I don't know that that's the right tack to take. If you posit life vs. life mother vs. child, you probably lose the argument.

If a mother of 28 (I'd guess about average for now.) with 58 years to live is put against a baby with 72 (male) or 76 (female) years to live, the stats woudl argue you're better off killing the mother and saving the baby, unless killing the mother lowers the life expectancy of the baby or of other children she already has.

Reducing people to years of life is of course absurd, but that's where an awful lot of people will take the argument.

I think arguing the personhood of the fetus is a bigger win in the long term, because you are then comparing years of human life with a clump of proto-human cells.

At some point, the fetus does turn into a baby. The Catholics would have us believe that it's at fertilization, which is tragic, since millions of fertilized eggs fail to implant or develop every year. I think that's extreme. But allowing abortion up until the water breaks is just as silly as denying I would put the boundry at the time when the baby has developed a working brain, capable of complex thought.

Don't ask me about acephalics. I don't have an answer for that quandry.

I'm not sure I understand your comment. I don't see how anything I said reduced the question to some kind of quality adujusted life years analysis. I just think the abortion issue is really a question of reproductive rights, and I think that's where it should be argued. This whole business of arguing about when the fetus becomes a person doesn't do much for me, it puts the debate in a black and white religious sphere where it's impossible to come to any agreement. And I guess I also think the pro-life movement has the better side of that debate. Maybe put it this way: I'm pro-choice not because I think the fetus isn't a person, but rather because I believe women, like men, should have full control over their reproductive rights.

btw, I know you weren't arguing it, but I don't think the whole life years analysis will convince too many folks here... essentially you'd have the government telling people they had to sacrifice their lives for soemone else, which not too many Americans are comfortable with. Notice that even Congress, in passing this bill, claimed they'd seen research showing the procedure wouldn't help save women's lives. I think they weren't willing to take on the issue from that direction because nobody would agree with them...

The comment you made that I reacted to was "...clarifying the real issue here - men are never put into the position of having to choose between their own life and their pregnancy". I'd argue that pro-lifers would read that as "baby" in place of "pregnancy".

If you don't argue the personhood of the fetus then you allow the debate to be framed by the other side in terms of killing a small human to save a life or killing a small human for reproductive choice. If the fetus is a full-fledged person, then killing the baby is the same morally as killing a baby that's been delivered in the name of the freedom of another.

I and many others would find this utterly indefensible. By focusing on what constitutes a full fledged person as opposed to a clump of potentially human cells, you cede the moral high ground to the absolutists.

If however, you frame the argument as a choice between a living breathing person, and a grouping of tissues and cells akin to the unimplanted egg, you can defend your opinions not just from a social, but from a moral perspective.

Ultimately, the anti-choice side has the more emotional side of the argument over what constitutes human, but I don't think they have the better side of it. If I believed that the fetus was a full person I'd be out there protesting abortion strenuously. As it is, I fully support a woman's right to decide if the potential person inside her shoudl be removed, just as if she decided to be surgically sterilized.

I can't type today. Insert a "not" between "By" and "focusing" in the third paragraph.