I don't mean to pry, but would you mind if I asked you to elaborate on those reasons?
When an egg is fertilized, it's a mass of cells. Yes, cells with unique DNA but cells nonetheless, as indistinct to me as any other mass of cells. That's the first thing.
Is it not just a mass of cells on Day 89? 91? 180? People who are pro-life have a hard time understanding at what moment the mass of cells converts to a human. The only two bright lines I can see are conception and birth, and even you've admitted that birth isn't the right standard.
The second thing is an essential belief that people just have sex...The only thing that stops it is to stop sex that leads to unwanted pregnancies OR to severaly minimize the likelihood that an unwanted pregnancy arises as a result of having sex. That would mean we would have to acknowledge that even young people (our daughters and sons) have sex and should have access to birth control. Yet the people I characterize as the "religious right" seem to be opposed to the sex, the birth control, and the potential abortion. I can't add that math up.
On that we agree, but I would submit that birth control education is a private matter that should be handled by the family - not something that is administered in a public school.
If you hate abortion, making it illegal isn't going to stop it.
True enough. But there are many things that are illegal, and we understand those activities continue. They're illegal because society is damaged by them, and as a society we've decided that we cannot condone the behavior.
At some point the mass of cells, to me, becomes able to live without the support of its mother. When that occurs (and this is different for every pregnancy, so I'm told) then, to me, it's life. Therefore, 90 days where it's generally not viable seems like a reasonable place to draw one of MY bright lines.
It's false to say that there are only two points - conception and birth - and generally, that's a problem I have with the Republicans in the current administration - you're with us or against us - you support the war or you're unpatriotic - polar extreme views that completely eliminate anything in the middle. If, as you say, only the two exist, then birth control such as the pill should be illegal as well. Because it doesn't prevent conception, only implantation.
I hear you on the birth control issue - I would love it if families would handle it reasonably, much the way my family handled it (I was raised in a household that taught me to respect myself and to view my body as a gift and to give it carefully, but also that it was normal and that I should protect myself, which kept me a virgin much longer than my girlfriends). But for reduction to work, birth control has to be widely available. If you leave it to families, you won't get the kind of reduction in abortion I think is possible, but I can compromise on this one provided we're all connected to the realities of some households.
While I find your last statement eloquent, I don't see where society has been damaged by safe, legal abortion. I realize that it bothers many principled people and bothers them deeply, but I think that is separate from societal "damage", which is what you suggest.