Interesting Idea

Heard this one on the radio today (which was on because the downstairs neighbors had their car parked in front of the apartment to jam out for a while):

We define death as the cessation of brain waves. If an injured, diseased or damaged person has some kind of brain waves, they are still "alive," however minimally. We can make judgments on the quality of life, but not the fact.

So why not apply this to abortion? If the fetus has brain waves, it's a human deserving of State intervention to protect its life. It might only be light intervention, but the State still gains an interest. No brain waves yet? No life and hence it's tissue that the woman has full control over, with no State intervention. That means that a woman has roughly into her third month of pregnancy to make an abortion decision.

I think this idea has some merit, speaking as an anti-abortion person. I'm not dogmatically "pro-life," but against the taking of a life without strong protections for the life taken. There are circumstances where abortion is the only way, but far too many abortions are for nothing more than convenience, for a failure of birth control or self-control.

I really hate that continued discussion of abortion was taken by judicial fiat by the Supreme Court when it created from nothing but the flimsiest of justifications a non-medically-based "trimester" system for looking at abortion. We should have followed the European way, which was to let the process of legislative debate work out the kind of abortion laws this country wanted. It would have taken longer, yes, but it would have been something far more acceptable and less contentious than what was imposed on us three decades ago. It would have been organic and not "top down."