I'm always taken with Jim Aune's thoughtful argument on pro-life rhetoric: that many Republicans who advocate legislative restrictions seem to care a whole lot about the fetus in the womb, and not so much about helping to care for that baby after she's born.

For people so fearful and hateful (especially with this particular presidency) of state-sanctioned intrusions into their personal rights, many Republicans have no problem taking away the rights of others.

Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, said the bill’s original language barring the use of federal dollars to pay for abortions should have been sufficient for the opponents. "Abortion is a matter of conscience on both sides of the debate," Ms. DeLauro said. "This amendment takes away that same freedom of conscience from America’s women. It prohibits them from access to an abortion even if they pay for it with their own money. It invades women’s personal decisions."

I'm left returning to Jim's question, posed many years back: if Roe v. Wade had been argued differently, might not our current deliberative discourse on abortion sound radically different?

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