Haven't had time to read all the posts but just a couple of thoughts. People sometimes like to try to make abortion simple when it simply isn't. It's not simply murder and it's not simply a women's rights to do what she likes with her body regardless of cost.
Until 21-22 weeks a baby is not considered a viable human being, they are reliant on the mother's body for support so they are, if you will, a 'potential' being. This viability has been a moving target over the past decades due to advances in neonatal care. We have late term abortions still legal in some countries up to about 28 weeks as that was where viability started not much more than about 2 decades ago and in some cases the law simply hasn't kept pace with medical advances.
That aside when considering abortion, let's say for a potentially fatal congenital anomaly, with risk of materno/foetal mortality, a mother may be faced with a decision to abort her unborn child. Imagine several possible outcomes; the mother carries the baby to term and dies in child birth, the mother carries the baby to term and suffers a life of hardship as she struggles to deal with her child's high risk of mortality, the mother carries the baby to term and gives the baby up for adoption, or the mother aborts the baby early in pregnancy.
The first scenario if imposed on the women, you have afforded the unborn child a greater right to life than the mother. In the second scenario, again if imposed, you have given greater weight to the right of the unborn child to life than you have to the right of the mother to live the remainder of her life in psychological good health. The third scenario is potentially the same for slightly different reasons and in the fourth you have placed the mother's right to life above that of the unborn child. The fact is you can not afford an unborn child full right to life without also limiting the mother's own rights to some extent, and this is the crux of the issue. I'm not talking here about abortion for contraception's sake rather a scenario where we might imagine an abortion being 'justifiable'.
In most places in the world this has resulted in the idea that while a foetus has a right to life, it's rights are somewhat less than the rights of the mother as it is still considered a 'potential' being. That is to say, until viability is reached, the mother's rights hold more weight than the rights of the child. Once the child reaches a viable age and therefore is no longer just a potential being, the risk to the mother's life would generally have to be very significant in order to be able to justify abortion. This is why in many countries where abortion is legal it is generally legal up to certain gestational age but procurement of abortion after a defined cutoff, is generally much more difficult.
While the equation is relatively simple in a high-risk pregnancy i.e. the right to life of the foetus versus the right to life of the mother, it paved the way for the concept of a 'justifiable' abortion. Once that happened, as is often the case in law, the concept of right to life began to expand to include right to quality of life, right to physical health, right to psychological health. That is to say if the continuation of a pregnancy places the woman's life, quality of life or physical or psychological health at risk then are we giving undue weight to the rights of the 'potential' being versus the actual being?
That's where things get very murky.
