A few days ago, a friend disbursed some wisdom obvious to the Gen-X class or whatever: that Sarah Palin sounded like an idiot on Couric, that creationists are idiots, and that christians are fools. That latter one was because the don’t accept the blatant appropriateness — nea, the very necessity — of abortions in the cases of rape/incest.

While it’s good fun to see such jolly regurgitation of the political “facts” of the day, that last one needed a bit of a response from your humble scribe. I pointed out that one reason people might oppose abortion even in these cases is because it kills a proto-person who’s not personally guilty of the crimes of the rapist/incestivizor. The argument need not even rely on christian souls or supernatural phenomena. One can try to think about it in terms of crime & punishment.