Hi, Argumentative Penguin. I really dig your writing and your unapologetically nuanced points of view. Any (hopefully respectful) disagreement here (or in any other of your posts) doesn't change the fact that you are one of my favorite writers on this platform.
With that out of the way...
What sovereign rights does any person have once they are deemed to have their own unique DNA? Put another way, how many heads does an expectant mother have at any point in her pregnancy?
Before you say "reproductive freedom", please keep in mind that "reproductive freedom" is a activist-driven misnomer in the context of abortion politics, as the process of reproduction ends once a female egg is fertilized--everything from that point onward is gestation, not reproduction. Even in the reddest of red states, there are no laws barring women from choosing whether or not to conceive, nor obligating them to have or not have sex. Otherwise, there would be no laws against rape, and birth control would be either banned or forcibly mandated.
In any case, my path to becoming pro-life (after a lifetime of being pro-choice) began the moment my firstborn opened his eyes for the very first time and appeared to be looking right into mine, and by the time I later looked at some procedural diagrams of the abortion process as a new parent, there was no turning back. Weirdly, these clinical and colorless line drawings were more offensive to me than the graphic photography often seen in pro-life literature.
I should say here that the above unfolded at a time when I wasn't going to church, and was not taking moral direction from any religion whatsoever regarding my abortion stance, and at a time when I was a card-carrying member of a certain Marxist labor organization with strong pro-choice leanings. Rather, it was simply a matter of me knowing medicalized depravity when I see it, while also learning to recognize the hypocrisies and false narratives that pervade pro-choice rhetoric.
And now, although I am in a faith community that is consistently pro-life from cradle to grave (anti-abortion, anti-capital punishment, anti-euthanasia), my church's pro-life stance is coincidental to my own.
To put it concisely, I'm pro-life because I'm anti-depravity, and not out of any religious fervor (despite my affiliation).
And finally, here's an article simply as food for thought:
