Here is where I KILL BILL and engage in a little hypothetical hypocrisy, and somehow, get the last word.

I have to get the unfortunate Bill out of the way first. I will miss him, but he has to go. First off, its just not cricket to use your own, special, made-up scenario to make your point. If the unborn were given human rights, the government still wouldn't have the right to make you donate time and kidneys to the dying Bill because hardly anyone requires the use of someone else's organs to live whereas every human being who ever existed required the act of conception and the process of pregnancy to live. It is the one and ONLY way to achieve life. The luckless Bill had a chance at life already; in a way that millions of babies a year will never have.

I said in my last post: "Leaving aside one's personal feelings for the male gender in general, this cannot be viewed as fair or just, i.e one gender having to submit his reproductive will to the arbitrariness of the other's."

You said: "I agree, it's not fair. Life isn't fair. Nature isn't fair. But it is what it is. For a very, very long time now, women have had to submit their reproductive will to the arbitrariness of men's will - fathers, husbands, doctors - and it wasn't fair. But it was what it was, an accepted part of life, for hundreds of years. It is only because we have moved away from that forced dependency that these issues have surfaced and created friction. It is less about the viability of life or the rights of a fetus than it is about who has "control".

I take this to mean that since Life and Nature aren't fair, it sucks to be an unwanted fetus. You also seem to see the abortion issue as one of control, that somehow men would again gain some kind of control over women if abortion became illegal. It is hard to see it that way because women engage in sexual intercourse today without being married, without parental consent and pretty much on their own terms, barring any circumstantial displays of courtesy to their sperm donor. How would it be different if abortion were illegal? Men would only have as much say in the situation as a women and they would have to pay child support. Both men and women should have equal reproductive rights, and these should be utilized before pregnancy. Why should a baby be destroyed because his or her parents were careless, or selfish, or inebriated? We can't make up for the male oppression of women by becoming the opppressors of our own children.

The only thing that every human being on the face of the earth has in common is the fact of their conception and birth. This fundamental equality, from which all of our unalienable rights spring, is only visible at this time. Once we are born, we are susceptible to all the curses and blessings of the human race, but we can base all of our rights firmly in the fact that were were all created equal.

Achieving true equality is an ongoing process, but the one definitive fact is that you cannot have equality without life. Pregnant women have their life. Aborted babies do not.

You say something else that I have to take exception to which was that "abortion is not predicated on the idea of feti being "useless". Of course it is. If it were known that an incestuously raped, crackhead mother's severely handicapped baby was going to be born and cure AIDS upon his birth, you can bet your sweet candy that no one would allow that woman to have an abortion. If we, as a mob, had to keep that woman comotose so that baby could be born, don't you think we would? OK. I am a bad girl. I detest impossible hypotheticals and sure enough I used one shamelessly :-) This paragraph is far outside the realm of the equal rights debate, but I just wanted to point out that babies are aborted because they are not wanted for one reason or another. You can't say that a baby who is aborted because they are deformed is wanted. They might have been wanted if they were normal, but they are not wanted as they are. If their parents truly wanted them, they would have them deformities or no.

I have to say that the feminist, pro-choice movement is so rooted in ideology and organizations that they have forgotten what they were organized for. I feel that as long as abortion is legal, women ought to be better informed as to the decision they are making. Right now, the focus of the pro-choice movement is more about retention and less about actual choice. No feminist likes my opinion or wants to hear about it and I'm as good a candidate for political view as any of the hysterically rabid feminists out there. Probably more so because I haven't had a knee-jerk reaction to the pro-life argument. You can't win for trying in the feminist movement unless you are pro-choice. I have heard religious pro-life women castigated for their stand because they had never had to deal with an unplanned pregnancy. Well baby, I'm not religious, but boy have I had to deal.

Somehow, this doesn't resonate with feminists. I always get thrown scenarios that are designed to make me happy that women who've regretted their choice once it was done, chose an abortion, like: what if the baby were deformed? Or what if she weren't able to have a career? I got news: None of that matters if you feel like a murderer.