ā€œIf you donā€™t like abortion then donā€™t get oneā€

This will not convince anyone whoā€™s pro-life because they believe abortion is the same as murder. To them itā€™s like saying ā€œif you donā€™t like murdering people then just donā€™t do itā€.

ā€œIf youā€™re a man then just shut up about abortionā€

AFAIK, just about every opinion poll thatā€™s ever asked the public about abortion has found that men are not really much more anti-abortion than women are. If there is a gender gap, itā€™s like 5 percentage points or less. I think Iā€™ve even seen one or two polls that show women to be more pro-life than men (but again, not by a big margin). So if thereā€™s not a big gender gap on abortion then I donā€™t really see how this talking point is helpful.
Seems to me that the most likely consequence of this argument is it will discourage pro-choice men from participating in the cause & offering support.

(also, fwiw, itā€™s cissexist; trans men exist and can get pregnant)

ā€œMaking abortion illegal will not decrease how often abortion happens; it will only drive it underground and make it less safe.ā€

I donā€™t think this is a good argument. I have a few reasons why:

  1. Banning abortion probably will indeed decrease how often abortion happens. After all, bans tend to be fairly effective at getting people to not do things. Just as one example: there are a lot of semi-automatic firearms in the US, but not nearly as many fully automatic firearms. Why? Probably because fully automatic firearms are banned. I donā€™t see why the same wouldnā€™t happen with abortion.
  2. If you want another example that is more directly related to abortion: during the Roe era, red states developed a tactic of putting onerous and extremely contrived rules on abortion providers, with the unstated goal of getting those abortion providers to shut down. And it worked. A lot of abortion providers in red states shut down because they couldnā€™t comply with these ridiculous and obviously contrived regulations. Statistics bear out that red states have a lower rate of abortion than blue states. If contrived targeted regulations were effective at reducing abortion, then an outright ban probably would be too.
  3. A lot of the time when this argument is made, itā€™s articulated in a way that seems to concede the idea that decreasing the recurrence of abortion would be a good thing, and Iā€™m not sure why we on the pro-choice side should concede that.

ā€œIf abortion is murder, then every time a man masturbates is genocide, and every time a woman menstruates is murderā€

Most pro-life people are smart enough to know the difference between a gamete and a zygote, so this doesnā€™t convince anyone.

ā€œTheyā€™re not pro-life, theyā€™re just pro-birthā€ (sometimes phrased as ā€œpro-forced-birthā€)

Usually this isnā€™t actually an argument for legal abortion, itā€™s just a reference to the fact that conservatives generally oppose social safety nets. Which, yeah, it is shitty of them that they want to force (often poor) people to have children but donā€™t care much about the welfare of those children once they are bornā€¦ but thereā€™s no inconsistency there. Itā€™s not a hypocritical position, just a very cruel one. So we shouldnā€™t act like this is some amazing ā€œgotchaā€ moment.

ā€œIf weā€™re gonna ban abortion then how about we force men to start paying child support as soon as the woman gets pregnantā€

This is just not an effective argument. Most anti-abortion people would be just fine with this idea. They are more than happy to force their ā€œfamily valuesā€ on men as well as women.
You wouldnā€™t be able to tell from liberal/leftist conversations, but conservatives resent liberal, non-religious, sexually promiscuous men to a similar degree as they resent liberal, non-religious, sexually promiscuous women.

ā€œTheyā€™re just anti-woman/they just want to control womenā€

I think thereā€™s some truth to this one (conservatives definitely harbor resentment towards sexual activity & expression that they perceive as un-Christian) but ultimately I donā€™t think this is the best argument to use. I donā€™t think that misogyny is really what motivates them. I think they actually are convinced that a just-fertilized zygote is a fully formed person with a soul and a mind and a conscience.

ā€œIf men could get pregnant, then there would be abortion clinics on every cornerā€

  1. As stated before, trans men exist and can get pregnant
  2. As stated before, there is not really much of a gender gap on abortion, and it is not helpful to imply that there is.

So. What arguments should pro-choice people use?

In my opinion, the abortion issue really just comes down to two main questions:

  1. Is an embryo/fetus a person?
  2. If it is a person, does that mean it has a right to continue growing in its motherā€™s birth parentā€™s (I guess thatā€™s the more correct term) uterus?

And our answers to those questions should be as follows:

  1. No, it is not a person. (At least, not until itā€™s developed enough to survive outside the womb - Iā€™m not sure what I think about this exactly)
  2. No, it does not have a right to use and benefit from another personā€™s organs

Thatā€™s really all that we need to say about it, although I have a couple of extraneous thoughts below that might also be useful:

  • An embryo/fetus is not a person. It has some of the characteristics of a person, but not all of them. It cannot survive outside the womb because its organs arenā€™t developed enough. Until about 24 weeks of gestation, it canā€™t even feel pain because its nervous system isnā€™t sufficiently developed. It is not sentient. It cannot perceive itself or its environment. It does not have subjective experiences. If it isnā€™t sentient, then it has no interests to protect (which, when you think about it, is basically what ā€œrightsā€ are).
  • an abortion is generally defined as ā€œthe termination of a pregnancy via the removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus from the uterusā€. Notice here that it is NOT defined as ā€œthe destruction of the embryo/fetusā€ or ā€œthe death of the embryo/fetusā€. It is merely the ā€œremoval or expulsionā€. This is why miscarriages are considered by medical professionals to be a type of abortion - specifically they are a ā€œspontaneous abortionā€. So, even if one considers an embryo/fetus to be a person, an abortion is not actually an act of killing that ā€œpersonā€, it is just the act of removing that ā€œpersonā€ from the uterus. If the embryo/fetus dies after it has been removed from the uterus, that is a separate event and it is not the doing of the (formerly) pregnant person.
  • InsideOutsideCatside [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    Most pro-life people are smart enough to know the difference between a gamete and a zygote, so this doesnā€™t convince anyone.

    Lmfao what a fucking joke, I guarantee you that the % of pro lifers who know what those words even mean is in the single digits, at most 10%.