I agree with you about the debate within a debate thing. It's genuinely hard to have a conversation about late-term abortion law in the current US context, wher

I agree with you about the debate within a debate thing. It's genuinely hard to have a conversation about late-term abortion law in the current US context, where the really important laws being made are criminalizing abortions at the very earliest stages, and even possibly some forms of pre-implantation birth control. But I also think it's helpful to cede some ground to the moderate pro-lifers. If we can acknowledge that 32 week fetuses are empathetically "infants in a difficult locale", to me it's clear that there is some legal burden there. I don't think the opinion of one woman and that of any one doctor she can find willing to agree with her are sufficient grounds for killing a fetus at that stage. Not all people make good choices, and thinking things deserve protection from bad choices. I'll also add that the criminalization of late-term abortions rests heavily on 1. Guaranteed access to early-term abortions regardless of circumstances 2. Mid-term abortions under specific circumstances. 3. Affirmative defense for late-term abortion given even narrower circumstances, i.e. bodily risk to mother. With those guarantees, and only with those guarantees, I think the argument can be made that a mother with a late-term pregnancy has willingly undertaken the responsibility to carry that pregnancy to term, and therefor aborting that late-term pregnancy may be treated similarly to a parent harming an infant. But I'll reiterate: only with those guarnatees. And, of course, lots of places don't have those guarnatees right now, which is why this is a "debate within a debate", as you say. And this is the smaller and less impactful of the debates.