> This is how right-wing activists frame it but it’s thoroughly dishonest, not to mention unscientific.

The key issue in the abortion debate is – "at which point in the development of an individual human does it gain the moral status of a person". Some say at conception, some say at birth, some say at some point in between the two. The natural sciences (including the biological and medical sciences) can't directly answer that question. It depends on what are the correct criteria for an entity to have the moral status of a person, and that is a question for morality/ethics/moral philosophy, not a question for the natural sciences. At best, if we have agreed on moral principles to determine the answer to that question, then the natural sciences can provide factual information which can be combined with those moral principles to reach a moral conclusion; but, in this case, the different sides don't agree on what are the right moral principles to apply, which is a question beyond the proper scope of the natural sciences. Hence, I don't think either side's position is inherently "unscientific", although people on both sides of the debate are fairly called that when they wrongly present the debate as something which science can settle.

> A baby is a human child which has been born

"Baby" is a term of everyday language; I don't know if it has a formal scientific definition, but even if it does, you can't presume someone using the word outside of explicitly scientific contexts means the word in some technical scientific sense. In everyday language, "baby" is the correct term to use for an unborn child (at least one which is sufficiently far along); I know when my wife was pregnant, she had a baby in her womb, and when she was pregnant with our daughter, we told her big brother that "there's a baby inside mummy's tummy".

Is "baby" the right word for a newly conceived embryo? Not in many people's usage; in my own usage, an embryo isn't a baby yet, but it is going to become one at some ill-defined point in the future, yet prior to birth. However, maybe in some people's usage, a newly conceived embryo is properly called a "baby". Different people use language in different ways. And how the term "baby" is or should be defined in everyday language is another question which is outside the proper scope of the biological and medical sciences.

> Abortion is always well before the point of viability and increasingly rare the later it gets

So, a friend of mine who identifies as "pro-life" told me about a case in the state of Victoria, Australia, in the year 2011, in which a termination of pregnancy was performed at >= 37 weeks gestation for a "maternal psychosocial indication" (i.e. no confirmed or suspected congenital abnormality). I didn't believe him at first, but it is in the official statistics (see Table 6.20b, page 141 of [1]).

I don't support a complete ban on abortion (possibly my "pro-life" friend does). But I do think there is something wrong with a state's abortion laws if healthy babies can be legally aborted at >=37 weeks for a maternal psychosocial indication. I don't see how that morally differs from performing infant euthanasia post-birth for a maternal psychosocial indication.

[1] https://www.bettersafercare.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2...