[Barrin92]

>The real question at the center of abortion rights legislation is "at what point does a fetus become a person

I think this is disproven by the fact that even extreme pro-life advocates generally carve out exceptions in case of rape or incest, which ought to be irrelevant if the personhood of the child was the factor that is actually in question.

This debate doesn't add much depth because killing is not automatically murder, and there are plenty of cases in which killing is justified to preserve autonomy, including of course of animals most of which have more claim to autonomy or protection from harm themselves than an early stage fetus.

>"Then, should we be allowed to kill braindead and comatose people arbitrarily"

Probably not arbitrarily, but if its in the interest of a person who still has a working brain then I would say it's hard to find a coherent argument to not answer that question with yes.

[betwixthewires]

I tend to agree with your first sentence, it is a hypocritical inconsistency. Either you believe the fetus is a distinct person, or you don't. A carve out allowing for what you say is murder for a crime the "condemned" isn't responsible for is reprehensible, again, if you believe abortion is murder. I've met pro life individuals who only allow for a carve out in the event the mother faces a tangible risk of being disabled or killed by continuing pregnancy, and I tend to respect their intellectual consistency.

[cycomanic]

The issue with that intellectual consistency, is that the same people oppose sexual education and contraception which has been shown to significantly reduce abortions (let's not even talk about all the cases where they support killing of born people). If they do not support sexual education and contraception, they are not intellectually honest, they are not pro-life, but want to push a specific world view.

[betwixthewires]

I don't think I've ever met a person that believes contraception should be illegal, I'm sure they're out there though. I'd be willing to bet that set of people is far, far smaller than those that think abortion is wrong, and I wouldn't call contraception particularly controversial or opposition to contraception a mainstream view by any means.

Sexual education is another topic, a lot of people oppose it to one degree or another, we all have ideas about what a kid should learn about and at what age, it isn't that unreasonable to say that a parent should have the final say in their children's education, but with that should come more responsibility which it seems many parents don't want to take on.