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I think the pro-life people, particularly the religious who form a majority of them, don't tend to view the question tactically. If a position was imposed that reduced abortion rates without bringing it to zero, they'd still be happy, but they cannot themselves argue for a mere reduction because if they did they imagine themselves being tormented in the afterlife by the ghosts of the unborn fruits of rapes asking them "Wasn't I also a precious human being worth fighting for?". So for them, it has to be a total ban. This might change in the future if the pro-life position gets taken up en-masse by people who have another basis than religion for it; after all, natalism is not inherently religious.
No, that's not right at all. We're not against it because we're worried about an afterlife of torment. We're against it because we consider it evil and wrong to kill babies. Indeed the whole concept that it's wrong to kill babies for the sake of convenience would seem to be a Christian one, since infanticide is otherwise a fairly common thing for humans to engage in.
The reason we're not arguing for middle-ground legislation which bans elective abortions but makes exceptions for rape is that there's zero political will on the other side to accept such a compromise, as you pointed out above. The only way to get any kind of restriction is to get enough power to enforce full restriction, so there's simply no game-theoretic reason we'd even try to do anything less.
But there's more than two sides to this, I'd point out. There's a large contingent, maybe even a plurality, that believes that being born from parents who didn't want you sucks, that ideally children should only be born from parents that want them, that wouldn't care to defend considering a fetus a human being at the moment of conception, but ALSO wouldn't care to defend it only being a human being at the moment of birth. That contingent feels intuitively, even if they cannot articulate it with nice convenient lines, that there is a difference between an abortion days after conception and an abortion days before expected birth.
That contingent might be easier to compromise with. In fact, compromise is what they want, and usually get. Taking off the table some few but highly sympathetic exceptions might make them willing to go for a more restrictive compromise.
Yes, and that's why the status quo lies where it does.
I realize that you're not making this argument here but I've always found it awful. What's worse -- having parents who didn't want you, or literally being dead? The whole concept suggests a broken understanding of life to me; some kind of deep conviction that life is only worth living if it's not too far from ideal (by whatever random standard). Same with the people on reddit who say that if every child can't have their own bedroom that's abuse and it would be better not to have them.
Never mind that a lot of people are waiting in the wings to adopt; never mind the many, many people who have gone on to live great lives despite rough beginnings. Sorry kiddo, you're not going to get this one fairytale thing that I've arbitrarily decided is more important than life itself; down the drain you go!
"Life being worth living" suggests that there is a person who would appreciate that life. Debate is out on whether the nascent brain activity of a fetus counts as a person.
And herein lies the big reason as to why the pro-choice side has to fight using misleading arguments; they have actually very good, defensible arguments, but they're technical, philosophical and feel bad to say. Like pointing out there's no easy answer as to when consciousness or life begins. It feels like you're telling pregnant women their fetus isn't a real human. At that point you might as well tell pet owners their pets don't love them, they just want food.
It feels much better when you frame it as defending some highly sympathetic but non-central cases like rape victims than as denying a maybe-baby's humanity.
Same with the "it's my body", " I can chose whether to have a medical operation"/arguments, technically correct and mix it with the previous argument and it's convincing to people with ethics brain. Doesn't code as nice and empathic.
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