It might not look like quite the same Holocaust level event when you control for the ones that would have died anyway. But hey, let's not examine the details when we can just spread hysteria instead. And then when you look at the other 2 leading causes of death, which are about as bad or worse in numbers, your hysteria looks even more misplaced. And then there's the fact that about 30% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, or approx. a million per year, about twice as many as now get aborted. What kind of crazy numbers would we get if we summed all those up since 1952, also?

That pales in comparison to the contraception apocalypse.

And now that more have access to contraception, abortion rates are steadily going down, which I think everyone can agree is a good thing.

(Some) conservative Christians absolutely do not agree with this. Hence abstinence-only education, shuttering planned parenthood, cutting requirements that insurance cover contraceptives and cutting government funding for them (and health services for women more generally), trying to restrict access to Plan B, etc.

For folks trying to make policy on moral absolutist grounds, the outcome (number of abortions, stable healthy families, ..) doesn’t really matter as much as making sure all of the relevant questions have black-and-white legal status in accordance to the extent possible with their religious beliefs.

Trying to get deontologists and consequentialists to agree on policy is difficult partly because they typically don’t understand each-others philosophical frameworks, and talk past each-other, making assumptions (e.g. less abortions = good) which are not valid to the other party.

Sorry to be pedantic, but it is important: fetuses or embryos are aborted, they are not babies until they are born.

Totally agree in terms of a normal legal definition.

Of course different religions have different views on the more metaphysical concept, I find it interesting that it seems for Jewish people, that babies aren't considered "fully formed people" (spiritually speaking) until a number of days after birth.

Source: http://www.momentmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/When-doe...