Abortion became legal in the U.S. in 1973 when I was a senior in high school. Throughout my junior and senior high years, the abortion debate was raging as the U.S. considered legalizing abortion. My first thoughts on the issue were, "Of course no one should ever kill a baby." I was 12 and lacked knowledge and empathy on the issue. Then I learned the facts: In the countries where abortion was legal, there were fewer abortions, and those that did occur were, on average, much earlier term. The second part makes sense considering that women seeking an abortion where illegal would waste time and the fetus would be further along by the time she arranged a back-alley procedure. But why fewer? Because those countries also were supportive of birth control in all forms.
So the fact is - legalizing abortion will reduce the number of abortions and most will be early, often before implantation.
Legal abortion also nearly eliminates the tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of mutilations caused by lack of access to safe abortion. I personally knew girls who had been injured, and two women from my community had died from abortion before it was legalized.
But why are these women making such a poor choice, I thought? Then I learned the reasons behind many of their choices. A young girl was raped and the injuries would not heal if she were forced to carry the rapist's fertilized egg to term. The birth control failed for a couple with five children who were barely making ends meet. And how was this my business anyway? It is not my body or family planning issue, it is between the doctor and the patient.
But what of those poor little fertilized eggs? Then I took a course in genetics where I learned that most fertilized eggs do not survive in nature, or "God's plan" if you will. Fertilized human eggs are not some God-beloved, precious, save-at-all-costs babies. Most are doomed by poor timing, bad genetic combination, or environmental factors like pollution (yet for the right wing, every pursuit of profit must be free to kill fetuses, with the sole exception willful abortion - killing a fetus in the womb through dirty water, uninspected food, lack of maternal health, work place stress, or tobacco use is never an issue for them.) Being anti-choice is not supported by the Bible or Christ's teachings, and half of U.S. Christians are pro-choice, so saying that being anti-choice is your "Christian" value is a lie, it is laundering your personal fact-free, empathy-free opinion through Jesus, which is denying Him, the sin that cannot be forgiven.
We cannot make laws based on the population that flip-flops when it happens to them. We know that most anti-choicers, when they find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy, have an abortion but see themselves as a special case. Look up Scott DesJarlais, staunch anti-abortion teabag congressman whose wife had two abortions with his consent, and who tried to force a patient with whom he had an affair to get an abortion. But to him, his situation was "special." Other women are just sluts. Zero empathy, all selfishness. We can't base our laws on these hypocrites who only want you to do as they say.
And to this day, the World Health Organization finds that there are still fewer abortions in countries where it's legal. So if you vote solely to make abortion illegal thinking you will save some babies, you are voting to kill more, later term, plus kill tens of thousands of girls and women, and mutilate hundreds of thousands more. There is so much blood on your hands for refusing to learn the facts or have empathy.