I have not yet heard an anti-abortion argument that doesn't fall apart on examination. Most are baldly incorrect on their face. It really shouldn't even be an argument at this point, but I'll tell you why we are having this argument. I'll tell you why this is such an issue for so many conservatives.
It's a foundation. It's a first brick to build on. It's cracking the door open to get back to what they really, really want in their dark little hearts: slavery.
The beginning is this, codifying woman as a second-class citizen. That is why they fight to give a fetus more rights to a woman's body than the woman has. It's the first step, the wedge, the thing that they can nurture and grow like foul little weeds.
A question not pondered by the ignorant, mostly religious, base pushing giving more rights to a potential human than to an actual human: what's to stop you, once you've done this, from doing more?
Once they have codified in law that a woman is a second-class citizen, that a fetus is considered more human than women, what's to stop them there? Do you trust your leaders to just stop there?
Never-mind how you propose to regulate these laws once you've removed all clinics, because I'm going to go ahead and assume you've already planned to regulate internet purchases of abortion drugs, etc. Let's stay focused on the question at hand.
What happens to women now that a law is made that declares them as second-class citizens?
Would current conservative leaders stop there? Would they? Once a woman has no say about her body, what's to stop them from more, from worse, from abuse because now it's ok by law?
Anti-abortionists: do you think your goals will stop with your goal? Do you believe that rendering women as second-class-citizens won't result in atrocious abuse? Murder? Do you believe that rendering women as less-than other citizens will result in anything other than horror?
A brick in the wall of slavery, they're just dying to build again. They want women slaves, they want men slaves, they just want slaves again. It's kinda what's behind a lot of the bullshit now - libertarian values on down. Totalitarian rulers with a slavery citizenry. It makes them drool at night.
More success with bricks is being made with laws and judiciary. This excellent summary from Senator Whitehouse explains other ways the bricks are formed and put into place.
This idea that the goal is slavery is the idea. Those that drive it, pay for it, have been making it happen, don't actually admit it to each other, or indeed speak it aloud. Horrible word! So they discuss instead every step along the way, every brick formed and placed, and all comes to the same result anyway. Enslavement.
Another excellent bit of reading on the subject is this book. The true Libertarian believes in liberty, all right - for the "property owner". You must be wealthy to have political power and say. In the United States, that's how the government largely ran, in a time when property included slaves. Property included human beings. These ideas that drove the civil war haven't gone anywhere. That's America's story, anyway. Other countries have other stories, but most, if not all, countries have a slavery history somewhere back there, as well.
Owning people, enslaving people, is spectacularly profitable.
Consequently, the ideas that drive these shifts in our politics is a desire to have power concentrated at the top. Only voting rights and policy shaping for the elite few, and the rest of us be damned. It's how they avoid specifically stating they're hankering for slavery, by instead rather blithely stating that they want what they want, believe what they believe, without a thought as to how it affects anyone else. If other citizens are not as immensely wealthy as they are, it's their own fault, and that wealth is the only way you get a seat at the table, the rest of the world be damned.
And when the rest of the world be damned, what you get is slavery. Oh they might pretty it up, they might call it something else, they might provide just enough meager sustenance to the rest of us to keep up a work force, but not enough to provide strength to fight back. Tale as old as time. Boils down to slavery. Hitler did it, and he didn't even bother providing sustenance to his slaves. He wanted - and achieved - a slavery workforce that he simply replaced as they expired.
I am unabashedly pro-choice. I'm somewhat of a cheerleader for abortion, but that doesn't make me anything other than pro-CHOICE. If you feel abortion is morally wrong, then you do not have to have one. But relegating women into second-class citizenry - codifying it into law - is just plain wrong. Abortion should not be anyone's business but the person that wants one and the qualified medical person providing it.
Removing the choice from a woman - making it law that we have less rights to our own bodies than any other humans - is wrong. It. Is. Wrong. Our bodies should be sovereignty - every born and living individual human on this planet. Potential people should not have more rights than actual people. This should not be a question. And no matter what any anti-abortionist tells you - THIS IS THE REAL GOAL. Their support of laws and bills and regulations that damage actual children's lives shows how little they actually care about children. The real goal is to make woman less. The first step to enslave her.
