At some point, I'm sure, Jimbo is going to insist that we take this to [[talk:abortion]] -- but, to answer Christopher's question,

"Why should the state have this much say in what goes on inside someone's body? Where do we draw the line?"

If it were legally established that inside *your* body was another living, breathing human being with "personhood" and a "right to life", then you would have a degree of responsibility to avoid killing it. On the other hand, you could not be forced endure a process with an unacceptably high risk of killing *you* either.

It all hinges on whether a fetus is a "human being". Luckily for me, I have no axe to grind on this point. So I consider myself the ideal editor for a writing project aiming at creating a series of neutral (NPOV) articles on the topic.

In fact, the only obstacle I can see is that I might (as the Cunctator suggests) have too high an opinion of my own "neutrality". But since more people come running to me for mediation than to any other contributor, I guess I'll have to do it :-)

Modestly,

Ed Poor