The best argument for sanity in the abortion debate -- if this is where you're going -- I've yet heard.

A Wesley Snipes film festival?

But if dying is a process - that is, parts of you die before "you" die, then does that not also mean you're fair game virtually at any time?

If you are depending on "you" being conscious and "knowing" then how 'bout when you're asleep? Coma? Delirious from concussion or stroke?

And what, exactly, might be meant from "alive"? If not biologically, that what? psychologically? If that, then who gets to judge? Are idiots and retarded children fair game?

The thing about hair and nails growing after death is an urban legend. They don't grow--the skin and flesh around them shrinks.

If you should happen to stop, and we can't restart you, you're gone.

Um...if your meanderings had anything to do with abortion, then that statement alone would knock convenience abortions over the line into "should be illegal" camp ... since 'leaving nature unmolested to take its course' is exactly what abortion does NOT do.

Peter Sanger thinks mothers ought to have up to 28 days (lunatic month?) after birth to decide whether to keep a child or to kill or have it killed.

The Dutch appear to extend this to 12 years old except in the Nether-lands [sic] it would not be the mother's choice but the Doctor's.

Peter Singer, not Sanger.

Or course I see where you are going. You are going to Heaven, or Hell. No one dies so murder is impossible. Excuse me while I attend to some business.

Well, this is gratifying. Word for word, this little post has generated more commentary than almost anything else I've ever written.

First things first. Thanks to Jonathan Neill for his compliment, and to Aaron Davies for his correction. Though I do hate being corrected, I realize it's the right thing to do. I will miss my zombie fingernails

Grayson, when you say "fair game" what do you mean, exactly? Do you imagine I'm advocating murder? You seem to have turned my observation quite around. FIRST we die, THEN we begin our dissolution. Okay? Does this change your opinion at all? What is it that you think I'm saying?

For Uncle Bill, I would say that I'm barely familiar with Peter Singer's work. From what little I know of it, I find it disturbing and unpleasant. Does he really advocate elective infanticide? Seems typical of what I've heard, if so. As a Classical Values Aside, let me point out that Roman fathers had the (rarely exercised) legal right to execute their sons, right up to the age of sixteen. Perhaps some of the more martial Roman Virtues would be better left unobserved.

"Meanderings", Darleen? You wound me. You also puzzle me. I don't believe in 'leaving nature unmolested to take its course'. I never have. Nor do I believe I mentioned it.

Also, I am not clear on the connection between the shifting standards used to determine death, and the legitimacy of convenience abortions.

"If you should happen to stop, and we can't restart you, you're gone." is a truism.

Doctors generally will declare a patient dead when they have no hope of effecting a revival. When a patient reaches that point he is certainly gone.
Where that point might be will depend on what century the patient lives in. Today, using drugs and electrical shock, we have a very limited ability to raise the dead.

Two centuries ago, a stopped heart was beyond repair. Two centuries hence, who knows? What THAT has to do with abortion is a poser, at least to me.

J. Peden may be mis-reading what I said. He states "No one dies so murder is impossible."

I must disagree. Murder is very possible indeed. Death is real, as is sickness, dementia, and decay. My modest point, one which grayson seems to have missed, is that after we are dead (No pulse, no breath, no brain activity) parts of us linger on a bit.

Depending on how quickly action is taken, cells can be removed from a legally dead human body, a body which is in fact DEAD, and those cells can be cultured in the laboratory. I would have to say that this provides us with a small, meaningless portion of the deceased, a portion which is in fact still alive, not that it does the poor stiff any good. He's gone to wherever they all go. Heaven? Hell? Nowhere at all?

Shooting a DEAD man isn't murder, because he's already dead. But, regarding those changing standards I was meandering on about, if I shoot a dead man who was staying in the ICU, a dead man who died three minutes ago,and who might have been resuscitated by that code blue team that just came thundering in, THEN I might be in some serious trouble with the law. And rightfully so.

He was already DEAD, I could tell the judge. We could have brought him BACK, the prosecutor might retort. In the sixteenth century, I might very well get off scot free. Times change.

You're right that certain things are "better left unobserved." (Not that I've ever lived up to such a lofty goal myself....)