And one of the nicest I've received in my blogging life — thank you.

And that is one of the reasons I tell my experience when an appropriate context arises. Of course, the people who usually are moved by my experience to see the importance of government staying out of private and personal individual and family decisions are usually the ones who already recognized that importance. Sad, but true.

I have been following your touching commentary without saying much.

First, and I have commented in the past, I am so happy for you that you have finally been blessed with a lovely daughter.

The more I read accounts such as yours, the more I am convinced that (as is the subject of this post) the Church should stay out of the affairs of government, and the government should stay out of the most private, personal affairs of the people. And I do understand that crimes are committed under such circumstances, but a woman deciding about affairs of her own body is certainly not a criminal act.

It has nothing to do with medical science. It has to do with our (my ex-husband's and my) moral and ethical values and also with what we felt our hearts could bear.

My first child was born with Tay-Sachs and died at the age of 3. Between the time she was diagnosed in May 1987, and the end of 1988, my then-husband and I tried several times to have another, healthy child. Since we knew there was a 25% chance with every pregnancy that the fetus would have Tay-Sachs, prenatal testing was an absolute necessity. There were a couple of times I miscarried before I could even be tested, and then there were two pregnancies that I aborted because tests revealed in both cases the fetuses had Tay-Sachs. My now-20-year-old daughter was born on September 30, 1989. She, too, of course, was tested in utero, and found to be NOT Tay-Sachs-affected.

Obviously, the only reason that I chose to try for one healthy child — knowing as I did that there was a 1 in 4 chance that any fetus I conceived would have the same disease that my first daughter was born with — was because of the fact that abortion was a legal and readily available option. Had abortion been illegal or difficult or dangerous to obtain, I never.ever.ever. in a millions years would have tried to get pregnant again. It was only because I knew that I could end a Tay-Sachs-affected pregnancy that I took such a risk.

That is why I say that the legal option of abortion is the reason that my 20-year-old daughter is here on earth today.

Both our children were born perfectly healthy. I'm so sorry that you had to go through the agony of your first child passing away like that. That must have been very difficult.

When my wife was pregnant with our second child, we had a sonogram that really concerned our ob-gyn doctor. The measurements were “all wrong,” he said. He scheduled us for another sonogram the next day. What a long night it was as we cried over the prospect of having a severely deformed child. As it turned out, the technician who did the original sonogram had done it wrong, but if forced us to ask: Should we keep a child that is likely to be born with those kinds of disabilities? We decided that abortion was not an option.

I think this is the reason I respect former Gov. Sarah Palin. For are her faults – and they are legion – she and her husband had a Down's Syndrome child. Not everyone is cut-out to care for such a child, no question about it, but I do believe that there are others who through adoption can do so.

Please forgive me if these words come across as hurtful. It is not my intent to stand in judgment, only to “think outside the box” and see how we can come together as community to solve problems that are never simple. In that, we can all do better.

Also, since you shared those stories with me — one fictional and one real — I will share one real story with you. It's not really a story, because I've told it before, in this space. It's a statement of fact. If I had not been able to have those two abortions that I had, because in each case the fetus had the same fatal genetic condition that I watched my first child suffer and die from, I would not now have my 20-year-old daughter, who as I type this is on her way to my house from whence we will be traveling to our friends' house for Thanksgiving dinner.

So are you going to be the one to tell me my daughter should not have been born, or that it would have been better if she hadn't been?

“This is a tricky area, isn't it, D.E.?”

First, Happy Thanksgiving, redbus and thank you for your Servive to God. Because of Thanksgiving, I will not spend much time today on the computer. Just want to let you know I appreciate your reasoned comments.

However, I don't think there is anything “tricky” about the separattion of Church and State, as our Founding Fathers so intended, and I will always remain a firm believer of that principle.

In other words, the Church must stay out of government, and the governmen must stay out of our bedrooms and out of a woman's body…

Talk more after Thanksgiving

Dorian

My co-worker, Mike, and his wife recently had a son. He was especially looking forward to it because Mike himself nearly…wasn't. His mom was in the waiting room of the abortion clinic, but at the last minute decided to leave. She was carrying Mike. Now Mike is studying for the Christian ministry.

Chris Matthews asked the question: What punishment should a woman have for getting an abortion? The obvious answer is: Who am I to say? But somewhere in this whole conversation, let's not lose sight of the Jasons and the Mikes, because too often, they are left out of the whole discussion, as if they simply don't exist. The fact is, they do, and the sooner we come to terms with that, the better off we'll all be.

I will have a wonderful Thanksgiving because I'm spending it with very dear, close friends. The day will fly by, it always does.

I hope your Thanksgiving is joyous and wonderful, too.

Of course I don't speak for all women. But then again, I never claimed to.

Speaking on behalf of the mother — since I am one and you are not one — and speaking on behalf of that subset of mothers who have at some point in their reproductive lives had an abortion — since I am one of that subset and you are not — your assumption of indisputable ill effects to the mother from abortion is not only untrue; it's something you don't even have the right to claim knowledge of. We can all argue about what a fetus feels or doesn't feel, thinks or doesn't think, wants or doesn't want, and because of the fact that the fetus cannot confirm our beliefs, we can get away with such an exercise, those of us who wish to engage in it. But you cannot get away with asserting that the “ill effects” of abortion on the mother are “as clear as the nose on your face” because those of us who have had abortions are in a better position to know that than you are — and due to the fact that we are here, alive and all grown up and endowed with the ability to speak, we can confirm that you do not know what you're talking about, thank you very much.

And so we trumpet the “American legal system” or the “rule of law” on the one hand, then on the other hand, say that “morality is not and should not be dictated by law”. We do it every single day. That's what the law is.

I may not be a preacher, but I am a preacher's son, a deacon of my non-denominational church, and a Sunday school teacher. I also have a problem with legislating morality, to those over 18, for the simple reason that it works poorly at best, and often causes more harm than good. Both liberal and conservative legislation are attempts to bypass the real solution of convincing people to change by choice: if people aren't giving enough money to house the poor, take it from them against their will; if their behavior towards sex is harmful (promiscuity, porn), throw them in jail. Neither has ever been particularly successful, and both lead toward worshiping government and it's ability to use force, rather than the creator and moral teachings.

Dorian, religion is corrupt by it’s nature. It uses fear of the unknown to control populations for the empowerment of some demagogic potentate sitting at the top of the heap without concern for what the population has to say about anything.

Forgive me if I psychologize a bit here, FT, but have you been burned by a church or some other religious group? We all see religion through the eyes of our own experience. Mine has been overwhelmingly positive, so admittedly, I find it hard to understand such a statement. Even the Pope – arguably the most powerful religious figure of our day – does not “rule” alone, but is constantly in consultation with other leaders. Granted, where there are fewer checks and balances on the “top dog,” there's more room for abuse, but most churches have very democratic institutions in-place, such as church boards or presbyteries, so decision-making power is decentralized. Even in independent Baptist churches with very strong pastors, he'll eventually be ousted if he becomes abusive, or else folks will vote with their feet and go somewhere else where they're not subject to manipulation. For every Jim Jones story (and sadly, those do happen), there are many more that never happened because of the checks-and-balances in-place. So please, let's put our broad brushes away, because they paint a lot of good people with colors they don't deserve.

morality is not and should not be dictated by the law, insofaras a particular act does not infringe upon the rights of another.

Ah yes, roro80, our American penchant for radical individualism appears once again! Have we become so fragmented in early 21st century American culture that we simply cannot see that “no man is an island”? In fact, there are very few actions that I take (or others that I neglect to take) that don't have ramifications for others. Yours is an especially strange argument in the context of our hyper-litigous society, where we churn out more attorneys every year to interpret an every-growing corpus of laws. And so we trumpet the “American legal system” or the “rule of law” on the one hand, then on the other hand, say that “morality is not and should not be dictated by law”. We do it every single day. That's what the law is.

Just one obvious illustration: smoking. Long before the Surgeon General issued in the late '60s his now famous warning about the ill-effects on health of smoking, for decades, there were many preachers who sounded off against it. Some churches even required non-smoking as a pre-requisite to membership. (Are you listening, Father Time, because this cuts to your complaints about religion trying to control people). These preachers had no scientific evidence, only general principles in the Bible talking about taking care of of the “temple” (i.e. our bodies). Now we know of course that the preachers were right all along. But there's more! Not only does smoking hurt the smoker, we now know from further studies that even those around smokers are damaged by the ill-effects of second-hand smoke. And the domino effect goes on…effects of smoking on the unborn, costs to the health care system, missed days from work due to smokers who are more prone to respiratory problems, etc.

So yeah, if I seem impatient with the “as long as you're not hurting someone else” arguments, it's because we don't even know sometimes when someone else is being hurt. And in the case of abortion, where it's as clear as the nose on our face that both mother and unborn child suffer from its ill-effects, then we had better be courageous enough to deal with it in the legal realm.