Is McCain In An A-hole?

An abortion hole, that is.

A new column by Nancy Gibbs in Time suggests that staking out a "life begins at conception" position may have dug a hole for John McCain.

Watching Barack Obama and John McCain handle Pastor Rick Warren's questions about abortion, you could see the whole presidential race in miniature taking shape before our eyes. The clear answer beats the clever one any time...unless you worry about the chaos that clarity can bring.

Before a friendly but still skeptical evangelical crowd at Warren's Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA, on Saturday night, McCain won a roar of approval when Warren asked him at what point a human being gets human rights: "At the moment of conception," McCain replied. The answer was clear, unequivocal and a great relief to restless Republicans who had endured a week of indigestion on the issue.

—SNIP—

McCain's straightforward answer, along with his assertion that he would not have nominated any of the Supreme Court's four liberal judges (notwithstanding that he voted to confirm all but John Paul Stevens, who was named before McCain was in the Senate), had social conservatives breathing sighs of relief. "I will be a pro-life president, and this presidency will have pro-life policies." McCain said, to cheers from the audience. "OK," Warren laughed," we don't have to go longer on that one."

—SNIP—

McCain's construction that life begins "at the moment of conception" opens a whole new range of questions: There is a world of mystery in what transpires between the moment when egg meets sperm and the point of implantation, when that fertilized egg nestles into the uterus and begins to grow.

McCain's position has the great virtue of simplicity; a unique set of chromosomes has now been assembled that has the potential to grow into a unique human being, assuming circumstances permit. As many as half of fertilized eggs naturally miscarry, usually before the prospective mother even knows she was pregnant. But there is a roiling debate over what factors might also affect implantation, with implications for everything from fertility treatment and contraception to criminal law and human rights. I wonder if McCain knows how deeply into troubled waters he has waded.

Consider the obvious implications if rights attain the moment the egg and sperm meet: All kinds of embryo research become questionable, starting with the stem cell research he says he favors. Couples who undergo in vitro fertilization and then choose not to implant all the embryos are surely violating the rights of those that are discarded or frozen. Some forms of contraception, such as IUDs and the morning-after pill, would presumably be illegal, if they affect the ability of an egg to implant. Abortion opponents contend that the birth-control pill itself, while designed to prevent ovulation so no egg is fertilized in the first place, may also have the effect of blocking implantation of any egg that sneaks through. Suddenly a whole range of reproductive choices comes into question.

—SNIP—

But his construction of human rights beginning "at the moment of conception," while theoretically clean, is a practical mess. It throws the entire weight of argument onto one side of the scale; a woman, whose womb and RNA are essential to the development of a fertilized egg, would be obliged to do nothing that could even inadvertently interfere with the progression from zygote to newborn. This would have, among other effects, such immense impact on access to contraception that it would all but guarantee an increase in unwanted pregnancies - and the abortions that McCain opposes. I suppose this counts as definitive leadership; I just wonder if McCain's definition takes him in the direction he really wants to go.

Let's see if the "liberal mainstream media" pins him down on this. They could create quite a quagmire.