Again with that logical principle of non-contradiction thing...

anyone would think I was obsessed...

Objection 1: the Calgary Herald hath said that there must be a "balance" between "a woman's right to choose" and the need to place limits on that right...

“The state ought to establish boundaries because it cannot tolerate a situation in which there is literally open season on its unborn citizens at every stage in their development.”

“At a certain point, the state must declare that having passed the legal limit during which abortion is permissible, the rights of unborn Canadian citizens take precedence.”

I answer that:

Bollocks.

"...here the Herald has fallen into a logical pitfall, a trap from which it is only possible either to say that abortion must be outlawed entirely or that there is not now and never has been any such creature as an "unborn Canadian citizen". The abortion lobby has been successful in establishing in Canadian court cases that there is no such thing as an "unborn Canadian citizen" - that an unborn child is, according to one Alberta court, merely another part of the woman's body.

...

The concept of "balance" is a popular one in Canadian politics. The word was used by many who supported the legislation that enshrined embryo experimentation as a legitimate occupation for Canadian scientists. The bill was said to be "balanced" by its regulations governing the use of embryos in research. But a balance that allows human beings to be killed in large numbers to further medical science strains the meaning of the word.

The entire discussion on embryo research, and abortion, can be summed up simply. If an embryo is not a human being, no excuses, like "balance", are necessary; if, however, an embryo is a human being, no such excuse is possible or acceptable. MP's who suggested that the bill was "balanced" had to start with the decidedly unbalanced premise that an embryo was not a human being.

Similarly, if what is carried inside a woman during pregnancy is "an unborn Canadian citizen" as the Herald asserts, that person must be afforded the full rights of that citizenship, including the right not to be killed at his mother's request. If he is not a citizen, if he does not exist at all as the abortion movement would have us believe, there is no need for any "balance" between purportedly conflicting "rights".

This inability to recognize logical contradictions has crippled attempts to find sanity in the debate. Logical contradictions, the notion that two opposed ideas cannot both prevail, that one cannot both be in the room and not in the room at the same time, that a child exists before birth and a woman has a right to abortion, cannot be pleasantly plastered over with references to "balance".

...

There are only three possible positions to take in the abortion debate. A child in the womb at any stage really exists and is really a human being who must be protected from harm. No human being is present in the womb, so opposition to abortion is absurd and unjust. Or a third position that is becoming increasingly popular and accepted: that a child exists whom we may now kill at will with no legal repercussions, a position that simply negates all of the legal history of the western world and the foundational notion of human rights.

All of these positions are held, and fiercely defended, in the ongoing struggle over abortion. But they are all mutually exclusive positions and no logical "balance" is possible between them.