Or is the convention against discussing politics here silly?
I propose a test. I'm going to try to lay down some rules on voting on comments for the test here (not that I can force anybody to abide by them):
1.) Top-level comments should introduce arguments (or ridicule me and/or this test); responses should be responses to those arguments.
2.) Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
3.) Try not to downvote particular comments excessively, if they're legitimate lines of argument. A faulty line of argument provides opportunity for rebuttal, and so for our test has value even then; that is, I want some faulty lines of argument here. If you disagree, please downvote me, instead of the faulty comments, because this post is what you want less of, not those comments. This necessarily implies, for balance, that we not excessively upvote comments. I'd suggest fairly arbitrary limits of 3/-3?
Edit: 4.) A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate. (My apologies about missing this, folks.)
I'm going to try really hard not to get personally involved, except to lay down a leading comment posing an argument against abortion, a position I don't hold, for the record. The core of the argument isn't disingenuous, and I hold that this argument is true, it just doesn't lead to my opposing abortion. I do not hold the moral axiom by which I extend the basic argument to argue against abortion, however; I'm playing the devil's advocate to try to help me from getting sucked into the argument while providing an initial point of discussion.
Which leads me to the next point: If you see a hole in an argument, even if it's an argument for a perspective you agree with, poke through it. The goal is to see whether we can have a constructive political argument here.
The fact that this is a test, and known to be a test, means this isn't a blind study. Uh, try to act as if you're not being tested?
After it's gone on a little while, if this post hasn't been hopelessly downvoted and ridiculed (and thus the premise and test discarded as undesirable to begin with), we can put up a poll to see whether people found the political debates helpful, not helpful, and so on.
This is actually a good argument that, predictably, most people are ignoring (since the weak premise is such a tempting target). But it's not airtight.
I am under no legal obligation to go out of my way to save random children. People are only under legal obligation to sacrifice their own interests to keep children alive, after they have taken on the legal responsibility to care for that child, by becoming the child's legal guardian. It's true that we, as a society, make sure that all children have legal guardians, and that those guardians take care of the child. In contrast fetuses have no legal guardians. That doesn't necessarily mean we aren't treating them as people, it just means we aren't treating them as children. Adults also have no legal guardians.
But even if we insist that fetuses must have legal guardians, there is still a loophole. Suppose mother A gives up her unborn fetus for adoption. Mother B adopts, and A removes the fetus since she is no longer under any obligation to care for it. Then B, fulfilling her obligation as a guardian, does everything in her power to keep the fetus alive, but of course it dies anyway. This is an absurd example, but it illustrates how we may be able to kill fetuses, not because they entitled to fewer human rights, but merely because they are in such a unique position as humans.
Finally, It seems this argument was designed with the Violinist thought experiment) in mind. But does it really change things? Are you required to make organ donations to your children, if they need it? (hat tip to hairyfigment)
I think it really is a matter of whether or not women should be forced to be incubators. Even if we decide that fetuses should have full human rights, we would need to find a way to balance the rights of mother and fetus. And that balance would at least sometimes allow abortion. For example, we certainly wouldn't force a women to carry a fetus to term, if there were a 50% chance they would both die in childbirth.