i've accused the pro-abortion rights side of being disingenuous when the make abortion merely a matter of a woman's control of her own body; they take it more seriously than that would indicate, as when obama and everyone else says that we can all agree that we should reduce the number of abortions.

one might say that the anti-abortion rights folks are caught up in a similar contradiction, as pointed up by the wichita abortion doc's murder. their rhetoric is murder, taking innocent human life just for your own convenience etc. but when someone actually takes that rhetoric seriously, like the shooter in this case, the pro-life groups back off entirely.

this suggests that there is actually a middle ground underneath the heated rhetoric: that it's a morally fraught thing, but not the same as murder. and yet articulating that position in a clear way would be extremely difficult, and prescribing policies that correspond to that would also be.