The Terri Schiavo case, the American Catholic Church's decision to more aggressively oppose capital punishment, and the seemingly endless abortion debate are all life and death issues that spawn passionate arguments on either side. But it seems to me the vast majority of these arguments focus more on the passions than the issues. So much so that one could easily hear arguments on both sides and conclude that they are talking about two completely different issues.
Consider a liberal understanding of conservative positions: they support life of something as abstract as a clump of stem cells, but betray those values when it comes to actual people accused of a capital crime. Conversely, the conservative understanding of liberal positions: they support the life of a convicted killer, but not that of an innocent baby. I think these are both misrepresenting the opposition. Misrepresentation starts as dishonesty, but in this case it's been going on for so long that most people actually believe it. It's moved from dishonesty to ignorance. Ignorance won't help win an argument, so both sides should have an incentive to better understand the other.
I personally take the liberal position on all of these issues, but I think both sides rest on basic convictions that are reasonable and generally ignored. A basic liberal position might be that anyone with the capicity to make intelligent choices about their own life or death should be free to do so. A basic conservative position might be that anyone with the capicity to make intelligent choices should be held responsible for those choices.
So convicted killers should be held responsible for their choices to murder through the death penalty, or convicted killers should retain the right to choose when they should die, from respective conservative or liberal perspectives. And women with unwanted pregnancies should be held responsible for their choices by being compelled to give birth, or they should be free to choose to terminate their pregnancies (so long as the fetus lacks the capicity for intelligent choice.)
These positions leave plenty of room for argument. There's the general argument: which is more important, freedom or responsibility? And specific arguments such as: how do we decide who has the capacity to make intelligent choices? But few are having these arguments. Instead, nearly everyone involved is attributing disagreement to pure malice and talking past each other. I suspect we will all come to regret this.