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CMV: I believe the abortion debate is being dominated by extremes and practical policies/solutions are being drowned out.

This is a multi-fold view, so let me take some time to do my best to set it up.  I am also certainly not a medical or legal expert, so feel free to correct me if I mistate anything.

First, I understand there is a wide spectrum of beliefs and opinions on abortion.  There are people who’d fall in the “Pro-Life” category who’d be against the harsh Alabama Laws, and there’s people in the “Pro-Choice” category who find abortion to be immoral.  Just because I believe the debate is being dominated by the extremes does not mean I think everyone is falling under one of those extremes.

It seems the extremes on the “Pro-Life” side are using terms such as ‘baby murder’ and ‘infanticide’, which I don’t find to be helpful to the conversation and finding a practical solution.  This seems to stem from somebody who’s pro-Life believing a fetus deserves the same rights as a human being, at the expense of the mother’s rights.

I am not sure where I would draw the line of where an abortion should only be done in the case of a health issue (although I’d certainly say late term abortions should only be done in this case, and first trimester abortions shouldn’t be restricted to this case), but I really can’t see how a fetus could be considered a human in the womb, especially within the first trimester.  The fetus is still dependent on the mother/host’s body for survival, and its body could not survive on its own outside the womb like a normal human’s could.  

At best I could see someone claiming a fetus to be a “potential human”, as theoretically as long as there is not a miscarriage the fetus will develop into a human.  But at that same circumstance, a potential human is still not a human.  For example, let’s say I take a single piano lesson and the teacher says “You have the potential to be a great pianist”, that wouldn’t make me a great pianist.  I could still choose to simply not practice and fulfill the potential.  As for the fetus, it’s still at the stage where “it could become a human” but it’s not one yet.  Defining something as being human simply because it has the potential to become one becomes extremely problematic.  A sperm has potential to become human, so would that mean every man who masturbates commits mass murder?  Obviously not.

By that standpoint, I really can’t see a case where you could make a solid argument that abortion is murder.  That’s not to say I’m saying abortion is moral, but that it’s not murder and not infanticide.  Those charged attacks seem to be major extremes.

Now, approaching the other extreme of “it’s just a clump of cells”, I’m not really sure I could get behind that either.  While at very early stages, it certainly appears that way, but by a late enough stage you have a fetus that is deliverable.  By killing the fetus you are taking away life, and a potential human that’s one the verge of becoming human dies.  Using the pianist example, it’d be like I spent 10 years of practicing piano, and was close to really achieving something special with my craft, then had second thoughts and decided to quit.  While I was still only at the verge of greatness in that sense, there’s something a bit more inherently tragic about quitting after all of that work and development was put in.  

It’s not a perfect comparison, but I feel like if you asked someone which was more valuable a sperm, an embryo or a fetus, they would almost all answer the fetus.  Granted, add a human child into that equation, and your answer would likely be the human child.  So in that scale, there is obviously high immorality in killing a child (murder), but you could see the scale of that immorality decline the less developed the fetus is, based on how we’d rank them in inherent value.  The amount of that immorality for abortion would be hard to judge and seems very subjective.

So, based on this there’s some amount of moral greyness in abortion (I think each person in this thread would likely have a different answer on how immoral or moral it is).  I would think that would correspond with most people, whether “pro-Life” or “pro-Choice”, would likely be able to agree that lower abortion rates, keeping laws and access constant, would be a good thing.  There’s a certain amount of moral greyness in killing a fetus and an abortion is a result of an unwanted pregnancy (thus the entire experience is unwanted by the woman, thus if it could be avoided, that would be desired).  So I think we could agree that first abortions are linked to unwanted pregnancies, and we could agree that society would be better off if it had less of either or both.

So, why is the policy debate focused entirely on whether we should outright ban abortion or not?  Wouldn’t it be more productive to focus on practical policies that help reduce unwanted pregnancies, and thus abortions?

Restricting, or outright banning, abortion seems to be implying either the woman should be punished for her sexual activity or that the fetus is a human being.  I’d hope you wouldn’t agree with the former, and I believe we adequately showed the latter isn’t true, or is at least very vague.

So wouldn’t it make more sense for both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice advocates to find policies that help reduce unwanted pregnancies?  An example of this could be better sex education, available healthcare and freely accessible contraceptives.  Some mix of policies such as these can help reduce unwanted pregnancies, thus reducing abortions, without having to go to the extremes of either banning abortions or denying the moral greyness and undesirability of having a high abortion rate.

It seems to me, things like the Alabama law are political theater, meant to rile up debate and voters to your side, but does nothing at addressing the actual problem.  I think you could find consensus that reducing unwanted pregnancies would be positive, and that implies lower abortion rates, and there seems to be more clear and easy to pass and enact policies available to do that.  So shouldn’t the abortion discussion be focused on these practical policies, and not the extremes we see in the political realm right now?

EDIT:

To clarify a major point I see being drawn up.

I recognize extremes might not have been the best word choice, as it ends up implying the argument is a “both sidesism” which wasn’t the intention.

The intention is more focused on how the debate seems to be framed around simplistic talking points which draw clear moral lines about a subject where the moral lines are shaky and grey at best.  I’m saying, that the argument of “abortion is murder” is way to extreme and leads to acceptance of laws such as the Alabama laws.  But also not addressing the nuance that an abortion is morally neutral at best seems to further drive the polarization.  Abortion as a topic seems to be more focused on political, semantic theater and barely any of the coverage is focused on practical policies that could appeal to people pro-choice and anti-abortion.


Now, obviously for many politicians making the abortion subject a wedge issue through political theater is the goal.  I guess my appeal is to try to push it past being a wedge issue and to focus on the policies that would actually make a difference (while not necessarily being as politically polarizing).
gpt
> So wouldn’t it make more sense for both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice advocates to find policies that help reduce unwanted pregnancies? An example of this could be better sex education, available healthcare and freely accessible contraceptives. Some mix of policies such as these can help reduce unwanted pregnancies, thus reducing abortions, without having to go to the extremes of either banning abortions or denying the moral greyness and undesirability of having a high abortion rate.

I find your viewpoint very confusing. Pro-Choice people have always been the ones who advocated for better sex education, available healthcare and freely accessible contraceptives. Anti-abortionists are the ones who fight against such policies.

You seem to be working under the logical fallacy that both views are of equal value and the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but in fact the anti-abortion viewpoint has become more and more extreme, while the pro-choice viewpoint is just the same as it ever was.