Perhaps I need to make something clear, which I am reluctant to do, because I enjoy the fact that people presume to judge what others believe, based only on what they believe.
I do not believe abortion is either a good or moral choice. I believe a woman who chooses to abort suffers because of that choice. The right solution is for people to be totally responsible for their choices, which usually means, the woman never should have become pregnant in the first place. Since a woman considering an abortion, with some obvious exceptions, have already demonstrated a reluctance to make responsible choices, it is unlikely she will take responsibility for the unborn.
Here are some of what is wrong with all that leads and follows an abortion: abortion is an attempt to reverse or cancel the consequences of one's chosen action; any action engaged in without reqard to consequences is immoral, even if the consequences are good; neither sex or any other desired pleasure is an excuse to not think; you cannot do wrong and get away with it; if you are not sure it is right, it is wrong; abortion does not cancel an unwanted consequence, it adds another wrong choice and self-destructive consequence to those one is already carrying.
I regard all arguments based on the "welfare" of the unborn as specious and those who make them do care at all about the unborn. A quick painless death is to be preferred to a life of torment and suffering, especially when the choice is not in one's own hands. This does not justify abortion, but does eliminate one of the nonsensical arguments against it, so the truth can be more plainly explicated.
But abortion is extremely controversial, and its moral status extremely ambiguous. It is also a matter that lies totally outside the jurisdiction of legitimate government.
My argument all along is only that governments are created by adult human beings to protect the rights of adult human beings to live freely, by their own moral choices, which includes, whether or not to have an abortion. When government begins using force to make decisions for individuals regarding their own bodies and family, (as they do now with compulsary education), that government is tyrannical and enimical to all justice, morality, and the human requirement for liberty.
The anti-abortion people do more to promote abortion then pro-abortion people do, by making it a religious issue, by changing the meaning of words (like calling abortion murder), and by appealling to emotions and feeling, instead of sound reason and moral principles.
Here is a another simple principle. I should never support any law to prevent anyone from doing anything, if that thing, however much or often it is done, can never be a direct threat to me, my property, or my family. When someone does something I would not do, or I do not like, or I personally believe is immoral, that does not give me a right to use force to make them conform to my convictions and preferances. That is what is wrong with the entire anti-abortion movement. They ought to oppose abortion but what they do has the opposite affect, because what they really want to do is interefer in the lives of others. Essentially, they are intruders and meddlers in others affairs, a moral evil with far more devastating consequences than abortion.
I certainly don't want more laws to solve any problem. Less law is always better.
Hank
I should never support any law to prevent anyone from doing anything, if that thing, however much or often it is done, can never be a direct threat to me, my property, or my family.
I suspect that many of the meddlers would consider this "freedom to decide" a threat. The fact that "murder" is being permitted in their society is a threat to their environment.
By the way, if "murder" is indeed happening here, it is premeditated and done to the purely innocent. If ever there was a crime deserving the death penalty, logic says this is it. To be true to principle here we should end abortion by executing all the aborting women as well as their doctors. Why do we not hear cries for that? Murder deserves proper punishment. Why? Because they know that it is not murder. It is an emotional ploy to win an agrument and it has failed miserably.
When someone does something I would not do, or I do not like, or I personally believe is immoral, that does not give me a right to use force to make them conform to my convictions and preferances. That is what is wrong with the entire anti-abortion movement. They ought to oppose abortion but what they do has the opposite affect, because what they really want to do is interefer in the lives of others. Essentially, they are intruders and meddlers in others affairs..
It deserved repeating.