The ONLY issue in the abortion debate?

A recent NZ Herald story about whether current medical consultancy procedure leads to abortions on request resulted in a flurry of comments (17 pages the last time I checked). Many of those comments are expressions of opinion rather than well-developed arguments (but then, a 1200 character post limit doesn’t lend itself well to substantial dialogue). I took the opportunity to post something myself highlighting what I thought was the key issue:

The only question in the abortion debate is whether the foetus is a person. If so, abortion is murder. If not, abortion is OK. If we are not sure and this really is a “grey area” then abortion is like the case of a hunter shooting at something moving in the bush without stopping to check whether it’s a deer or his hunting companion. If there’s a person there who he kills, he’s committed manslaughter. If there’s not a person there, he’s still being incredibly foolhardy, and may even be guilty of criminal negligence. What’s the rule for a hunter? If you’re not certain what your target is, don’t shoot! The same thing goes for the abortion debate – until we are certain that the foetus is not a person, we shouldn’t allow abortion. This is where the debate needs to focus: is the foetus a person? Those in favour of abortion need to demonstrate that it is not.

There was at least one direct response to this, which in subsequent posts here I’d like to explore further.