My understanding is hardly obscure. If you honestly misunderstood, my clarification of which sense I've understood the term – which you suggested and I explicitly averred – should settle it. If you still want to call it hypocritical based on your understanding, then fine – but by that very definition it's no more perjorative than the term 'inconsistent'.

(As to your questions regarding what a fetus is, see the second link all the back in comment 21. You know, where I said "If anyone wants to see where I did "look for the point where below that, no real case can be made that it’s a developing human life" – and reached a different conclusion than Dr. Jackson… see here." Short version: if it doesn't possess a brain, then it's human tissue, not a human being. If killing it is murder then so is exfoliating. Once a brain has formed, it's hit at least the minimum possible point where a thinking being could be present.)

As to "vile aspersion on your character", I didn't say you wrote that phrase. I didn't put quotes around it or anything. I was characterizing how you apparently received what I wrote. Calling it "perjorative" and telling me to "Go to h*ll" seems to bear that out.

Hypocrite:

1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

I.e., there is no requirement of any amount of conscious inconsistency in order to be a hypocrite.

"…before the brain forms, an embryo can't be a human being…" Genetically speaking, what exactly is it? If it is genetically human, then killing it is murder, and forbidding murder has little to do with the nefarious mandating of anything.

Maybe you should think through what THAT implies (i.e., the vote of judges determines the humanity or value of undesireables).

"…vile aspersion on your character…" show me where I wrote that.

"I get accused of dishonesty around here a lot." Maybe it's time to stop and consider why, since I did not accuse you of being a liberal in this thread.

You ask, "If it is a blob of tissue, then why do you care?" Because I do think that before the brain forms, an embryo can't be a human being… but people who disagree are trying to mandate that everyone treat them as such, whether or not they agree. Yet they don't seem to think through what that implies, or behave accordingly.

Pointing out this inconsistency is a way of getting people to actually think about what they actually believe and why. The fact that you have to work so hard to regard it as a vile aspersion on your character or whatever makes me suspect you don't want to do that.

I get accused of dishonesty around here a lot, but it's not the case. So far as I can tell, the fact that I'm not a cartoon liberal (not really a 'liberal' at all, though not a 'conservative' either) confuses people here. I take different positions, and justify my positions with different arguments. But since I'm "not conservative", I must therefore be "liberal", right? I mean, there's no other option… is there?

"…I have to suspect malice…" Precisely my point about you in my comment 32, something you completely avoid in your response.

My comment about the blob of tissue is directed towards you. In case you didn't get the point, you have made this big to-do about inconsistency and how you expect people to grieve, as if there is something profound that you are taking a stand on. If it is a blob of tissue, then why do you care?

Whether or not you intended to use the word hypocrisy matters very little. You wrote what you wrote, it was, clear, and you have spent a dozen posts trying to obscure what you plainly wrote.

People can grieve exactly the hell they want. What you think about it matters less and less to me the more you throw dust up in the air.

Jeez, if you could only have an honest exchange once in a while.

And here's where you miss the point so completely that I have to suspect malice: "Why would anyone have a problem with a miscarriage? It's just a blob of tissue." If people say they don't believe that, if they say that a zygote is a full human being, but then don't treat them that way… yeah, that's "hypocritical or inconsistent".

Oh, wait. Those are Mr. Kerwick's words, but it seems you agree with them. But your actual words, which I quoted in #30, carry the meaning of "hypocrite." But they don't, you say, even though your complaint is about inconsistency regarding a large group of people you claim statistically exist. Sure, I got it now.

Well, you can pawn it off on Mr. Kerwick, but I will continue to hold you accountable for your words. And your words morph over time when challenged. They don't mean what they mean. One gets jarred when one goes back to your original comments after experiencing your parsing of them in later posts.

And, of course, it is you that is having the intellectual discussion. I, on the other hand, profoundly lack clarity.

You know, after having previous discussions with you ending up the same way, maybe I am lacking clarity. Why would I engage you yet again and tolerate your continued bob-and-weave? It's like seeing a familar shape of a car, but it is covered with mud and no longer recognizable.

I guess I'm just not intellectual enough.

I haven't impugned the honesty of either your wife or yourself… nor would I expect you or your wife to display a lot of clarity upon suffering a miscarriage. If you want to take what I wrote as "perjorative" no power on Earth can stop you, but that wasn't my intent. And if you actually read what I wrote, I think you'll come to that conclusion.

In post 17 you did not say that people mourn differently, you said, "…then I'd have to call her actions inconsistent, though." "Differently" is a magnanimous term, while "inconsistent" is perjorative. Once again you dance around, trying to be a moving target.

Your whole implication is that pro-lifers are hypocrites. Otherwise you wouldn't have written things like, "If people say they believe something, but don't act like they believe it… you have to wonder if they actually believe what they say." That is a textbook definition of hypocrisy.

It is clear who is lacking intellectual consistency here.

Comment 17 above.

And no, I haven't said anything about 'pro-life people' being hypocrites – that's your word you're trying to put in my mouth. Hypocrisy requires a certain amount of consciousness about a contradiction, and I think there are many people (on all sides of the 'abortion issue') who haven't thought through the implications of their beliefs. One can be inconsistent without being hypocritical.

I'm sorry for your and your wife's loss, truly. No matter when it happens, it's a terrible thing. (My own wife came very close to losing our first and was on bed rest for months.) You are apparently perceiving what I'm saying as an attack, which is not the case. I'm attempting to have an intellectual discussion on "Intellectual Conservative", but if you're unwilling to do so, I guess we'll just have to leave it at that.