The partial-birth abortion battle vividly reinforces the axiom that fruitful debate is not possible unless there is common ground. Two modes of argument drive the abortion lobby nuts. The first is any analogy to slavery; the second, frame-by-frame pictorializations of what partial-birth abortion is.
On the first point, it is worth reflecting that the Dred Scott decision of 1857 asserted that slaves were quite simply property, and that for that reason the Missouri Compromise, which restricted slave traffic outside the Union, was unconstitutional. The reasoning of the Supreme Court isn’t easy to confute. If a slave were property—like, say, a truck-then the owner could take it where he chose.
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