Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
I'm not a conservative.
Opposing abortion as a solution to unwanted pregnancies while supporting various other policies which reduce their frequency and impact is a consistent position that I can respect, if not quite agree with. It's easy to see how people might oppose abortion - "Ending a human life is wrong, an embryo is a human life, so abortion is wrong" - so I think it's important to try to be respectful of that, for people who are consistent on those other points. But if you'll indulge me a little, there seem to be three main problems with that line of thinking against abortion.
Firstly, as it stands it's a rules-based (deontological) approach to morality, which is a little questionable in contrast to
other approaches such as consequentialism and virtue ethics. For example, drawing on the Christian tradition the 'Old Testament' had a rules-based system in which knowing what was right or wrong required simply looking at the list of rules; but in the 'New Testament' Jesus directly challenged that regarding even the most sacred rules such as the Sabbath, suggesting instead that rules' and actions' rightness and wrongness derived from their utility or consequences (such as picking grain or healing on the Sabbath) or from the intent and character of the actor (such as 'do to others as you'd want done to you' or 'love your neighbour as yourself'). Rules-based approaches can be simple - and are often simplistic - which is why they're taught to children and retained by many adults, but they're hardly the last or best word in moral theory.
Secondly, even granting a rules-based approach (and assuming that to be a valid rule), a more 'logical' conclusion from that assumed rule would be to
outlaw sex first and foremost. Why? Because from 100 pregnancies there will be roughly
70 'natural abortions' (in the form of either failure to implant or later miscarriage), roughly
6 induced abortions in the USA and then the remaining 24 live births. If we decided that it was appropriate to restrict women's liberty based on our assumed deontological rule in order to prevent those six induced abortions, logically it would make far more sense to prevent the seventy natural abortions also by restricting everyone's liberty equally. Actively ending a 'life' is conceptually different from knowingly and actively creating the conditions in which a 'life' will be ended, but it's a pretty fine distinction and when it's a ten to one ratio it would obviously be absurd to say that the former must be outlawed and punished while the latter should be allowed and even encouraged. Needless to say, such an absurd conclusion following more or less inescapably from our assumed, simplistic rule suggests that the rule isn't a very good one!
And thirdly, the rule actually is not so simple; there are numerous widely-held exceptions to it, and it seems reasonable for abortion to be one of those exceptions. The actual 'rule' is something more like "Ending a human life is wrong except:
- when necessary for self-defense
- to save other lives (eg. trolley problem, baby Hitler, hostage situation)
- to prevent greater suffering (eg. euthanasia)
- passively removing life support in permanent vegetative state
- when they really want to die (suicide)
- when they've done something really bad (capital punishment)
- when authorized by a government under various circumstances, often variations on the above (eg. defensive war) . . . . "
Various people will tick different boxes there of course, but loosely speaking I've put them (besides perhaps the last) in the order I'd consider most justifiable - I lean pretty heavily against capital punishment and obviously not a huge fan of suicide! So with all those potential exceptions to the 'rule,' why not abortion too? In fact abortion is pretty much a variation on the second, third and fourth one of those: It slightly reduces risk to the mother's life (and greatly reduces the restriction of her liberty); an unwanted embryo likely won't have a great life and would suffer less, in fact not at all if simply ended; and abortion prior to about twenty-four weeks is simply removing life support from a mindless, vegetative parasite. So even for those who adopt a deontological approach to ethics and assume that this 'rule' is a valid and important one, obviously there are good reasons for abortion to be recognized as a standard exception alongside various others - as a
government authorized exception at the very least, even for those who maintain that they
personally would consider it wrong to have one.