In general our laws are pretty consistent. Once we establish a precedent, the law builds on the logic of that initial decision, and inexorably pushes the laws to the final conclusion implied in that decision. Except, it seems, in the area of pregnancy and childbirth.

Our laws about children and pregnancy are horribly inconsistent and contradictory. Thanks to the imposed national laws concerning abortion, we have a strange hodge-podge of decisions which are remarkably inconsistent.

For example, take the very simple question of what is a person, for purposes of legal rights. A child with one toe in the birth canal is not a person, not technically alive, and can be killed with impunity in states which allow such late term abortions. On the other hand, the second that toe leaves the birth canal, that fetus is now a full, living being, possessed of full rights, and cannot be harmed without consequences.

Then there are other strange birth circumstances. For example, the position supported by a state senator named Obama, that a child accidentally born alive during an abortion attempt can still be killed with impunity, even if outside of the body and presumably a person, as the mother's intent to abort prevents the child from becoming a person. Fortunately for legal consistency, this position is not the law, but it just shows how strange abortion makes our law, when a competent person can argue the mother's wishes remove rights from what is obviously a living, functioning human being.

Or consider premature babies. At 20 or 21 weeks they can be supported outside the body, and, if they are, they have full rights of a human being. Yet, if they are still within the womb, they can be killed with impunity. The same stage of development, the same type of entity, yet the rights of one are much greater than the other.

Now, I am sure someone will say "Well, one is still in the womb, so it is different." But location is not the determinant here. As with the Obama argument and the case of a child not completely expelled, a child can, in the minds of some, be fully, or almost fully, outside the body, yet still be subject to being killed.

Nor is that the only inconsistency. Take for example murder laws. A child, still inside the womb, which is killed by an attack upon the mother is considered a person for purposes of homicide laws in many states, yet can be aborted without consequence. In other words, a mother, on the way to an abortion clinic, is murdered at the doors, and the child is legally a person. Yet if she survived, and made it inside, the child is not a person, and can be killed. It boggles the mind.

If anything, the only consistent rule I see is that the mother's choice seems to be paramount, in the Obama case absurdly so. If the mother says it is not a child, then it can be killed, but if she says it is a child, full rights attach to it. In this way, I suppose, the alws are consistent. But is it a consistency we want? Do we care to take this to its logical conclusion?

If we accept that a fetus is only a fetus until the mother says she wants it to be a child, then what argument do we have against Senator Obama's position? If a child is accidentally born in the process of abortion, why should we not commit infanticide? After all the mother did not want it to be born, so why not kill it?

But from that idea, other, worse conclusions flow. If it is only a mother's decision that makes it a child, and we accept that accidentally born children can be terminated, what about mothers who did not realize they were pregnant? Or who simply failed to get an abortion in time? What objection can be raised against infanticide in these cases as well? And if we can commit infanticide on the newly born, why not later?

If we accept the basic principle that a mother's decision makes a fetus into a child, then really, what objection can we raise against killing a child at any point prior to achieving full adulthood? Does not the logic of "choice" inevitably lead to a matriarchal version of the old Roman pater familias rule, where the father (now the mother) can kill off any dependents? If a child is not vested with rights unless the mother wants it, and if a child can be killed after accidental birth, does not the logic lead to that conclusion?

I am not taking a stand one way or the other on the question of abortion. I am not speaking of the morality of abortion at all. I am simply pointing out that our current laws seem to have no consistency unless we accept the premise that a mother's wishes are the sole means of granting rights to a  child, and that that logic leads to conclusions that no one, not even the most ardent NARAL partisan, would want to contemplate.

If we are to have laws making abortion legal, then could we please define these laws in a consistent way. Either a three month old fetus is a child or it isn't. The same at six months, or seven. If it is not a person, then it cannot be murdered, and it cannot have rights, even outside the body, until it reaches the age at which rights attach. Or else we need to say it is not a person so long as any part remains in the mother's body, and eliminate all of these laws calling it murder to kill a child inside the mother. It must be one or the other, as nothing else will work. We cannot base our laws on the vague criterion of the mother's wishes, nor can we have a muddled law where a child is sometimes a child and sometimes a fetus, depending on the context. The law, regarding abortion or any other matter, needs to be consistent and must be based on concrete, objective, and well defined definitions, as anything else only leads to chaos.*

In other words, if we must have abortion laws, then please make them consistent, and well defined.

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* The pro-life side is guilty of inconsistency as well. In allowing no abortions "except int he case of rape or incest" is just as much a muddle as the current laws. You cannot legally murder someone because they were conceived by rape or incest, so how does anyone justify calling a child not a child simply due to the circumstances of conception? Either a fetus has rights and cannot be killed or it does not. This exception makes a farce of the pro-life position.