Abortion & Politics: the basics

[Final-Fan]

When it comes to very politically and emotionally and morally charged issues such as abortion, the very first thing that I think people need to do is make sure they are not talking past one another. 

PART ONE

I recently saw a video where someone said, "If you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married.  If you don't like abortion, don't have an abortion."  This may be a reasonable argument when it comes to gay marriage, but it completely misses the point, in my opinion, when it comes to abortion. 

At the core of the debate over whether abortion should be allowed, in my view, is the issue of what a human person is.  Is a freshly fertilized egg—a zygote—a person?  Is a blastocyst a few days old that hasn't even implanted in the uterus a person?  Is a ten week old fetus, with no practical brain function, a person?  Most pro-choice say no, no, no, and that personhood develops in the fetus later, perhaps around 26 weeks.  Pro-lifers say yes to the third one at least, and many say yes to all three. 

That's why the quote is such nonsense.  To the speaker, of course, it seems fine:  if abortion is simply a distasteful action that doesn't affect a human person's life (except the potential mother), then it's reasonable.  "I don't like eating peanut butter and I don't want to have an abortion."  But to a pro-lifer, it's like saying, "If you don't like murder, don't murder people; why are you telling me that I can't murder someone for being inside my body?"

On the flip side, if a pro-life advocate says to a pro-choce person "abortion is murder", the answer isn't going to be shocked realization; it's going to be "no it's not".  Because they don't see the fetus as an actual person until way later in the development cycle.  It's a potential person.  Killing a potential person may be regrettable, but it's not horrific. 

At least, this is how I see it as a pro-choice person and how I have seen the pro-life position and its proponents' arguments from where I stand. 

PART TWO

So the debate over abortion is really a debate over personhood.  This, as I see it as I write this post, is a question that can really only be settled three ways: 
1.  Scientifically
2.  Religiously
3.  Democratically

Now, here in the great nation of the United States of America, we have freedom of religion, which in my mind rules out a religiously-based definition of personhood as the basis for a legal ban on abortion.  (Feel free to rebut this claim.) 

To be continued.  I have to go, but I'd like to post this anyway to see people's thoughts on this much.

[edit:  Some good discussion below!  A lot more pro-choice than pro-life, but also showing that neither side is totally monolithic.  I hope no one was waiting for me to make a book out of Part 2.  Basically, though a thing like this will definitely be influenced by the democratic process, I do think this is a policy question that deserves to be settled by more than a simple head count.  Science has informed policy and should continue to do so.  And if enough people don't like it, well that's the other side of things.]