The major pro-life voices avoid challenging pro-life rhetoric. Pro choice folks stick to the positive side of their case, stressing the liberty argument. No doubt this is wise. To do combat with pro-life arguments would be to descend into either hopeless webs of faux Thomism, or worse repellant gutter matches. By taking the high road pro-choice manages to stay mature, dignified, and tolerant.
Yet, i think the pro-life argument ought to be at least examined. One reason for my belief is that the pro-life argument is designed to do more than simply rally the faithful and make moderates squeamish. Indeed, the bizarre 'fetus is a human being' claim is designed specifically to establish a so-called non religious basis for ending abortion rights
Recognizing that it is constitutionally impossible to pass a God-based law, the pro-lifers have sought to construct a putatively faith-neutral substitute, through the 'unborn baby' theory. If the body politic can be persuaded that this is somehow a law of nature or some kind of natural secular ethic, then prolifers can proceed to pass all sorts of laws that presumably pass Constitutional muster
Why is this subterfuge necessary? Because all previous arguments for abortion control are worn out. The religious argument is not tenable in a secular democracy. Later anti abortion statutes were crafted around either the presumption that such laws would protect helpless women from having to submit unwillingly to abortion or beliefs that the procedure was medically unsafe. Obviously neither of these conditions apply today. Hence, pro-lifers need a new rationale, which they find in the 'Unborn baby' or "fetus is a human life' or 'unborn child' nonsense.
We are dealing here with how categories are formed. Never in human history has the fetus been considered a human being. There is no legal precedent
Nor are there there moral, ethical scriptural cultural or linguistic precedents. The concept goes against 3000 years of human history, law and faith. (the Catholic natural law argument against abortion is based on the premise that pregnancy is God's will, rather than the person-hood of the fetus, a radically distinct argument.) Basically the 'fetus is a human being' idea was developed by a handful of political operators and propagandists in the wake of Roe-Wade. It had never before existed in human history.
In general, people seem to develop categories that correspond to their experience and are useful in understanding life. Thus we know that acorns are acorns. it is neither useful or accurate to call them unborn oak trees The same can be said of caviar, which is not except in a technical sense unborn sturgeon. I am not wiser or more moral to think of my poached egg as an unborn chicken. Throughout every culture and time in history we have maintained separate concepts for gestational form. the fact that there are always two words - one for the 'larval' form and another for real and final being attest to how profound and elemental the separation between fetus and human being has been for all of human history. This holds true for custom, ethics and theology as well as law. Thus, for example, Talmud forbids the burial of a fetus in a sanctified cemetery.
In sum, the concept of the fetus-human being has no foundation outside the minds of a few conservative strategists and their followers. This is not to say that there are not other possibly more profound arguments for the pro-life position. My argument here is merely aimed at a a cheap slogan that defies history reason and scripture. It has the odor of arguments once put forth for Aryan supremacy.