Tommy, doesn't the law traditionally apply the term homicide to born persons?

(This isn't to say that tradition is never wrong.)

Charity and smoky slow cookin'.

A tasty, tasty combination.

I heart the Book of Common Prayer! Or the older editions, at least :-)

Mr Rattler and I were married using one of the rites in the Book of Common prayer.

Quicker,

I think the best place to start looking for an answer is in our legal history, first in Anglo-American common law, then in English canon law.

According to this source, it wasn't until the nineteenth century that abortion became a matter for legislation rather than common law. Before then, abortion before quickening generally went unpunished by common law, and was punished with penance by canon law, while abortion after quickening was treated as a very grave misdemeanor in common law, and as quasi-homicide in canon law.

Abortion can be a very hard crime to prove, particularly early-term abortion. Common sense tells us we can't allow every unfortunate woman who has miscarried, or whose weight simply fluctuates, to be under suspicion of murder. And under any law against abortion, many women will nonetheless get away with it. Just and humane laws must reflect these realities.

Nothing to be ashamed of -- I learned to play a piano reduction of Pachelbel's canon in D in high school because a friend requested. It's a great piece for practicing improvisation, too. Still, I think parodies of it are very funny!

I walked down the aisle to a tune I first heard in the Monty Python skit Buying a Bed.

I'm still not quite sure I understand.

Why does thoroughgoing spontaneous order = morality as only passion?

Also, where does determinism fit into this, exactly?

Must natural things have a determinate end? How do you mean natural? (It sounds like you don't simply mean naturally-occurring.)

(FWIW I agree morality isn't merely passion. Morality is cultivated.)

Oh, I know! Gherkins.

I always thought Cumberbatch sounded like "cucumber patch".

What do you call the offspring? Celluars? Jellos?

And also by relying on Enya.

Elvish music is supposed to be beautiful beyond mortal thought, not just ethereally bland.

A favorite short study prayer:

All Wisdom cometh from the Lord and is with Him forever. Wisdom was created before all things, and the understanding of Wisdom from everlasting. -- 1st and 4th verses of the Book of Sirach

For something that fits into the Protestant canon, there are many beautiful passages on wisdom in Proverbs. The whole of chapter 8 is quite lovely, and verses 22-31 particularly give me goosebumps.

That was my first thought, too. (Though it also strikes me that judges may have some incentive to make capricious rulings in order to magnify judicial power.)

My second thought:

It's really pathetic that the choice is no longer obvious. Bureaucrats should be merely afterthoughts in the governance of a free country, while judges ought to be the jealous guardians of our precious legal heritage.

Does sexual anything tend to distract from non-sexual anything?

The logical workaround is to turn a 32-oz soda into some kind of sex toy, no?

There is -- no joke -- an insurance company on our street called "Trojan Insurance".

I've walked by their office many times, but still haven't plucked up the courage to waltz in during business hours and ask whether they're named after the horse or the condom. (Either way, I'm not sure buying Trojan Insurance would make me feel safer.)

This has been my experience.

I'm never gonna be one of those "happy, shiny" Christians, and it can be very hard to fit in if you're not.

Ask me to pray extemporaneously from the heart,  and you  will  hear language that sounds like some surreal combination of William Butler Yeats and Steve Urkel. Though it's completely genuine, I suspect you have to know me  very  well for it not to sound affected. And if my sincerity isn't something that others can share, if it doesn't edify them, what use is it? It's better to remain silent, which can make you an outsider of another sort.

Perhaps this is why I find the best shared worship experience to be singing. Not only are the words fixed, but their precise utterance is, too. It's a way to pour out  all  your religious fervor without disrupting anyone.

I'm sorry this happened to you. No one deserves to be violated.

It is so easy to logically understand that we bear no shame for what we did not consent to, but so hard to live according to that truth!

I admire your strength of character, your ability to be a confident woman despite the tragedy in your past. Confidence is so important, not only to the well-being of our souls, but to women's personal safety. The confidence you describe is either a very great achievement or a very great gift -- perhaps some of both.

I completely understand if you delete what you wrote.

If I may leave you with an impertinent question -- to think about, not necessarily to answer:

When you've survived what is undoubtedly rape, mightn't you find that today's tendency to conflate regrettable sex with rape is, well, a little weird? Perhaps even a little insulting to women who've survived what is unquestionably rape?