I am sick and tired of your virtue signaling. Of course babies are precious, but your statement was that by acknowledging the liberty of women I was "defending abortion", which you insist is "murder".
How is it "defending abortion" to suggest that lives be saved by persuasion? How am I condoning "murder" by suggesting the Constitution permits women to choose and fulfill their own destinies? Abortion will, I trust and believe, wither on the vine due to a combination of persuasion and support, and the increasing availability of effective contraception that does not fail.
NO WOMAN IN A PERFECT WORLD WANTS AN ABORTION. The circumstances that compel women to abort are tragic, and unique to the life of each woman. No money. A dashed future. Abandonment by parents or partner. Plain and simple fear. There is no size fits all solution. But hectoring those who advocate persuasion rather than coercion as "defending" the practice is obnoxious. Yes, your attitude hardens hearts, because your fundamental argument is that people who don't agree with you are evil. Did it ever occur to you that those who don't advocate criminalizing abortion are as troubled by the practice as you are? Of course not - you're all about virtue signaling, not saving lives.
I would take issue with most of what you have said here. The short version is this: There were fewer abortions when clinics were not like a starbucks, walk in and go, and common as cat crap in a litter box.
There were fewer abortions when the procedure was illegal. It was not an option generally to even be considered.
As I have said, there is a time to choose. Before conception, generally the act leading to which is a consensual and conscious act which has a predictable possible outcome. Enough money is spent to ransom the royal families of the world multiple times to ensure that children are aware of this, commonly well before puberty.
When abortion was not an option, that choice was made at the appropriate time. Even before Roe, the means to prevent the "need" for an abortion were in place: abstinence, the condom, the Pill, and IUDs were available, and even more methods since then have been developed. 'Moments of immoral or simply sexual abandon could still be had, without taking a significant chance that a life would be produced, and people desiring that 'freedom', used those methods--not all, but most.
One of the great whines in support of Obamacare was made by a Georgetown student (Sandra Fluke) so contraception would be available (as if it wasn't already).
Contraception":
preventative measures, not the slaughter of the unborn, which is
not prevention of pregnancy, but the termination of one established, (frankly, I view RU-486 as an abortion device also).
The time for choice is before a life is created: after that life has been created, the "choice" has already been made. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, counselor.
As for a perfect world, we don't live in one, so what any woman wants there is irrelevant. What we have is a world in which there are a host of means to prevent pregnancy, and in a "perfect" world, they'd be used, as they are in this imperfect one.
In a world without legal abortions, the emphasis was and would again be on prevention of inconvenient and 'unwanted' pregnancy--where it belongs, a choice made at the appropriate time, and not on 'mitigation' by murder.
