Debating tips watch for Diversions

One of the first tricks that will be used by the anti-life side is to bring up a diversion from the hard cold facts.
Every trial lawyer knows this basic rule: If the facts back you up, you argue them. If the facts don't back you up, you argue about something else.
This is the essence of distraction or diversion.
A person who possesses a weak position in any contest must resort to trickery and deception in order to win. By far the most common and effective tactic employed by the weaker party in any debate is the simple diversion or distraction of his opponent's (and audience's) attention away from the subject being discussed.
Anti-lifers know that the best they can do against an experienced pro-life debater is to break even (and this is a rare event indeed). Therefore, the easiest way for an anti-lifer to salvage a tie in a debate is to drag a series of tangential or irrelevant topics into the discussion.
Quite simply, if the anti-lifer can appear to be reasonable when offering facts that nobody can dispute — on a topic unrelated to abortion — he can then expect that this appearance of reasonableness will transfer over to his position on abortion in the minds of the audience. Observers will walk away and make the connection between the pro-abortionist's position on abortion and his logical and concise presentation on topics that have absolutely nothing to do with abortion. The product of this connection will be the vague feeling that the pro-abortion position is somehow superior.

We see this in a quote from the Anti-life side
"I urge incredible restraint here, to focus on your message and stick to it, because otherwise we'll get creamed. If the debate is whether the fetus feels pain, we lose. If the debate in the public arena is what's the effect of anesthesia, we'll lose. If the debate is whether or not women ought to be entitled to late abortion, we probably will lose. But if the debate is on the circumstances of individual women. ... then I think we can win these fights."
— Kathryn Kolbert, Vice-President of the New York-based Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (now the Center for Reproductive Rights).