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The short answer is that I don't value all human life the way that you do, if I understand your position.
***I find this way of looking at things brings a weary sadness to my heart.

In the case of abortion, I agree the fetus is a human. But to me, it's a human at such an undeveloped state that doing away with it doesn't bother me.
***Well, saying that "doing away with" an acknowledged human life doesn't bother you is a very honest thing to say. It really should bother you, and I don't know how the death of innocent ones doesn't cry out for justice in your conscience. I will pray for you. During the Roe v Wade court arguments, one of the key components was the age of viability, which seems to be what you're bringing up here. The problem is, once again, the current law is behind on biological advances & Medicine. Many of the late term abortions could survive outside the womb, and would meet the legal definition of viable. Soon we will have the ability to transfer fetuses to surrogate wombs and then there will be no moral excuse to kill that baby.

And when compared to what is likely to happen if that mother has the child she doesn't want, especially in the case of young, poor, urban mothers . . .
***who could easily put up that baby for adoption... and then everyone involved is better off.

I read an interesting book called, "Freakonomics" a while back. One of the chapters in it put forth an interesting theory. Crime rates started declining in the early 90s. 18 or so years after abortion first became illegal. They theorized that a high percentage of the babies who were aborted would have grown up to be criminals, because they were largely to urban, poor, uneducated mothers.
***Sounds like a violation of Occam's razor. The simplest explanation is the best. Crime rates declined in the early 90's because the economy was better. I read an interesting book that you might consider, since you like non-fiction. The biggest selling non-fiction title of the entire decade of the 1970's was "Late Great Planet Earth" by Hal Lindsay. Maybe it will awaken that dormant conscience of yours.

Cold, and harsh, I understand. But I'm ok with that. I'm at peace with my hard heart!
***I don't see how you can proceed from acknowledging that your position is cold and harsh, your heart is hard, and that this is somehow a superior moral position to pro-life? Why would you want to lead others to think like this? Do you really think it makes for a better president to be so callous about human life?

I fully understand why others like yourself feel differently. I would understand why you would want your states to have laws against it.
***Do you fully understand why slavery has been outlawed? I understand that people would still view outlawing abortion laws as an intrusion of Gov't into their lives (which is very American). You could view it with slavery that it was a terrible intrusion into their lives. But what about the slaves' lives? Was it an intrusion into theirs? The right to privacy ends where a person abuses that right and does not countenance another's person right to LIBERTY in the case of slavery or LIFE in the case of a preborn human. It was very american to resist guvmint intrusion into the rights of slaveholders, but that had to be dealt with for the good of our society. Looking at it from a purely numbers approach, there were maybe 2-400k dead( ? ~10^5) in the Civil War. There are maybe 100 times (2 orders of magnitude) more than that ( ? ~10^7) dead in the abortion thing. We already have not done better with this moral issue than we did with slavery.

During the Roe v Wade court arguments, one of the key components was the age of viability, which seems to be what you're bringing up here.

I'm actually not really thinking in terms of 'viability', to be honest. I'm thinking purely in terms of outcomes.

I personally don't feel that every human life will be a good thing to have around. If, say, a crack-addicted mother is going to have 10 kids, and 9 of them will grow up to be thieves, to me it would have been better if all of them had been aborted. Purely hypothetical, of course. But that's my thinking.

Adoption certainly is one possible solution. But short of forcibly removing children from unfit parents, that doesn't seem to be an option that is chosen most of the time. People who do not want the babies will abort them. If they don't, and are forced for whatever reason to carry the baby to term, they seem very reluctant to give the baby up for adoption many times. I don't get it, but that seems to be the case.

Cold hearted, yes. That's one of the knocks often levelled against those of us who believe in a conservative use of federal power. Like our stances on welfare, and crime, and war, and the border, and illegal immigrants, and the death penalty, and . . .

The simplest explanation is the best. Crime rates declined in the early 90's because the economy was better.

It was an excellent book. Levitt, the guy who did the numbers analysis, is something of a genius and had some good data behind the theory. But it is just a theory, of course. But I think that is one of the simplest answers. Aborted babies are unwanted babies, with parents typically unable to raise those kids right. Children in those circumstances are at a high risk of growing up to be criminals.

It's a fascinating book. There's one chapter analyzing names, and how people turned out. One poor black family in NYC named one kid 'Winner' (they called him 'Win') and one kid 'Loser' (they called him 'Lou'). 'Win' grew up to be a career criminal, and 'Lou' grew up to be a cop. They also submitted identical resumes for jobs, one with a name like 'Judy' and another with a name like 'LaShandra'. The normal 'Judy' names got invited for interviews far, far more often.

Cool book.