We have to decide if an unviable fetus is a life separate and apart from the mother. If it is, then it's life in some sense, but it's not self-sustaining at all.
First, the living fetus is not unviable from the first cell to natural birth. It simply requires a specific environment in which to thrive and be self-sustaining. This need for a specific environment is far from unique, as pretty much every species on Earth requires certain sets of environmental parameters to survive. For example, fish need water, not dry land. Some fish need salty water, others need fresh water, and others can use both, but none of them are viable absent their aqueous environment.
The need for this initial specific environment is quite temporary (a few months compared to decades of life outside the womb).
The moral contradictions and quandaries you list are always worth considering, particularly with respect to human life (those jailed while sentenced to the death penalty, and wartime ethics etc.), and yet the one aspect that separates those issues from the abortion issue is the question of innocence. That baby is utterly innocent (even babies conceived from incidents of rape or incest are innocent), and dependent upon its mother to provide the environment it needs to grow and thrive. In any moral and just society, that mother would never consider killing the baby for her own convenience, out of a sense of fear, or out of any other selfish motivation. (Note, this position leaves room for medical considerations, when the mother's own life is truly endangered by carrying the child.)
In a just society, adoptions would be far easier and less expensive to procure (a quick web search shows costs ranging from $5000, to $40K), and the birth mother would have a far more robust and easily accessed set of life-based services instead of extremely easy access to government subsidized murder shops and death-by-mail abortion pills.
But as you say, let's not look under those rocks because we might lose an election if people get uncomfortable facing the ugliness of the current culture in the country.
