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The two sides are, of course, "pro-choice" and "pro-life." Those are the names each has picked for itself; obviously semantics are at work here, as few people would care to characterize themselves as "against freedom of choice" or as "opposed to life." "In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder." ¹⁹

Of course, the actual situation is not so clear-cut. For example, I have a number of friends, who describe themselves — at least in a political sense — as firmly pro-choice. Yet some of those same people, on a moral or personal level, are either just as firmly opposed to abortion, or at least made uncomfortable by some of the implications. The polarized labels of "pro-choice and "pro-life" do not begin to accommodate the diversity of opinions which are actually held.

In fact, cases at either extreme quickly fall apart when examined with any logic at all. As scientists Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan write:

A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There is good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound — including music, but especially its mother's voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain wave patterns. ... It's hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before? ¹⁹

On the other hand, the newly fertilized egg, or zygote, is about the size of a period on a printed page. As embryologist Clifford Grobstein asks, "Can a single cell be a human being, a person, an entity endowed with unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" ¹²

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