4.2.12 WC: 191694 matter of Constitutional law. Politically I have always supported a women’s right to choose abortion, since I do not regard an early term fetus as a human being for purposes of the abortion debate. For me the decision to abort is very much a matter of degree and the women carrying the child should have primary responsibility to make that decision. But as a matter of constitutional law, I find little basis in either the right of privacy or the right to equal protection that would grant a women the right to terminate her pregnancy, particularly as the fetus comes closer to viability. The law must always make arbitrary judgments—an 18 year old may vote but a 17 year old may not, a 34 year old may not run for president, but a 35 year old can—and the judgment as to when a fetus becomes a human being in highly arbitrary. Most legal systems establish exit from the birth canal as the moment of humanity but a 9 month old fetus in the womb is biologically indistinguishable from a fetus that has just exited the womb. (Indeed when kangaroos exit from the womb, it is only a temporary condition and the joey returns periodically to the mother’s external womb for nourishment.) The fetuses is as viable at 9 months as at 9 and a half, but distinctions must be made by the law. The question of when life begins is somewhat more arbitrary than the related question of when life ends. But even the latter question is subject to disagreement as the cases involving “pulling the plug” demonstrate. The religious component in the abortion debate is quite pronounced. For a believing Catholic, and for some Protestants, life begins at conception. If I believed, as some do, that abortion is the killing of a human being with a soul, I would probably be marching in front of abortion clinics to stop the murder of innocent babies. The fact that I don’t believe this is largely a matter of my upbringing, most particularly my religious training. It is not a matter of absolute “truth.” Som