By far the most useful book I’ve found – the one that gives me reason to post to you, is Abortion and Moral Theory. The great thing about this is that it cuts right through all the bollicks in the debate. What it says is this: if a country or group need to develop a policy on abortion, you need to first simplify the issue down to the very bottom by putting aside the side arguments (e.g. equality for women, or cases of rape, or rejection of birth control, or personal beliefs). Taking extremes the two simplest parts then become:
Pro-life – life starts at birth. The foetus has rights similar to all living humans (including the right to live) and should not be killed because it normally does not infringe upon the right to live of the mother.
Pro-abortion – the foetus is not yet alive or human and therefore no killing occurs, and therefore no violation of any rights takes places unless the mother is not allowed to exercise her personal and private decision.
Putting the two parts together debate is reduced to determining if the foetus is alive or not. Once that has been decided, then everything else gets put back in the pot and complex arguments can begin to be made about exactly what laws should be introduced.
Moral theory considers a position of ambivalence as being a personal belief (I think associated closely with non-confrontation). Although personal beliefs become important to all humans, they do not stand up to debate in a moral/policy context. That is to say that a personal belief is held with passion – and that leads to deadlock in debate, where it remains that the best argument should win.
Personal belief is most strongly held through personal experience. This however does not necessarly mean that the belief is an objective truth. To say that " the best argument should win" implies a fact based upon best sophistry and not objective truths.