I think abortion is a lot easier when you frame the argument around suffering.
I think part of the problem with abortion is the left argues that "it is not a life" which is generally a weak argument. It's better to accept/concede that you are ending life, but doing so without suffering before there's a neural net that can recognize anything - I think that's the important bit (and why third trimester abortions are banned anyway).
The push back then tends to be that life itself is sacred and can never be ended (suffering is not relevant), but this is generally not truly believed by the people making the argument so it's easy to point out their contradictory support for the death penalty. They then usually say there's a difference between innocent life and people who've committed crimes at which point you're back to negotiating conditions and suffering seems like a pretty good condition to use.
[Edit] It's also a messier issue because I think a component of the debate is shaming women for sex. That they should be forced to have their baby as some sort of penance for having sex. Obviously this is largely unsaid in favor of more palatable arguments, but if it's the true driver then it's hard to even start because you're not addressing the true motivation (which may not even be fully realized by the person arguing).
> It's better to accept/concede that you are ending life, but doing so without suffering before there's a neural net that can recognize anything
First, this assumes that such a "neural net" is required for suffering. I personally don't have a problem with that, but making an ironclad scientific case for it is going to be very difficult, since we don't understand how "neural nets" actually produce suffering even in the case of humans with fully developed brains.
Second, by this criterion, it's not just third trimester abortions that should be banned, but abortions at any time after the "neural net" develops. That's a lot earlier than our current jurisprudence draws the line (neural activity can be detected in the brain of a fetus at about six weeks, vs. viability at roughly 24 weeks as more or less the current jurisprudence line), which means that our current jurisprudence is allowing a lot of suffering by this criterion.
So I'm not sure this framing actually makes the argument any easier.
[Edit: Can no longer edit my above comment so putting it in a reply]
I had some time to think, I think you're right and at some point it becomes a utilitarian trade-off where there is no obvious answer, but a lot of factors that can help support/determine what the best policy is.
I think the suffering framing does move the needle away from the 'life is sacred argument' to something more actionable and specific (also honest/consistent with other beliefs often held by that crowd like the death penalty). There is a baked in assumption here that everyone is arguing in good faith though which I don't think is necessarily true (see the edit on my initial comment).
> I think part of the problem with abortion is the left argues that "it is not a life"
I don't think this is accurate. Getting a typical pro-choice person to discuss the fetus at all, much less whether it can be called alive, takes some serious cornering (I am pro-choice, to be clear).
Sure, but diverting the question from the topic where your point is weakest is just misdirection and isn't very persuasive.
There are a lot of good reasons other than this one to support pro-choice, but those reasons will be irrelevant to someone who views 'abortion as murder'. You have to put yourself in their position and reason about it like they would, then think about what is the best argument from their position.
Basically steel-manning their side and then tackling the best argument head on.
I think this is where really interesting discussions happen and where minds can change, otherwise you end up just discussing the same tired points without making any progress.
> I think abortion is a lot easier when you frame the argument around suffering.
Really? I think it becomes much more difficult. It invites arguments for infanticide (see the 2013 Giubilini paper on after-birth abortion for a famous example of this). The same arguments concerning a woman who is not able to take care of a child apply equally well after birth if suffering is the only consideration, because it's entirely possible to end the life of the baby in a painless manner. As someone who is pro-life, I've generally found the suffering angle to be the least compelling of the pro-choice counterarguments.
I do think you're right that there's an extra element beyond just suffering (otherwise you can argue that killing infants instantly is okay if they don't notice and they're not yet self-aware).
I think it's a mixture of suffering and having a neural network formed enough for ...something? I have an intuitive feeling that it's wrong to kill infants before they're self-aware even if 'done painlessly', but I don't feel that way about a blastocyst or a fetus without a sufficiently formed neural network that can suffer.
I recognize this isn't perfectly consistent though and I don't have a great answer for why.
Suffering matters - of the mother. The death in hospital of a woman who was denied an abortion was the catalyst for the successful campaign in Ireland to get the constitution changed to permit abortion.
I think part of the problem with abortion is the left argues that "it is not a life" which is generally a weak argument. It's better to accept/concede that you are ending life, but doing so without suffering before there's a neural net that can recognize anything - I think that's the important bit (and why third trimester abortions are banned anyway).
The push back then tends to be that life itself is sacred and can never be ended (suffering is not relevant), but this is generally not truly believed by the people making the argument so it's easy to point out their contradictory support for the death penalty. They then usually say there's a difference between innocent life and people who've committed crimes at which point you're back to negotiating conditions and suffering seems like a pretty good condition to use.
[Edit] It's also a messier issue because I think a component of the debate is shaming women for sex. That they should be forced to have their baby as some sort of penance for having sex. Obviously this is largely unsaid in favor of more palatable arguments, but if it's the true driver then it's hard to even start because you're not addressing the true motivation (which may not even be fully realized by the person arguing).