Are you still in favor of killing this child?

[Alexander's Horse]

Most of you are talking in the abstract. Try some real situations and see how you feel about termination.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Women who CHOOSE to have kids are MORE secure than the average woman. This is not a decision entered into lightly. Most women choose to become mothers when they are in a stable relationship and have the means to raise the child.

What if a mother refuses to make that 'choice' but prefers to keep the child and to give the child up for adoption? There are many women who get pregnant while not in a stable relationship.

Again, you have no evidence to support your position, so we continue to go round the merry-go-round.

You seem to have a rather fundamental inability to grasp the concept of how statistics operate, Ben. Are you now trying to deny that, on average, women who choose to have babies are financially secure and in a stable relationship? Or are you actually so ignorant of women that you believe most women choose to get pregnant while not in a stable relationship?

If you believe that women who seek abortions are equally likely to be in a secure relationship, then you are living in a parallel Universe.

Whereas women who seek abortions are usually desperately unhappy. They include women who have been abandoned, women who are too poor to cope with kids, and rape victims (not a lot of those, but not many commit suicide either: it doesn't take many pregnant and suicidal rape victims to drive up the overall suicide rate).

What about all those ambitious feminists? Again, without solid evidence, you cannot back up your statement.

Interesting that you equate ambitious career women with "feminists". But if a woman sees her career wrecked by an unwanted pregnancy, won't that make her unhappy and depressed too?

And let's not forget who is making the extraordinary claim with no genuine evidence.

You're denying that this happens?

Yes.

...Wow.

Next you'll be arguing that no abortion doctor has ever been murdered!

What color is the sky in your private Universe, Ben?

From "Biff the Unclean" on this thread:

Many summers ago I volunteered as an "escort" for Planned Parenthood in Manhattan. An "escort" is a person who enables a woman to get through the lines of Christians who block the entrance. Since I would stand out in the street with them and chat with them when I wasn't knocking them out of the way I got to know where they were coming from.
I've traveled around the world and have been in the backwaters of Asian and Africa and have seen my share of scum. I've never seen any human garbage lower than this lot. It's all about control. They don't care about life, or women or babies. They just want to force people to obey them...

...Well I remember one girl that arrived when all the escorts were busy. The RtL set upon her and started screaming at her that she was a murdering whore. The poor kid ran down Second Ave in traffic in hysterics. About an hour and a half later it had been quiet for awhile and one of the Xian women turned to me and said "You have to admit, after all, that we are good and decent people." Fortunately I had served in the Navy in the South China Sea so my vocabulary was up to an appropriate reply.

The School of Visual Arts held classes in the same building as Planned Parenthood so some of the women were only art students and models, this did not stop the Xians from attacking them. Models, it turns out, have even more extensive vocabularies than sailors do...

...The reason I became an Escort was guilt.
I was ambivalent about abortion. I could see the point that both sides made and they truly seemed equally valid. I was just happy that I would never be called upon to make that decision.
My wife was giving a talk in Washington DC and I went along for the ride. We stayed at a hotel near the National Geographic headquarters (The Hilton I think, the hotel with the big Trader Vic's Tikis outside {you remember your land marks, I'll remember mine}) and were having breakfast at the hotel's restaurant that had windows on the sidewalk. I pointed out to my wife that there was a protest going on across the street in front of a brownstone. I joked about the protestors being very goofy looking, but I couldn't hear what they were chanting through the glass and couldn't read their signs. A Hispanic woman walked by or window who looked like she was about to have a nervous breakdown. She walked down the block and then came back and walked the other way. She did this several times with my wife and I munching on French toast and watching her. Finally she crossed the street and was immediately set upon by the protesters. There was screaming and yelling and they were grabbing her and pushing and pulling her. My wife said "That poor girl is in trouble, she needs help." After a few minutes the woman pulled herself free and lurched into the street. A passing car grazed her and knocked her down, though she was on her feet again in a moment and fleeing. It was only then that I realized what the protest was.
I cannot say that I believe in abortion. But I felt so guilty that I had sat on my ass stuffing my face watching this outrage happen without lifting a finger that when I returned to NYC I volunteered at Planned Parenthood.

Now, are you calling this man a liar?

Escort James Barrett was murdered by Paul Hill, the "pro-lifer" who was executed recently. Admittedly, he was escorting a doctor at the time (John Britton, also murdered by Hill), but they act as bodyguards for both doctors and patients.

Neither of which is remotely relevant to the issue here: your bizarre and fallacious argument that abortions cause suicide.

Aah, I see the problem. Do you believe that abortions cause no mental trauma to the woman?

YOUR problem is that you refuse to accept that women who seek abortions are ALREADY suffering from mental trauma. And being called "murdering whores" by screaming "Christians" will NOT help matters.

You can't make suicidally depressed women happier by denying them what they desperately want, or by turning them into criminals!

When a woman is poor and pregnant, after the abortion, she will still be poor. When a woman is pregnant and depressed, after the abortion, she will still be depressed. Abortion cannot cure any medical condition.

When a woman is poor and pregnant, she faces the prospect of becoming a LOT poorer UNLESS she has an abortion. And if a woman is depressed BECAUSE she is pregnant, she will be a lot less depressed AFTER the abortion.

This is obvious to those who live in the real world and actually KNOW a few women. Including women who HAVE had abortions.

Now, why offer counselling to a woman if the abortion is all she needs, and 'getting rid of the baby' will solve all her problems? I agree, that we need to help these women. However, I fail to see how abortion will help alleviate the surrounding problems these woman face.

I have no objection to counselling. But, frequently, an abortion WILL alleviate the problems these women face.

Let's take a suicidally depressed rape victim as an example. You cannot use the argument that these represent a small minority of abortion cases, because we are specifically talking about suicidal women here, and for those of us who still live on planet Earth, it's pretty obvious that these will be the most traumatized cases.

She's been raped. That was bad enough. But now she faces the prospect of being compelled to carry the seed of her rapist: nine months of morning sickness, back pain and so forth. Nine months of being permanently reminded of what happened. And the shame, the anger, the humiliation of being used like that... It is sheer hell, and there are only two ways out.

1. Suicide.
2. Abortion (either legal or back-street).

In the real world, Ben, abortion saves lives. NOT the life of the child, obviously. But if you deny that abortion saves many of the lives of the women who seek it, then you are denying the very facts which motivated the legalization of abortion in the first place.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Tough beans. That's not my argument.

Your argument is a Slippery Slope.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
The zygote is already an independent organism at the point of conception, not implantation.

A zygote is neither independent nor an organism. Try again.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Just as a newborn cannot survive without sustenance, neither can a zygote survive without implantation.

No organism can survive without sustenance. Your point being?

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Yet a skin cell stuck in a petri dish will not grow, or develop, while a zygote will. There must be something different between the two to account for the different responses given exactly the same environment.

I like to see your zygote cell to grow into an embryo on a petri dish. That would be a neat trick.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Elok
I am not of the opinion that scientific advances change morality.

I didn't suggest that.

We need to draw a line somewhere, however. My suggestion is, any creature with sentience (self-awareness) should be considered as a person and protected as such.

[Elok]

Then why does the fact that we can turn a body cell into a fetus matter as an argument? I mean, I could say there are scientific ways of transforming farts into gold, but to say that makes methane a valuable resource implies that I would actually do it and therefore make the argument actually apply to reality.
And AH might want to think, the next time he feels like condemning a bank robber, the kind of misery that robber might be going through. Some of them have gambling debts, and need to turn to crime to keep bookies from removing their fingers by force. Some have families to feed, for crying out loud. Alexander's Horse is just a cold, callous excuse for a human being to sit there in his easy chair and say that armed robbery is wrong when he's never been in that kind of situation.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Elok
Then why does the fact that we can turn a body cell into a fetus matter as an argument?

That is called RAA (reducio ad absurdum).

Here, it is to refute an opponent's argument by deducing the logical conclusion to it and showing how absurd said conclusion is.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Elok
Then why does the fact that we can turn a body cell into a fetus matter as an argument? I mean, I could say there are scientific ways of transforming farts into gold, but to say that makes methane a valuable resource implies that I would actually do it and therefore make the argument actually apply to reality.
And AH might want to think, the next time he feels like condemning a bank robber, the kind of misery that robber might be going through. Some of them have gambling debts, and need to turn to crime to keep bookies from removing their fingers by force. Some have families to feed, for crying out loud. Alexander's Horse is just a cold, callous excuse for a human being to sit there in his easy chair and say that armed robbery is wrong when he's never been in that kind of situation.

Your point?

[Lincoln]

Here is some quotes from the real world of the abortionists:

"I was trained by a professional marketing director in how to sell abortions over the telephone. He took every one of our receptionists, nurses, and anyone else who would deal with people over the phone through an extensive training period. The object was, when the girl called, to hook the sale so that she wouldn't get an abortion somewhere else, or adopt out her baby, or change her mind. We were doing it for the money."
--Nina Whitten, chief secretary at a Dallas abortion clinic under Dr. Curtis Boyd
"They [the women] are never allowed to look at the ultrasound because we knew that if they so much as heard the heart beat, they wouldn't want to have an abortion."-Dr. Randall
'Pro-Choice 1990: Skeletons in the Closet" by David Kuperlain and Mark Masters in Oct "New Dimensions" magazine
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"Every woman has these same two questions: First, "Is it a baby?" "No" the counselor assures her. "It is a product of conception (or a blood clot, or a piece of tissue)" Even though these counselors see six week babies daily, with arms, legs and eyes that are closed like newborn puppies, they lie to the women. How many women would have an abortion, if they told them the truth?"
--Carol Everett, former owner of two clinics and director of four
"A Walk Through an Abortion Clinic" by Carol Everett ALL About Issues magazine Aug-Sept 1991, p 117
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"If a woman we were counseling expressed doubts about having an abortion, we would say whatever was necessary to persuade her to abort immediately."
--Judy W., former office manager of the second largest abortion clinic in El Paso, Texas
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"We tried to avoid the women seeing them [the fetuses] They always wanted to know the sex, but we lied and said it was too early to tell. It's better for the women to think of the fetus as an 'it.'
--Abortion clinic worker Norma Eidelman quoted in Rachel Weeping p 34
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"The counselor at our clinic would cry with the girls at the drop of a hat. She would find their weakness and work on it. The women were never given any alternatives. They were told how much trouble it is to have a baby."
--former abortion worker Debra Harry, quoted in the film "Meet the Abortion Providers" 1989
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"When discussing the sonogram, you are supposed to tell the client that it is a measurement as far as the pregnancy is concerned, but not a measure of the fetal head or anything like that."
--Rosemary Petruso, on her training to be an abortion counselor. Her story appeared in the St. Louis Review and was also quoted in "Women Exploited: The Other Victims of Abortion" Paula Ervin, editor. Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 1985
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"Sometimes we lied. A girl might ask what her baby was like at a certain point in the pregnancy: Was it a baby yet? Even as early as 12 weeks a baby is totally formed, he has fingerprints, turns his head, fans his toes, feels pain. But we would say 'It's not a baby yet. It's just tissue, like a clot.'"
--Kathy Sparks told in "The Conversion of Kathy Sparks" by Gloria Williamson, Christian Herald Jan 1986 p 28
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"It is when I am holding a plastic uterus in one hand, a suction tube in the other, moving them together in imitation of the scrubbing to come, that woman ask the most secret question. I am speaking in a matter-of-fact voice about 'the tissue' and 'the contents' when the woman suddenly catches my eye and says 'How big is the baby now?' These words suggest a quiet need for definition of the boundaries being drawn. It isn't so odd, after all, that she feels relief when I describe the growing buds bulbous shape, its miniature nature. Again, I gauge, and sometimes lie a little, weaseling around its infantile features until its clinging power slackens."
--abortion worker Sallie Tisdale "We Do Abortions Here" Oct 1987 Harpers Magazine p 68
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"Vital signs should be observed regularly, and a Doppler [for listening to the fetal heartbeat] inaudible to the patient should be used at intervals to determine the presence or absence of fetal heart tones.. This [informed consent] is a controversial area, but most professionals in the field feel that it is not advisable for patients to view the products of conception, to be told the sex of the fetus, or to be informed of a multiple pregnancy"
--Abortionist Warren Hern in "Abortion Practice" J.B. Lippincott Company, 1984 pgs 145 and 304
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"Sonography in connection with induced abortion may have psychological hazards. Seeing a blown-up, moving image of the embryo she is carrying can be distressing to a woman who is about to undergo an abortion, Dr. Sally Faith Dorfman noted. She stressed that the screen should be turned away from the patient."
--"Obstetrics and Gynecology News" editorial February 15-28, 1986
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"95 percent of women who have had abortions said that their Planned Parenthood counselors gave them " . . . little or no information about the fetus which the abortion would destroy."
--From Aborted Women-Silent No More by David Reardon, Crossway Books, 1987
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"Now, the baby I aborted was eleven weeks old, and can you imagine what this did to me when I saw this baby with the hands and face, sucking his thumb? And they told me it was a cluster of cells!"
--Carole K.
State Director of Women Exploited By Abortion. From Women Exploited, which is a sampling of the stories of WEBA (Women Exploited by Abortion) chapter members.
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"I have seen hundreds of patients in my office who have had abortions and were just lied to by the abortion counselor. Namely 'This is less painful than having a tooth removed. It is not a baby.' Afterwards, the woman sees Life magazine and breaks down and goes into a major depression."
--Psychologist Vincent Rue quoted in "Abortion Inc" David Kupelian and Jo Ann Gasper, New Dimensions, October 1991 p 16
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"The Pennsylavania Abortion Control Act went into effect on March 20, 1994. For the past six years, health centers that provide abortion services and the lawyers representing them have been fighting the provisions of the law. What does the law provide? Women seeking an abortion must be told by a physician at least 24 hours prior to the procedure the nature of the procedure and the probable gestational age of the fetus. Women must also be told that the Commonwealth's materials are available describing fetal development and listing for agencies that offer alternatives to abortion. . . What we must do now is make sure that our Representatives know how strongly we feel about the law. Call them, write to them! Let them know how burdensome these regulations are. Vote for pro-choice candidates...."
--Elizabeth Blackwell Health Center for Women newsletter April 1994
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Why is there so much fuss about abortion? Isn't what is removed only a mass of tissue?
"But when I look in the basin, among the curdlike blood clots, I see and elfin thorax, attentuated, its pencilline ribs all in parallel rows with tiny knobs of spine rounding upwards. A translucent arm and hand swim beside."
--Sallie Tisdale "We Do Abortions Here"
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"I can remember...the resident doctor sitting down, putting the tube in, and removing the contents. I saw the bloody material coming down the plastic tube, and it went into a big jar. My job afterwards was to go and undo the jar, and to see what was inside.
I didn't have any views on abortion; I was in a training program, and this was a brand new experience. I was going to get to see a new procedure and learn. I opened the jar and took the little piece of stockingnette stocking and opened the little bag. The resident doctor said "Now put it on the blue towel and check it out. We want to see if we got it all.' I thought, "that'll be exciting-hands on experience looking at tissue.' I opened the sock up and put it on the towel, and there were parts of a person in there.
I had taken anatomy, I was a medical student. I knew what I was looking at. There was a little scapula and an arm, I saw some ribs and a chest, and a little tiny head. I saw a piece of a a leg, and a tiny hand and an arm, and you know, it was like somebody put a hot poker into me. I had a conscience, and it hurt. Well, I checked it out and there were two arms and two legs and one head and so forth, and I turned and said "I guess you got it all.' That was a very hard experience to go through emotionally.
--Former abortionist
"Saline abortions have to be done in the hospital because of the complications that can arise. Not that they can't arise during other times, but more so now. The saline, a salt solution, is injected into the woman's sac, and the baby starts dying a slow, violent death. The mother feels everything, and many times it is at this point when she realizes that she really has a live baby inside her, because the baby starts fighting violently, for his or her life. He's just fighting inside because he's burning."
--Debra Harry
"One night a lady delivered and I was called to come and see her because she was 'uncontrollable.' I went into the room, and she was going to pieces; she was having a nervous breakdown, screaming and thrashing. The other patients were upset because this lady was screaming. I walked in, and here was this little saline abortion baby kicking. It had been born alive, and was kicking and moving for a little while before it finally died of those terrible burns, because the salt solution gets into the lungs and burns the lungs too. I'll tell you one thing about D & E . You never have to worry about a baby's being born alive. I won't describe D & E ; other than to say that, as a doctor, you are sitting there tearing, and I mean tearing- you need a lot of strength to do it- arms and legs off of babies and putting them in a stack on top of the table."
--Dr. David Brewer of Glen Ellyn Illinois
"I remember an experience as a resident on a hysterotomy. I remember seeing the baby move underneath the sack of membranes, as the cesarean incision was made, before the doctor broke the water.
The thought came to me, "My God, that's a person" Then he broke the water. And when he broke the water, it was like I had a pain in my heart, just like when I saw that first suction abortion. And t hen he delivered the baby,. and I couldn't touch it.. I wasn't much of an assistant. I just stood there, and the reality of what was doing on finally began to seep into my calloused brain and heart.
They took that little baby that was making little sounds and moving and kicking, and set it on that table in a cold, stainless steel bowl. Every time I would look over while we were repairing the incision in uterus and finishing the Caesarean, I would see that little person moving in that bowl. And it kicked and moved less and less, of course, as time went on. I can remember going over and looking at the baby when we were done with the surgery and the baby was still alive. You could see the chest was moving and the heart was beating, and the baby would try to take a little breath, and it really hurt inside, and it began to educate me as to what abortion really was."
quoted in "Pro-Choice 1990: Skeletons in the Closet"
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"Following [the doctor's] directions, I took the collection bottle and poured its contents into a shallow pan. Then I used water to rinse off the blood and smaller particles which clouded the bottom of the pan.
'Now look closely,' the doctor said. 'It is important that we have got all the stuff out.'
I looked in the pan to find that the stuff consisted of the remains of what had been, a few minutes before, a thirteen week old fetus. I could make out the remains of arms and legs and a trunk and a skull. I tried to piece them back together in my mind, to see if there were any missing parts.
Most of the pieces were so battered and bloody they were not recognizably human. Then my eyes locked upon a perfect little hand, less than half a centimeter long. I stared at four tiny fingers and a tiny opposed thumb, complete with tiny translucent fingers.
And I knew what I had done."
--former abortionist "Chi An" quoted in Stephen Mosher's "A Mother's Ordeal: One Woman's Fight Against China's One Child Policy" pgs 60-61
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"I got to where I couldn't stand to look at the little bodies anymore"
--Dr. Beverly McMillan, when asked why she stopped performing abortions.
"I have been there, and I have seen these totally formed babies as early as ten weeks... with the leg missing, or with their head off. I have seen the little rib cages..."
--Debra Harry
"We all wish it were formless, but its not...and its painful. There is a lot of emotional pain."
--abortion clinic worker
Quoted in "The Ex Abortionists: They Have Confronted Reality" Washington Post April 1, 1988 p a 21
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"You have to become a bit schizophrenic. In one room, you encourage the patient that the slight irregularity in the fetal heart is not important, that she is going to have a fine, healthy baby. Then, in the next room you assure another woman, on whom you just did a saline abortion, that it is a good thing that the heartbeat is already irregular....she has nothing to worry about, she will NOT have a live baby...All of a sudden one noticed that at the time of the saline infusion there was a lot of activity in the uterus. That's not fluid currents. That's obviously the fetus being distressed by swallowing the concentrated salt solution and kicking violently and that's to all intents and purposes, the death trauma. ..somebody has to do it, and unfortunately we are the executioners in this instance..."
--abortionist Dr.Szenes

[Sava]

@ Lincoln

[Verto]

I thought there was a word limit to posts!

[Ben Kenobi]

UR:

I like to see your zygote cell to grow into an embryo on a petri dish. That would be a neat trick.

It happens during in-vitro fertilisation. The sperm and egg are extracted from the father and mother, and fertilised inside a petri dish. A few days later, the zygote divides from a single cell to form a blastocyst, or several cells which is then implanted into the mother.

No organism can survive without sustenance. Your point being?

A zygote is neither independent nor an organism. Try again.

Perhaps I tried to rebut your point? If a zygote requires sustenance, it ought to count as an organism.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
It happens during in-vitro fertilisation. The sperm and egg are extracted from the father and mother, and fertilised inside a petri dish. A few days later, the zygote divides from a single cell to form a blastocyst, or several cells which is then implanted into the mother.

My point that a zygote cannot develop everywhere still holds. It needs a very specific environment to grow.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Perhaps I tried to rebut your point? If a zygote requires sustenance, it ought to count as an organism.

By your logic, then, anything that is not an organism does not need sustenance? I see that your brain is not an organism. Let me just cut off the blood flow to it.

[Ben Kenobi]

UR:

My point that a zygote cannot develop everywhere still holds. It needs a very specific environment to grow.

The environment has nothing to do with any intrinsic qualities of the zygote. You still have not rebutted my point, that controlling for an extraneous factor, the environment, we get two completely different results for the zygote than from a skin cell.

Therefore, the difference must pertain to an intrinsic quality of the zygote, allowing for growth and development, not present in the skin cell.

By your logic, then, anything that is not an organism does not need sustenance?

As for your example, would a brain, with blood sustain itself without the rest of the body? With blood, all by itself, could the brain grow and develop? No.

This is why the brain does not count as an organism because when provided sustenance, it does not grow and develop. The zygote counts as an organism in that he or she does develop.

[blackice]

The 'victor' doesn't matter. It was a good decision for everyone similarly situated.

Yes millions of dead unborn humans, Hilter would be proud of you...

The point is the judge alone created a social policy that even the mother disagrees with. She would like the ruling reversed. That would a good decision for everyone similarly situated, the unborn, the mother and the father that was not allowed to see and raise his child. In the eyes of the father and his family, the judge sentenced his unborn to death. For no other reason than the mother did not want the child at the time. This to you is justice? For whom? not the unborn and not the father and or family members. I liken this to suicde, selfish and self importance...

Bottom line if the mother has sole rights to life and death of her child, she too must accept the sole responsibility to raise the child. Most if not all laws are so washed out in this area it is time for clear cut laws.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
That is called RAA (reducio ad absurdum).
Here, it is to refute an opponent's argument by deducing the logical conclusion to it and showing how absurd said conclusion is.

But it doesn't show any absurdity that I can see. It only cites our ability to simulate certain aspects of nature under controlled conditions which by your own admission are not to be applied to any actual situation. I cannot see how the ability to tweak a body cell into a fetus has any more to do with the argument than a psychological side-effect uniquely caused by masturbation has anything to do with an argument about sexual intercourse. You are only making claims to our ability to artificially manipulate the system. If we don't plan on manipulating the system, it's a tree-falling-in-the-forest question.
And just to answer AH in the same breath, I was being a bit snide, but my basic point was that objectivity is generally a DESIRABLE quality in a judge, or rather in a jury. A judge may sentence a convict more or less severely based on his/her individual situation at the time of the crime, but you cannot realistically argue that somebody who would otherwise be considered a criminal is in fact perfectly innocent because he or she wanted to do it badly enough due to situational motives. The (admittedly blunt) analogy was that, as we don't expect our legal system to have personal experience with the motives of other things it condemns, e.g. robbery, murder, drug abuse, we have no real reason to expect them to base their abortion laws on personal experience either, unless there is an aspect to the situation that you haven't mentioned.
Ah, it's good to have power back...