Hm. Via Sullivan, a diaologue over who bears the blame for the stand-off over abortion, pro-lifers or pro-choice types, in which on Freddie DeBoer writes:

To me, the question about abortion (and it is a philosophical and moral question, not a scientific one) is whether or not a fetus is a human, and thus deserving of human rights. If the answer is yes, I could never in good conscience support abortion, outside of specific circumstances when carrying the child to term poses significant risk of killing the mother. Not even in cases of rape or incest.

I remain a staunch supporter of abortion rights, however, because I don’t believe a fetus is human. I can imagine, however, a compromise position from someone who doesn’t believe that a fetus is human; it seems to me much easier for someone who believes that to compromise in the direction of more limitations on abortion, than for someone who believes that a fetus is human to compromise on more permissiveness regarding abortion. I’m just profoundly unmoved by pro-choice arguments that assert the human-ness of the fetus. So it just seems to me that there is greater moral and rhetorical space for the pro-choice side to compromise given our stance on the fundamental question.

Emphasis added.

I have to say up front that I disagree with this, because how far along is the fetus in question? Eight months? Yeah, I’m on board with defining an eight-month-fetus as a human - and, as a result, might be open to the idea of a compromise on that issue. More on that in a second.

But how about two weeks? Is the “fetus” at that point the moral equivalent of a human being already born? I do not accept that. I don’t accept that a single fertilized cell, nanoseconds after fertilization, is the same thing, morally or otherwise, as the child being pushed around in the stroller. And maybe that line is arbitrary; can the fetus feel and react and “think?” Those for me are the things that define humanness. But that is, of course, just my opinion.

But it does illustrate the difficulty in compromising even if the likes of me would say: OK, let’s ban late-term abortions. Let’s make abortion significantly more difficult to obtain after the first trimester. Because any compromise is going to be seen, by the pro-life right, as a mere way-station on the way to a complete ban. If I thought the pro-life right would be satisfied with mere concessions, I might be more inclined to make them. But the pro-life right would be far more likely to see any such concessions as a foot in the door.

I’d like to be proven wrong on that. But I don’t think I will be.