"This time she drew gasps from the crowd. She insisted that opponents of abortion were sincere in their religious faith and deserved a more respectful hearing from pro-choicers."

That's a step in the right direction, but what Mrs. Clinton and other pro-choicers need to wrap their minds around is the fact that opposition to abortion is not necessarily religious. It is tied to or derived from religion for most perhaps, but there are a growing number of atheists and agnostics who are pro-life, as well as theists who are pro-life on other or additional grounds. Dr. Bernard Nathanson was one such, and Nat Hentoff is another. Speaking for myself, my own religious beliefs were exactly the same when I was fanatically pro-choice as they are now. We don't believe that a fetus is a human being because we believe in Transubstantiation. We believe a fetus is human because we believe in the facts of embryology, which are increasingly pointing in that direction. Even by the definitions the Supreme Court used in Roe vs. Wade, the point of viability is getting ever earlier, thanks to medical advances since then. We don't believe that abortion is a sin in the way that an Orthodox Jew believes that eating pork is a sin. We believe that abortion (in most cases or after the earliest stages of a pregnancy, anyway) is a sin in the way that the most die-hard atheist believes that murder is a sin. The bumper-sticker "Don't Like Abortion, Don't Have One" is as silly as "Don't Like Slavery, Don't Own A Slave" or "Don't Like Sodomy Laws, Don't Enforce One". Pro-choicers need to at least grasp what it is that they are disagreeing with.

One day, on abortion, we're all going to face a difficult question: if technology reaches a point where a child can be removed from the womb only a few weeks after conception and grown to viability outside of a woman's body, what should the laws on abortion be then?

It's not a joke. We may see such in our lifetimes, and our children almost certainly will.

It's not clear that either pro-choicers or pro-lifers will like the answers most people favor to such a question.

Anyway: Sully is quite insightful on Senator Clinton. But I may only say that because I've thought all the same things myself.

I'm not at all convinced that Hillary-hate has enough legs anymore to scuttle her candidacy.

It strikes me that if a woman can give up an unwanted child without killing it, it borders on involuntary servitude to force her to care for it. If, as the pro-life argument goes, there is no moral distinction between a fetus and an infant, then why shouldn't a fetus also be allowed to be surrendered for adoption? (Womb-to-womb transfers complicate things further, of course....)

As to HRC, I agree with you Dean about the tiredness of the Hillary hate machine. If anything it will help her candidacy.

Independent bloggers, however, have not yet had a crack at the terrorist pardons (and the sale of pardons to rich criminals) -- the investigation of which was aborted in the interest of "harmony." William Safire (hardly a hatemonger) argued that Bush should have pardoned Bill and Hillary, but this was never done because the Dems threatened to go ballistic. (Not much of a blogosphere in those days, heh?) Considering Kerry's largely unsuccessful battle over his Vietnam-era conduct, I think Hillary will have her hands full unless independent bloggers are neutralized, discredited, or liquidated before the campaign gets in full swing.

Hillary Clinton is the only Democratic politician whom I really fear. If, as is likely, she successfully positions herself as a "centrist", then she can easily make her more vocal opponents look like moonbats.

You are quite tight that it would be involuntary servitude to force a woman to nurture a baby she does not want if another alternative is available. And, conversely, if such an alternative was available, abortion would more unmistakably be murder, there would be no excuse for continuing the practice. Then, we could separate the adherents on each side into those acting in good faith vs. those acting on behalf on some less savory agenda. The genuine pro-lifers would be clearly distinguished from those who really do want to to keep women "barefoot and pregnant", as pro-lifers are always accused of advocating. And pro-choicers who really want abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare" would be distinguished from those who may use that as a slogan during elections but who, for whatever un-Godly reason, are really addicted to the grisly process itself. I'm confident that the latter types in each camp are a minority, however.

I must mention that somebody wrote a science fiction novel a while back, Solomon's Knife, about a near future in which such a technology becomes a reality, and its implications for the abortion controversy. I'll have to look for it. Another book on my to-resd list.