One of the most divisive issues in politics is abortion, but it is also one of the issues where the priorities and beliefs of the proponents and opponents are brought into sharp relief.

Law should never be based on preferences, and seldom on economics. My preferences are no excuse to impose law on all of society. My expenses are not your obligations. Law needs to be based on a shared view of right and wrong, and on broad consensus. In all other cases, we should be free to live our own lives in freedom. We should be free to worship, produce, and live as we wish as long as we don’t try to take away the freedom of others. As the saying goes, my right to swing my fist ends at your nose.

Abortion may be the ultimate conundrum, because it brings together so many issues in a highly emotional and personal way. It also offers some clear choices, and illustrated how important principles are in making law.

In my opinion, abortion has one central, core question that should drive all legal and policy issues. That issue is whether that lump of flesh in the womb is another person, or more akin to a tonsil or an appendix.

It is fairly clear that if I were to ask my doctor to take out my appendix, or give away my kidney to a sick neighbor, no one would interfere with my right to use my “body parts” as I wish. I take some risks, and there are issues of money and legal ways to do these things, but on the whole, it is my business alone.

If on the other hand, if I did that with my child – after birth – there would be lots of interference, and the reason is that by broad consensus, we have decided as a society that raising children is a duty of parents, not an option. The law does not allow us to put newborn girls out in the snow when they are born because we want boys. Those children are persons in their own right, and their lives get the protection of the law.  Since they are not in a position to defend that right themselves, we have government machinery to see to the “welfare” of these children.

So the question – the only really important question – becomes: As a matter of law, when does a clump of cells become a person?

I don’t claim to know the answer to that question, and it’s a hard one. I do know this. That it is the core question, and all else falls away by comparison.

President Obama said it eloquently at the National Prayer Breakfast this last week. Obama said that “killing the innocent” is the “ultimate betrayal of God’s will.”

I agree.

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