How come it's Halloween and also 70 degrees? I don't remember sweating in my Halloween costume.

I heard one of my students from a very conservative Roman Catholic family saying to a friend who leads the school club, Fellowship of Christian Students, "How can she be for John Kerry? He's for murdering babies."

Procreation is the thing isn't it? What would the world be like if sexual intercourse was not related to procreation or to disease? Would we all be polygamous? Or would we be the same?

Pregnancy is a strange process. From the male point of view it is scary. What must it feel like to have it happen to you? I don't know. Abortion must be likewise and unimaginable for men. I've always thought that men should have no say so in the abortion debate. (I think I'd like it better if women decided when we should go to war too. They bring life into the world. Let them decide when to sacrifice life. I think more people would be alive.)

I'm drawn back to my student's accusation, "He's for murdering babies." The mystery for me is when does a child become a child. Is one cell a child? Are two, are four? Does a fertilized egg have a soul? When an egg becomes fertilized, does a bell ring in heaven and God and his angels grab a soul from the soul bank and immediately transfer that soul to the egg? Is there a different soul prepared for each of the possibilities of combination of sperm and egg? How about all those unplanned pregnancies? How does God get the souls ready for them? Are souls blank slates, imprinted after birth? Since God is all knowing, and he knows that some fertilized eggs are going to miscarry? Does he put a soul in those eggs only to have them die? Can he use that soul again later in a child that will be born, or is it gone forever? An all knowing God would know if a child was going to be aborted too wouldn't he? Is there a soul in every egg? Do we sin when we use birth control methods? I only had two children. Am I a murderer? Isn't that the position of the Roman Catholic Church, that no birth control should ever be used? Does the church believe that every egg is a soul?

This is a mystery to me. I don't know when a fetus becomes a child, a person. When a pregnancy threatens the mother's life should we let the mother die because to endanger the fetus would be murder? When the fetus is badly formed and cannot survive, and the doctors know that, should a miscarriage be induced?

Amazingly, there are people who think they can answer these riddles I have posed. I used to know more myself. As I get older, study more, ponder, reflect and research issues, I seem to know less. Intellectualism is the enemy of simple answers and that's why the intellectuals are rounded up and eliminated when governments are making changes.

There are a lot of questions in life that I cannot answer. I have decided that I'm okay with not understanding. It is okay with me if a woman and her doctor make a decision about this on their own. I hope that the country remains free to handle this issue in this manner. Why should a bureaucrat interpreting a statute be in charge of such a mysterious and difficult decision?