Kiddies, today Uncle Scott is going to put aside partisan rancor and address a topic upon which we can all agree: abortion.

It’s been the hottest political issue since Roe v. Wade was decided 34 years ago, yet neither side argues the debate on proper terms. Everybody is wrong.

The rules of engagement should be pretty straightforward. When, if ever, is an unborn child not enough of a person to deserve legal protection? The law unequivocally does not protect sperm and does protect born babies, but where in between should we draw the line? If you think that protection begins at conception, you are pro-life. If you think it comes at a later time in the pregnancy, you are somewhere on the pro-choice spectrum. Just about all other points of contention are irrelevant.

I’ll start with the pro-choicers and their ludicrous assertion that the key to the debate lies in a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body. If abortion is justifiable, it is not because of some “right of choice” between women and their bodies. Nine months of discomfort outweighs an entire lifetime? Are the women making this argument really so egotistical or are they just repeating an imitable self-righteous mantra?

With the exception of rape, the woman already made a choice – she had sex. (I wholeheartedly endorse this choice.) If an unborn child has no right to be alive, then killing it is not wrong regardless of a woman’s self-determination over her own body. If an unborn child does have a right to not be killed, than that right outweighs a woman’s interest in keeping her figure and not throwing up in the morning for 8 1/2 months.

Pro-lifers, I didn’t forget about you. I’m thrilled the Bible says abortions are wrong and thrilled that you follow the Bible exactly as written, although you probably don’t follow Leviticus 25:44-46, which explains what sort of slaves a god-fearing master should purchase. (Answer: Foreigners. But if you must buy a Hebrew slave, you can only keep him six years. But after that term you would still own any wife or children he gained during the term. Exodus 21:2-6. You can’t make this stuff up.)

If you want to obey the word of God, great. Don’t abort your own fetuses. But stop trying to justify banning abortions for everybody in a nontheocratic country by insisting we all follow the good book. If you’d like to live in a country where the rules come straight from religious text, there are plenty from which to choose. I hear Tehran is beautiful this time of year.

And to those more rabid pro-lifers who hold signs outside hospitals and clinics – an aborted fetus looks gross, we get it. It’s still not much more disgusting than natural childbirth, in which a slime-covered mutant-looking thing enters the world at the same time as a festive blast of feces and urine from the straining, pushing mother, who is screaming things that would make Larry Flynt blush. Stick around to see a fresh-from-the-oven placenta.

Most misguided are the Republican politicians who declare themselves “pro-life.” They like life, huh? How about instead of focusing so much effort on nonsentient zygotes, they save people who have been born? These guys are pro-life enough to oppose abortion but not pro-life enough to battle genocide. Once they stop the massacre in Darfur, they can talk about what wonderful, pro-life humanitarians they are.

Even the ways the sides self-identify are acid-flecked. “Pro-life” and “pro-choice” imply unappetizing alternatives – I sure don’t want to be anti-life or anti-choice. A more intellectually honest approach would label the sides as Conceptionists, who believe once fertilization occurs it is unethical to terminate a pregnancy, and Post-Conceptionists, who believe there is some period of time between fertilization and birth during which it is not unethical to abort.

The reason this issue is so heated is because the right answer lies very close to the line that separates the two sides. If abortion is wrong, it’s really only marginally wrong. If it’s acceptable, it’s just barely so.

Even though publicly announcing whether I am a Conceptionist or Post-Conceptionist could destroy my credibility with the other half of the population, as always, yours truly will pull no punches. My personal stance on the abortion debate is that