>"liberal republican Goldwater"

I think that would be an idiosyncratic view of Goldwater's politics, to say the least...

*The GOP don't lose on social issues as their values are intrinsically beneficial to society.*

Oh yeah, Hallelujah lol. Deny kids proper sex education, just
make them sign a pledge. Next, if they make a mistake, which
is common amongst teenagers, they land up pregnant, no education,
no job, pretty well destitute, trying to raise the kid without
money to do so. Yet another statistic in the slums.

How this is "intrinsically beneficial" to society, you will
have to explain.

Let's face it. Santorum, Romney and Gingrich a like the three stooges. God help us(oops!)if one of them gets in as president. That will encourage all the cookoo's here to get on the bandwagon. Rev Nile will rejoice, halaleulah! If it wasnt so serious, it would be hilarious.

Once again, Jocelynne shows an ideologue’s incapacity to understand a different point of view.

IF a foetus is a person, it has all the rights and is entitled to all the protections of a person. It is no more tenable to kill a foetus than a child. The child’s rights are not contingent, so even a child who is a product of rape has a right to live. And if the welfare of a mother is threatened by her pregnancy, the interests of both must be taken into account when medical procedures are considered. The child’s personhood does not bring women’s personhood into question, but it does raise questions about the extent to which the mother’s personhood should be prioritised over the child’s.

Jocelynne’s main arguments against the personhood of the foetus are arguments from consequences, and logically unsound. The personhood of the child threatens the autonomy of the mother; medical treatment to protect the child could harm the mother; certain contraceptive techniques could be rendered illegal or at least considered immoral if they destroy a foetus. These may all be true, and all be undesirable, but if a foetus really is fully a person then they are inescapable moral quandaries.

In fact, I do not agree that a foetus is a “person”. Personhood is bound up in self-awareness, the capacity to survive independently, the ability to think and feel and love and know one has a future and a past. It has no clear beginning, and that inevitably makes arguments about abortion complex and imprecise. In my view, this is reflected in our reluctance to endorse late-term abortions except when medically necessary, and almost universal rejection of utilitarian ethicist Peter Singer’s contention that it can be morally acceptable to kill an infant if it is in the interests of the parents.

So while I am pro-choice, I also respect and try to understand the strong moral sense that leads others to take a different view.

I agree Rhian.
I am not sure if I could ever have an abortion myself, but I would not presume to make a decision about abortion for someone else.

Aside from the argument about whether a foetus is a 'person' or not, just how would anti-abortion advocates suggest we should 'enforce' an illegal abortion law?

Would we tie the pregnant woman to a bed until she delivers her baby, so she can't 'escape' and secure an illegal abortion?
I have no doubt that some very religious men would be comfortable with this...

Would we force a mentally or physically ill woman to go to term if it threatened her life, or would that just happen with 'well' women?
So, forcing a woman who is well able to think for herself to do something she is passionately against is ok then?

Do we really want to go back to the 'good-ol-Godfearing-days' when women accepted any pregnancy as 'given to them as a gift from God', no matter how many she already has, or whether she can feed them all or not?
Because if we allow the mainly male parliament to take away a woman's right to choose abortion or not, you can be sure contraception will be next...

No matter which way the religious try to distort the language,
a zygote is not a person. A person has a human brain, a zygote/fetus
does not. No functioning human brain = no person, deal with it.