Resonant Information - Science - Comments

I think we have to keep

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:46:00 -0500

I think we have to keep things simple in order to have a clear picture of this problem. Recently many countries introduced the smoking ban mostly for public places. I am a smoker and this new rule seems fair enough, people have the right to fresh air and we shouldn't deny them this right. Plus, smoking ban should be an alarm signal for smokers for quiting.

What are the smokers right

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 11:01:00 -0500

What are the smokers right exactly? For sure they don't have the right to affect others peoples health, and I think this is the main point here. I don't know anti smoking campaign is spam, I don't have enough arguments to believe so. By the way, I am a smoker.

Smoking ban data

Zed — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 21:05:01 -0500

That's a lot of links. Having finally managed to get through them, I'd like to note that the overall effect is rather spectacularly weak, so I'd like to respond to the major claims.

Claim 1: The California smoking ban caused the loss of 3,000 restaraunts and bars and $100 billion in state revenues. The support for this appears to be one poorly controlled and researched non-peer-reviewed paper by two men whose primary qualifications appear to be that they're both smokers, one of which indirectly benefitted financially from a tobacco company. The premise of the paper is that even though studies evaluating the impact of the years immediately before and after smoking bans have shown that either the effect is neutral or even positive, if you pick out the states that had "smoker-unfriendly" cultures, they failed to grow as fast over the last ten years as states that were "smoker-friendly". The paper is rather hampered by huge chunks of missing data, and deliberately discarding the data that went completely opposite to the trend (Utah, which underwent massive growth rather than declining at all) on the grounds that it only had half as many smokers as the other states. If you the claim is that smoking bans cause smokers to stop spending money on bars and restaurants, then the expected result for Utah is a decline in growth about half that of the others, not a massive increase. In addition, there were no controls for other economic factors over that ten-year period, and on top of that, the question is never asked where the money is going, if not to bars and restaurants. Do smokers suddenly increase in savings accounts? Buy out-of-state products? If not, then the total economic impact to the state (as opposed to the restaurant and bar industry) is going to be approximately zero. It's possible that anti-smoking sentiment and laws have caused a gradual decline in restaurant and bars in "smoker-unfriendly" states, but if so, there are no listed peer-reviewed papers to support that claim. It's rather telling that the listed pro-smoking article admits up front that the vast majority of the peer-reviewed papers show no economic impact, and the ones that show negative economic impact have ties to the tobacco industry (a problem that the article itself perpetuates), and its only counter to that is to make the undefended assertion that the peer-reviewed paper authors are somehow all funded before the fact by anti-smoking groups. No evidence of this extraordinary claim is given.

Claim 2: There is no such thing as a tax on a specific product, because buyers will buy taxed products anyway at the same rate, while reducing purchases of non-taxed products. It's hard to know how to answer this, as it conflicts on its face with my entire understanding of economics and human nature. People buy taxed (or generally more expensive) products less. In any case, since smokers disproportionately consume health care funds, it makes sense that they should carry a greater portion of the burden.

Claim 3: There is no health issue with second-hand smoke, because we didn't become extinct by burning dung. Again, it's hard to know where to begin. In the days when people were regularly exposed to smoke, they died much younger. This is generally undisputed. You might dispute how much extended lifespans are directly the result of better air in the household, and how much is just due to better medical technology, but it's certainly ludicrous to claim that only things that cause complete species extinction constitute health risks. In addition, once again, peer-reviewed papers claim the exact opposite -- and 94% of the ones that disagree were directly funded by the tobacco industry to say so.

Claim 4: Public smoking bans are invalid because they infringe on property rights. Property rights are not absolute, and there are a great many restrictions on what you can do even on private property, much less public property. Buildings have to be up to code. Restaurants and bars have to comply with a large number of health ordinances that have nothing to do with smoking. If it requires some restriction on property rights to make sure that I don't end up eating rat poop when I go to a restaurant, this is a good thing. Same with toxic chemicals in the air.

Claim 5 (from the "New Years Resolutions"): Arsenic, carbon monoxide, and nicotine are the only harmful components of tobacco smoke, and those occur in such small amounts that smoking is thus less dangerous than breathing the air outside and drinking water. The morbidity rates alone should dispel this: smoking kills off about half a million people every year. The lethality of smoking is not news — scientific studies of morbidity differences between smokers and nonsmokers go back to at least 1938, and the deadly effects of smoking were commented on as far back as 1833. Furthermore, you can control the damage you do to yourself by cigarette smoke much more easily than you can stop drinking water.

Claim 6: The nicotine consumption from people who eat tomatoes, potatoes, pepper, tea, & eggplants is on par with the nicotine consumption of smokers (resolution #8). Again, it's hard to know where to begin with this. I've never even heard of someone waking up in the night, desperate to get down to the nearest grocer to fix up an eggplant craving.

Claim 7: The total weight of Class A carcinogens in cigarette smoke is less than 1/1000 of that given off by an alcoholic drink in one hour. We're starting to get silly here, and I couldn't find anything on any of the websites listed to support this, nor anywhere else on the web (I actually hunted for quite some bit, because I'm passably interested in the health tradeoffs on light alcohol consumption, but the only related thing I found was that cigarettes apparently induce desire for alcohol, which makes this point rather counterproductive). In any case, I try to make a point of not inhaling alcohol. For one thing, I expect I'd drown before I got cancer.

Claim 8: If you support public anti-smoking laws, you also have to support extreme air filtering regulations that require removal of "bacteria, viruses, dust mites, dust mite excrement, fungi, molds, spoors, pollen, dander, flakes of dead skin,+ chemicals" (resolution #13). In fact, there are already health regulations in restaurants about concentrations of some of these things, and most places do have filters on their air conditioning systems, but I'd like to make sure that at least no ban on chemicals in the air ever goes through. I like the chemicals in air. Particularly nitrogen and oxygen and hydrogen. I kind of need those.

Claim 9: God told us to burn things, so smoke is healthy (resolution #20). There are a lot of very strange commandments in the Old Testament, most of which are (thankfully) no longer practiced. Ascribing arbitrary secondary lessons to Old Testament commandments is not exactly convincing in an argument. Selective bible quoting will get you almost anywhere, sadly, and if you're the kind of person that still burns complete cattle on altars measured in cubits, feels compelled to marry his brother's widow and get her pregnant, and thinks that crawfish are an abomination...

... well, I guess that explains a lot.

smoking bans

aalf — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:24:47 -0500

Anti-smoking is a SCAM. Lies about health are stuffing the coffers of lawyers, pharmaceutical companies, and the filthy rich (funded with hundreds of millions of tax$) anti-smoking INDUSTRY. The BIGGEST lie I am seeing is 'there is only one side to this issue'.

Smokers DO NOT pay the tobacco taxes, by the way. EVERYONE pays them, since smokers merely shift spending from some other part of their budget to pay them. They get sucked right up out of the general economy, just as ALL taxes. This is costing YOU hundreds of billions.

There IS NO 'health' issue re: environmental tobacco smoke. I have been laughing for about 20 years at the brainwashed morons who seem to believe a species which survived (for 'millenia' if you believe the 'evolution gospel') by heating and cooking by burning wood, coal, peat, DUNG, and anything else humans have been able to figure out how to burn is suddenly being 'killed' by tobacco smoke. I am not laughing anymore, as now in the United States of America, we are revoking PRIVATE PROPERTY rights re: a LEGAL activity. This is NOT communist Russia here - and even Russia has had the wisdom to get rid of communism.

It IS costing us all hundreds of billions. Here is one study, showing CA has about 3,000 FEWER restaurants and bars than they should have based on their past 10 yrs. of economic growth:
http://www.aalf.ws/smoking/bancostsCA100billiondollars/

Here is what I am doing about it:
http://www.aalf.ws/smoking/tourNE-ban-states0106/

Here are my New Year's Resolutions:

New Year's Resolutions 2006 for Smokers & Freedom Lovers
Based on FACTS - Info at www.aalf.ws/smokingmad/
An American who Loves Freedom ~ www.aalf.ws/

1. Give up driving for one day. Since 1 day of driving = carbon monoxide exposure equivalent of a whole lifetime of smoking, this should equalize that risk.

2. Give up 1 glass of water every 11.3 years. Since EPA allowed amount of arsenic in ONE glass of water = 165,000 cigarettes, at two packs per day, this will equalize that risk. (3 pk/day=1 glass every 7.53 years : )

3. Stay as far away from large airports as possible. Each day they produce carbon monoxide equivalent of 160 million cigarettes, & the nitrogen oxide equivalent of 8.5 BILLION cigarettes.
If smoke is really so 'deadly', you should live forever . $$$ saved by not flying will pay for the extortion cigarette taxes, + other great stuff!

4. NEVER buy another Nissan, nor any other vehicle which is not provided with a safe ash tray. Keep attorney's number handy in case there IS an accident next time skirt catches fire on Los Angeles freeway.

5. Pray for brainwashed morons who believe a species which survived (for millennia, if you believe the 'evolution gospel') by cooking & heating with wood, coal, DUNG, peat, & anything else humans could figure out how to burn is suddenly being killed off by tobacco smoke??? (ROFLOL!)

6. ADD UP all the $$$ saved by NOT BUYING nicotine patches & pills (costs WAY more than cigarettes here in KY), Prozac, sleeping meds, weight loss meds, junk food & other smoking substitutes... 6.b. Finish this list - it's long.

7. Ask insurers for discounts if weight is under control. According to a Wall Street Journal article some time ago, obesity is costing society almost double what smoking is in medical expenses.

8. Start bugging everyone to 'kick' their tomato, potato, pepper, tea, & eggplant addiction. Nicotine is in all these foods, & said to be 'more dangerous and addictive than heroin'. (nonsense...) It's NATURAL. 'Big tobacco' DID NOT put it there - God (or evolution ?) did.

9. 'For their own good', get on everyone's case about their SUGAR, Caffeine, & CHOCOLATE addictions. Addiction is BAD no matter what! Become a Total PITA, the salvation of the whole world is up to YOU.

10. Stay away from ALCOHOL. Even if you don't drink, stay away from others drinking. The total weight of Class A carcinogens in cigarette smoke is less than 1/1000 of that given off by an alcoholic drink in one hour.

11. Buy pharmaceutical stocks. 'Big Pharma' is making a grab for a nicotine monopoly. They are raking in more boodle than all the illegal drug lords put together with each new smoking ban. (hmmm-see #8 ?!?)

12. On second thought - DUMP pharmaceutical stocks. When sheep-le figure out what huge whopping lies they've been told, & how many zillion$ 'big pharma's' spent buying all our politicians, media, medical, & 'education' systems, Stuff will hit the fan - BIG time.

13. Demand REAL 'Clean Indoor Air' laws. 'Smoke free' air is NOT 'CLEAN' air. Air contains bacteria, viruses, dust mites, dust mite excrement, fungi, molds, spoors, pollen, dander, flakes of dead skin,+ chemicals. YUCK!

14. Rudeness is 'in', but don't be rude to those who assault us with smells that offend us. Take allergy meds for all who wear perfumes, colognes, after shaves, & any other scents we are allergic to. Don't make them go outside in the cold, nor refuse to be in the same room with them.

15. Withhold all POLITICAL Contributions except to those who COMMIT to protecting our PRIVATE Property Rights. Demand a NATIONAL LAW PROTECTING Private Property from bans of legal activities & substances.

16. Avoid EVENTS where there IS a heated, DESIGNATED SMOKING AREA, sealed off with doors, & those in charge of the event won't ALLOW it to be used for smoking, forcing folks to stand outside in 23f degrees. NO MORE $ for grossly inconsiderate / downright CRUEL people!

17. Boycott ALL smoking ban areas. These folks have lost their FREEDOM on Private Property. HELP them regain it by helping to put pressure on their public officials. TELL officials & CEOs of companies how much $ you USED to spend, & how much it's costing them.

18. VOTE with YOUR $ - Avoid spending ANY $ in ban areas - Not only restaurants & bars -
why are they always the only ones to pay? Do not buy gas, nor stay at motels, Do not shop at retail stores, No catalog or online orders, No produce/products/services from BAN Areas
19. Withhold $$$ from American Liar (er lung : ) Assoc., & other 'health charities', until they quit wasting all our donations on anti-smoking propaganda, & do something useful, like give us a TEST for the Lung cancer GENE. Their CEOs don't NEED those 6 fig. salaries.

20. Search the Bible - there are almost 400 references commanding burnt offerings & incense being burned in God's temple. Maybe if the EPA had been there to tell the Lord how many carcinogens are in a burnt offering, He would have realized smoke is 'unhealthy'?

21. Be thankful if you don't live in a smoking ban area - yet. The CA smoking ban has cost them 100 billion$ so far. There are about 3,000 fewer restaurants & bars than there should be based on past 10 yrs. economic growth. ALL CA taxpayers are paying that $hortfall.
It isn't necessary to do everything, or to do it ALL the time.

Every little bit helps! It will all add up over TIME.

There are still about 60 MILLION (or MORE? Anti-smokers LIE about this too) smokers in the USA.

ALL FREEDOM LOVERS JOIN IN - YOUR Property Rights are Threatened TOO!

It FEELS GOOD to be able to DO SOMETHING!

Remember: All the OLDEST people in the world happen to be SMOKERS : )http://www.forces.org/evidence/hamilton/other/oldest.htm

Happy New Year!

These resolutions are ALL based on FACTS.
Documentation, FREE Reports, and Information about everything mentioned
in these resolutions is at www.aalf.ws/smokingmad/.
Follow links there to a wealth of health, economic, HUMOR, & other info.

Animated .gif version
http://www.aalf.ws/image/SmokersNewYearsResolutionsAS.gif

Anti-smoking FACTS Card 1
http://www.aalf.ws/image/SmokingFactsCardAS.gif
Anti-smoking FACTS Card 2
http://www.aalf.ws/image/Anti-Smoking-Facts240x140AS.gif

http://www.hosanna1.com/smoking/Christians/

Please SHARE THIS COAST to COAST & Worldwide

Lynda Farley - http://www.hosanna1.com/myresume.html
Edmonton, KY (270)432-7272 CST

AALF - An American who Loves Freedom - www.aalf.ws/

'The Most Beautiful Pages & Dogs On The WWW'
www.hosanna1.com/

Try not to be offensive

Zed — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 11:52:54 -0500

Implying cowardice, approval of genocide, land-theft, and now lack of education or awareness are, in fact, attacks. If you want to discuss a specific incident of modern theocratic colonialism in the western world, you'll need to be, well, specific (and ideally, a little more polite). I am, however, not particularly inclined to prioritize the correction of 600 or even 60 year old injustices when there are more current ones to worry about.

"Manifest destiny" is, as far as I know, dead for now (and if you think otherwise, your cause would be better served by noting an example than by insulting strangers). If it gets resurrected, there will be people who attack it. Expansionism and religious hubris are dangerous enough on their own merits without forcibly conflating them.

I see

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 10:25:14 -0500

Sorry to have disturbed you from your slumber, I gathered by the quality or your articles that you were well educated. I'll go post elsewhere. Some interesting stuff here though, keep up the good work. I was not attacking you, I was trying to gird you into action because I think you are right but have not joined all the dots. We are currently reliving a 600 year old argument, go to the history books my friend. Its all there.

Huh?

Zed — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 07:50:34 -0500

I have absolutely no idea where you are coming from. Nobody uses the "God promised us that land" line to justify genocide and land-theft anymore, so there's not much point in railing about it. Nowadays it's "spreading freedom and democracy" that's used as justification, and most of the same people who are opposed to the destruction of science are also opposed to wars of aggression.

This is something you should be able to see evidence of on this very blog, if you cared to look.

That's all very well but...

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 07:17:47 -0500

Over here in Europe (the Old World) nobody gives a fig about the creationalists and any suggestion of changing the curriculum is met with the polite derision it deserves. I read quite a lot of criticism of these people in US based blogs and while I'm in no way supportive of their flat-earth polemic what puzzles me is the silence on the "God promised us that land" brigade who read from the same kooky book. Is it that you are too chicken to face up to them? Or is it that Americans just don't mind genocide and land-theft but bad science is just too wrong to take in silence?

Cheerful thought

Zed — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 00:06:56 -0500

"Blame it on the revolution and shoot a couple of peasants?"

"At this rate, we're soon going to run out of peasants."

Yes, well...

japplegate — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 19:13:22 -0500

Who's to say we're not still breeding for brutality? Sure, the genome is still evolving, but do we have any way of knowing for sure that said evolution isn't going to make us MORE brutal as a species?

Enjoy your meal!

--
Hello, My name is Linus Torvalds. You killed my process. Prepare to die.

tursiops.org

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 22:34:21 -0500

Thanks for the plug for my site!

Dolfin
http://tursiops.org/

Losing personhood

Zed — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 12:42:14 -0500

I noticed that Alas, a Blog has a category devoted to Terri Schiavo, which covers some of these issues from the other direction: at what point you can stop considering a lump of flesh a person. From the scientific side, it appears to center around Mrs. Schiavo's loss of a cerebral cortex.

Personhood, etc.

Zed — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 22:39:32 -0500

Hello Abby. Thanks for stopping by.

Quoting Abby:

I appreciate your response, but this is what I cannot accept: that the value of something is based on one's emotional response to it.

It's not that the value of something is based on one's emotional response to it, but that many reasonable people can disagree over whether something has any significant value at all. If that is the case, then it is wholly inappropriate for half of the population to attempt to imprison the other half for choosing to preserve something that everyone agrees has value at the cost of something for which there is no such agreement, not even a significant majority.

The sets of situations I presented weren't chosen at random; they represent a gradient of risks. Forcing a woman to bear a child can place that woman's life at risk. Forcing a woman to raise an unwanted child is a painful experience for both, often harmful to their development, and harmful to the society around them.

Quoting Abby:

The terrorists tell you that you have to choose who will die - your spouse or the 10 people from India. What do you choose? If you choose to save your spouse, does that somehow mean that the people from India weren't really 'persons' or worthy of legal protection because you have a greater emotional attachment to your spouse?"

There are three fundamental differences in your scenario. First and foremost, you've brought another free will into the equation: my decision to say anything does not prevent the terrorist from choosing not whether or not to kill anyone. Second, the (presumably adult) Indians are not in questionable status as to whether they are people (you might have a better analogy by having the terrorists forcing you to choose between gassing two boxes, one of which has your spouse, whom you can clearly see through a glass pane, or another completely sealed box, that might or might not have people in it, in sort of a twisted version of the Schrödinger's Cat experiment). Third, the truly important question isn't about whether or not the ten people from India are worthy of legal protection, but whether or not you are worthy of legal protection if you choose your spouse and let 10 people die. Are you willing to put someone in jail for choosing their spouse? If the answer is no, then you should be very wary of being willing to put someone in jail for choosing the mother over the embryo.

Quoting Abby:

You're saying that almost everyone will disagree about when a fetus becomes a person, so we should allow abortion anyway because it makes room for "differences of faith." The thing I don't get about this is that this can be applied to so many other things. If someone believes that, say, redheds aren't "persons" because there's something about their hair color that makes him think of witchcraft, and he goes on a murderous rampage, killing all the redheads he sees, we wouldn't say, "Well, he has a right to do this. We ought to allow differences of faith, after all." OK, this may seem like a hopelessly inadequate analogy, but it's much more similar to the abortion position than you think!

Actually, I don't think it's similar to the abortion position at all, because we already have a number of globally accepted standards about how to recognize people (they deliberately interact with their surroundings, have roughly human shape, communicate with us, contribute to society, etc.), and although nobody claims this list is complete, it is definitely sufficient. If you're walking, talking, and building it doesn't matter if you're a redhead (in fact, it doesn't matter if you're an embryo — if you show me an embryo deliberately manipulating its environment in more than an instinctive fashion and carrying a conversation, I'll change sides) because you have already met conditions that everyone can agree on.

The problem with an embryo is that it doesn't meet these conditions, and you would have been better off looking for other examples that are more marginal because they also don't meet those conditions, such as people who have taken brain damage and have been left in a vegetative state. These situations are controversial for almost exactly the same reasons, however, and are rife with arguments over when someone can override a Do Not Resuscitate directive, or can pull the plug on someone who isn't going to recover. The arguments over DNR have gotten so bad, in fact, that physicians and nurses have started getting DNR tattoos, to make sure that there is no dispute about their wishes.

Quoting Abby:

And as for "jailing people for having differences of faith," isn't that the purpose of laws to begin with?

No! Good heavens, no, absolutely not, at least not in the United States; the First Amendment explicitly forbids it, in fact. The purpose of laws is to prevent harm to contributing members of a society. This might be different in a religious state, such as Israel or Iran, but I am quite happy not to live in such places and am quite willing to concede them whatever insane laws they desire, as long as they keep them strictly within their own borders.

Quoting Abby:

Second, you are exactly right that there's no scientific evidence for the beginning of "personhood." In my post on Feministing, I meant to point out that the concept of "personhood," is, in itself, vague and arbitrary. There *is* scientific evidence, however, about when a human life begins.

No. No there isn't. All you've done is switched out "personhood" for "human life", but it's exactly the same concept. I highly recommend you go through that link, as it covers most of the differing philosophies (and their history), inside the scientific communities and out, but inside or out they're still only philosophies. Science can only show us chemical or electrical behaviour, the rest we make up ourselves. I'm from the (admittedly somewhat extreme) school that believes that consciousness defines humanity, and thus human life; most people don't like that argument because conscious decisions don't become apparant usually for several months after birth. For the sake of peace, I am willing to bend over backwards to support extending protection to birth, the state at which care can (more or less) easily be given to another, or with a lot of argument perhaps as far as 7 months after conception, the point at which neural connections are formed. Few would claim that an adult with the brain completely scooped out and only the body kept alive by the miracle of modern life support technology was still a person, however, so I can only see the claim that a body with no brain at all developed is a person as ludicrous.

Even granting as far as I could possibly go, just for the sake of argument, the law already protects a fetus 7 months into development, however (well past the second trimester limit). This isn't what the anti-abortion crowd is looking for.

Quoting Abby:

And this is the ground on which I ultimately base my position. There's nothing even remotely "religious" about it. Human life exists in a continuum, and I believe that all human beings, regardless of stage of development, size, or certain attributes they happen to possess, have a right to live.

And this is the reason that many people find your position completely untenable. You say there's nothing religious about it, but all you've done is state completely unsupported beliefs. You are taking it on faith that a few cells constitute a human being, despite the fact that those cells can't do any of the things we expect human beings to do. They don't communicate. They don't even move. They don't laugh, cry, become curious, panic, or love. They can't. They don't have two neurons to click together, at least not at early stages of development. Treating them as human leads to absurd connections, as were pointed out so well in the Reason article I linked to in the main entry: 80% of fertilized embryos are lost naturally. Are we to reshuffle our priorities to try to save the millions (billions?) of zygotes lost to nature every year? If we are to accept fertilized cells as complete human beings, this is the leading cause of death in the world by a gigantic margin. Are we to do so at the cost of health for grown adults? Shall we arrest those who spend money on vitamins, but refuse to contribute to a fund for zygote rescue?

Quoting Abby:

Oh, and how is a fetus be a "potential human being"?

It's a potential human being because it isn't a human being yet, but if given the proper environment and support, might become one eventually. A seed may be a potential tree... but it is not a tree.

Quoting Abby:

I really appreciate your response; I've never been quoted on a blog before!

Stop by more often, and I might quote you again.

Personhood, etc

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 21:01:44 -0500

Zed, this is Abby. I appreciate your response, but this is what I cannot accept: that the value of something is based on one's emotional response to it. I've heard tons of arguments that go along the lines of, "if stuck in a burning building with a three year old and a fetus in an artificial womb, which would you rather save?" This is based on the false assumption that a value of a person's life is equal to whether or not we would mourn if they died. One blogger puts it better than I can: "Terrorists have kidnapped you and your spouse. They bring you into a room with a television screen where they have a live feed of other terrorists in India who are pointing guns at the heads of ten innocent people. The terrorists tell you that you have to choose who will die - your spouse or the 10 people from India. What do you choose? If you choose to save your spouse, does that somehow mean that the people from India weren't really 'persons' or worthy of legal protection because you have a greater emotional attachment to your spouse?"

And another thing. You're saying that almost everyone will disagree about when a fetus becomes a person, so we should allow abortion anyway because it makes room for "differences of faith." The thing I don't get about this is that this can be applied to so many other things. If someone believes that, say, redheds aren't "persons" because there's something about their hair color that makes him think of witchcraft, and he goes on a murderous rampage, killing all the redheads he sees, we wouldn't say, "Well, he has a right to do this. We ought to allow differences of faith, after all." OK, this may seem like a hopelessly inadequate analogy, but it's much more similar to the abortion position than you think! And as for "jailing people for having differences of faith," isn't that the purpose of laws to begin with?

Second, you are exactly right that there's no scientific evidence for the beginning of "personhood." In my post on Feministing, I meant to point out that the concept of "personhood," is, in itself, vague and arbitrary. There *is* scientific evidence, however, about when a human life begins. And this is the ground on which I ultimately base my position. There's nothing even remotely "religious" about it. Human life exists in a continuum, and I believe that all human beings, regardless of stage of development, size, or certain attributes they happen to possess, have a right to live. Oh, and how is a fetus be a "potential human being"?
I really appreciate your response; I've never been quoted on a blog before!