Roe v Wade

Today marked the 34th anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision, and Bush lent all of his usual hypocrisy, ignorance, and faulty logic to the event:

"I have made clear to the Congress, we must pursue medical advances in the name of life, not at the expense of it."

This of course was in refernce to stem-cell research, part of a broad speech outlining the importance of protecting life. So when we limit the funding for research that nearly all scientists agree could unlock some pretty powerful clues to solving terrible diseases, what exactly are we doing? Are the lives we could save with the research but instead forsaking for cell masses not an expense (and a pretty unbalanced one at that)? It seems to me that the life of a teenage girl who down the road, at say age 46, develops Parkinson's after creating a family with a husband and children is worth many hundreds of cell masses. But I digress. This is meant to be more about Roe v Wade.

Is a woman who gets raped not allowed to abort in order to avoid living with a daily reminder of that incident? South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds thinks so and signed a bill stating just that in March last year. Is a teenage girl raped by her father to be forced to use a coat hanger or find a back alley "clinic" because she can't get the parental consent required? Such bills have been presented (which makes me a little suspicious of the state politicians).

The point is this...abortion is an issue where the act is either legal or illegal. You can't create a law that will address every circumstance, and it makes absolutely no sense to criminalize something that will happen one way or another. Why not create the safest environment for it while still reasonably respecting human life?