUH-lease tell Kerry that his monomaniacal integration of Vietnam into every sentnce he utters has become a joke on Saturday Night Live! We all know you served in Vietnam. Really. We do.

First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins. I’m a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, leads me today.

So do you believe life begins at conception or what? Are you a good Catholic or a pick and choose Catholic?

But I can’t take what is an article of faith for me and legislate me and legislate it for someone who doesnv´t share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever. I can’t do that.

Um, yes, yes you can. We do it all the time. You don’t turn a blind eye to murder just because some people’s religion does not believe it is murder. Is it wrong to hunt down and kill terrorists, who simply, on religious grounds, believe that beheading helpless hostages is a moral good? If someone is committing what YOU believe to be murder, you MUST act to stop the act - it’s not just about “can or can’t.” If you can prevent a murder, inaction is not a moral course of action.

Am I wrong here? Someone tell me why I’m wrong.

Did I ever mention that I am the high priest of Maximumleaderology? As part of our religious doctrine, we feast on the flesh of ritually slaughtered homeless people. We don’t believe that it is murder if your motivations are pure. I’m glad to know that Kerry is unwilling to impose his religious beliefs on me and respects our difference of opinion.

Sometimes I long for the moral clarity of the British Raj.

When a Hindu delegation protested to the Viceroy that the British were interferring with their culture by preventing sutti, the British leader responded that Britain did respect the Hindu culture, but “our culture says it is wrong to burn women alive. And our culture imposes the death penalty on murderers. So go ahead and build your funeral pyres. We will build our gallows. After you are done practicing your culture, we will practice ours.”