Listening to conservatives talk about abortion, you sense that a lot of them truly have deep, sincere feelings of misplaced empathy toward fetuses, and it's bizarre given that on virtually every other subject their attitude is just nakedly malicious. Toward every living creature other than a human fetus - including real children who are already born - their feelings are at best contemptuously indifferent, and often fall to deep resentment, suspicion, or even murderous hatred, but bring up fetuses and suddenly they're talking like Amnesty International. The fact that this is psychotic is undeniable, but why do they think like this? I think I've hit upon an explanation.
Very simply, anti-abortion derangement is an expiating ritual for conservatives. They may be psychotic, but very few of them are completely psychotic, so they still have this human itch in the back of their mind telling them to have compassion and stop being lying, thieving, murdering pieces of reptilian shit. They'll cheer murderous wars of aggression, blow pregnant women to smithereens with bombs, take pleasure in the idea of torturing prisoners and denying other people's fundamental human rights, giddily fire employees and throw people out on the street, and feel all warm and fuzzy at other people's misfortune because it makes them feel superior...but they know it's wrong just as well as everyone else knows it's wrong. And that knowledge irritates them, makes them feel not as superior as they prefer to feel.
An intelligent, responsible, psychologically healthy person would deal with a pang of conscience by doing something different: You feel guilty about screwing someone over, make it up to them and don't screw over other people in the future. You feel guilty about supporting inhuman monsters in exchange for tax cut bribes, then you switch parties or at very least stay home on election day. But conservatives don't think like that - their paranoid inferiority complex is so massive that they resent the idea of even something as basic as Right & Wrong dictating their behavior. They would feel "oppressed" by common decency. So they keep doing what they do, behaving idiotically and selfishly always, and then they expiate their guilt through a ritual act of symbolic compassion that in reality embodies the same sadism and malice as the rest of their behavior: Attacking abortion.
A fetus is non-sentient, so it is "pure" of all contrary thoughts and perceptions that would offend a conservative. It can't talk back, disobey, or show independent existence like a born child. It is a blank slate upon which to project all of their most pious fantasies, but it has human blood, and of course in the fascist race-nationalist psychology of conservatism, blood is everything - more important even than the human being it feeds. This is why the conservative conception of "family" consists of nothing more than blood and power - a dictatorial father ruling over the human property he created and owns because they were born of his blood. Everyone else is just a disposable servant, convenient ally, or obstacle.
But there is no downside for conservatives to pour all of their guilt into "defending" non-sentient fetuses, and then calling themselves "Pro-Life" for it: They will never demand of themselves or other conservatives that they show the same compassion to born children or grownups, or even that they tangibly prove they give a shit by providing universal prenatal care. See, they don't really care: Anti-abortion politics is just a ritual - a ritual of arbitrarily expressing compassion for the fetus to expiate the guilt of having zero compassion for any other living thing. And then - something they really enjoy - translating that ritualized mockery of compassion into hate and rage against abortion providers and the liberal political elements that defend reproductive rights.
The right is evil, folks. It's not hyperbole, it's just what they are. Where normal people do symbolic things to work out negative emotions like anger to avoid acting on them, conservatives do symbolic things to avoid acting on love and empathy. These are emotions they find problematic, inconvenient, and do everything they can to avoid letting them change their behavior, acting out pathetic, Orwellian shams in order to exorcise them rather than just acting on them. Instead of refraining from shooting the black man who dares to set foot on their property, they do it and then work out their subconscious guilt by shrieking terrorist threats at an abortion doctor. Instead of just not stealing from their own employees, they do it and then donate a fraction of their stolen wealth to "defending unborn children." They'll chuckle and guffaw, Pabst in hand, over the young deer whose head they just blew off, and then weep at images of aborted fetuses their Pastor shows them. Even in expiating guilt, they find some way to be perverse and malefic.