Tolerance and Social Control, Take 2

First of all, I would like to thank all the responders to my previous post for their articulate and lengthy responses. I found the whole discussion interesting and thoughtful all the way to the end. There were two persistent anti-choice responders, Nethicus and Eddiestardust, who continued to avoid the question as I posed it, though, and I would like to know how they would actually respond to the point of my post, which is, if my hypothetical woman in Missouri who would like to have an abortion does not believe that human life begins at conception and does not believe that every zygote is equivalent to every human, but instead believes that human life begins (let's say) when a child can live on its own outside of the womb, why does the conviction or belief of some anti-choice person trump her own conviction or belief? Eddiestardust, for example, offered the following argument: "Human life is sacred from conception to natural death. Life is given by God himself and he alone decides when it is time for each of us." His argument is no different from that of my hypothetical priest -- he believes and feels a certain thing about human life, but there is nothing self-evident about it, and no reason, in and of itself, for my hypothetical woman to change her mind.

More persistent is Nethicus, who says he is a scientist (though he does not say that he is a biologist, for example). Addressing another responder, he writes, "You, as ZEF, were still you. Regardless of what you *think*, you were human then, and you are now." This, too, is merely an assertion of belief. And doesn't this seem like the height of arrogance, that an anonymous responder on a website would dictate to another anonymous responder how she should *think* of her own identity? If you are discussing beliefs, you actually cannot have recourse to ideas of "truth," since your beliefs cannot be proved by you to be objectively true.

What if everyone who posted about beliefs were required never to use the language of "truth," but always to use the language of "belief"? What if eddiestardust's line, above, read, "I believe human life is sacred from conception to natural death. I believe that life is given by God himself and he alone decides when it is time for each of us"? Who could disagree with him -- he does believe that. But equally, those listening to him would be accorded the right to their own beliefs. Similarly, Nethicus might say, "I believe you, as ZEF, were still you. I believe that regardless of what you *think*, you were human then, and you are now." Nethicus would then be acknowledging responsibility for his beliefs -- he chose them, he actively engages in them -- while allowing the other responder to take responsibility for her beliefs, and to act upon them.

My original question was, why should Christians believe that they have the right to impose their beliefs on the rest of us? If you take away questions of "truth" and ideas that their beliefs come from God, then you take away most of their argument, and are left with simple power politics. Anti-choice factions in the US have used power politics to intimidate the other side for a generation now. I believe they need to be honest about their motives and their goals.