9 months is a long time for fetal development. I don't know when within that time span the unborn should begin being treated with rights or dignity the same way a born baby is. Theoretically, I think an educated guess is as good as we can do. Practically though, we should hold to the normal moral rule to tread carefully, both morally and legally.
I'd like to think of myself as on the middle on abortion. Both sides deserve a lot of criticism for making unsound arguments, and missing the crux of the issue while demonizing one another. Moreover, my actual position is in the middle of the possibilities on abortion.
But the two camps are not defined this way. The pro-lifers have taken one tiny sliver of the possibilities by claiming that life begins at conception. Pro-choicers have taken the entire spectrum of possibility outside of that. Literally life could begin at any other time in the pregnancy and it could better be described better as pro-choice than pro-life.
I'd usually look to the common leftist tactic of trying to gain linguistic territory, but in this case pro-lifers give it away. It's hardly pro-choicers who are nudging their position into ever wider territory. Pro-lifers adamantly declare that abortion is virtually never okay because life begins at conception. If you're going to define your position in a way that contains such a small sliver of the possibilities, you're basically asking to be wrong.
