One thing that’s struck me (though it’s not surprising) in reading and listening to debates (online in particular) is how often one side doesn’t seem to get how irrelevant or useless some of their major arguments are when they’re addressed to the other side.
In this particular case, in abortion, the big wall is fetal personhood. No amount of “it’s my body” is relevant to someone who thinks that even birth control is the absolute moral equivalent of shooting a two month old in the head with a .357 Magnum. If there’s any hope whatsoever if moving a pro-lifer, or proving him/her wrong in the public arena, it seems to me that there MUST be a LOT of attention paid to the idea of fetal personhood. (In fact, this post was inspired by an online mini-debate in which a pro-choicer seemed to fail to fully grasp what a pro-choicer thought in regards to what a “person” is, and the pro-lifer utterly ignored particular points the pro-choicer made that had nothing to do with fetuses being people that he should have been able to address.)
But the problem is, how can it be done? The only real way to do so that I can think of is to attack the very concept of a soul itself, which will not only turn off most of the intended audience, but also very difficult to do in a meaningful way. Is there a way to do so I’m not thinking of?